Admittedly, at the start of my countdown I'd planned to simply fill this entry with an enormous "Z E R O" – it does actually sum up the state of my romantic life today quite nicely.

Having read my last nine entries, you might guess that I'm rather jaded about relationships and whether love ever stays. But I am surprisingly optimistic about the issue – at least as it pertains to me. As it pertains to the rest of you, well, I'm quite sure that love and pain are two sides of the same fig leaf. Eventually you'll get yours... but fortunately you'll soon forget it – after all, we humans have amazingly small capacities for remembering pain.

I've had objects of desire, and once or twice been an object of desire. Both are so intoxicating that sometimes I've settled for having or being an object of use because it seems better than nothing, zilch, zero. Not long ago, a couple of my women friends tried to convince me that it wasn't better, that I should settle for being alone, that I would in the end be happier alone. I found their arguments gratingly annoying: they're both happily married to wonderful people.

I have absolutely no intention of accepting zero without a fight. I have every intention of once more being in a partnership of mutual desire and future and support.

In a countdown, zero usually indicates a launch. New start. Fresh beginning. All that. So... here's wishing for a happy Valentine's Day and loads of love.