I’m not the most socially adept person in the world. I’ve been trying hard to get better, and I’m an order of magnitude more confident than a couple of years ago, but I still get pretty nervous. I try to be more assertive where before I’d have just gone quiet, and this often works, but sometimes the nerves crash my speech centres and I say weird things.

It was just me at the ceroc dancing class last week, and the teacher told anyone on their own to move to one side of the floor. So I did, and there was a lady ahead of me. Obviously what’s required is some kind of phrase to indicate ‘we both appear to be partnerless, therefore it seems logical that we join up and join the class as a regular couple - is that ok?’. Except you obviously wouldn’t put it like that - you’d say something normal. Or you can do what I did and say ‘do you want to go?’.

She gave me a strange look - I was at this point trying to induce spontaneous self combustion - yet somehow figured out what I meant. Things got better after that, mainly because I said as little as possible all evening. It was still fun, though.

Do you want to go? Wtf? Having said that, I still can’t come up with the perfect statement. I’ve got as far as “Do you, um”.