I’ve fallen completely in love.

It may be only lust. In fact, that’s probably all it is. I’m hoping that’s all it is, believe me. Anyone who knows me knows of my quite epic and hamartic fondness for blue eyes and blond hair. It really doesn’t help when they’re accompanied by pretty little cherry red lips, smiling a smile that could topple any bird from its perch in dizziness. Which in this case they are. I’m completely infatuated with the most beautiful boy alive. And I only encountered him for the first time last night. But why is it far more reassuring for this to be only a physical attraction than a romantic one?

Well, for a start, he’s only eighteen. I know, repulsive isn’t it?

Secondly, his name’s Del. Yes, Del. Uh huh, I don’t know what I was thinking. Probably just looking into his eyes, or watching that cute little half-jig he wiggles absently whenever he gets excited suggests I wasn’t thinking at all.

Thirdly he still lives with his mum, though Marni is a lovely woman who only this morning I watched cook pancakes in her nightie. Marni’s great.

Fourthly, despite my best efforts to subtly encourage any inclination Del might have towards his own flock, he so far seems to mostly enjoy watching the girls who hang around the bus stop outside his house like hookers on a street corner.

Oh yeah, and fifthly, and perhaps most significantly if you’re inclined to pedantry or quibbling over semantics, he doesn’t exist.

You see, last night I arrived home quite late and quite drunk to find that those lovely people at MacGold (cheers Jane) provide just as good a service as ever. Propped up outside my door, as I wobbled about the place like a Merlot-jelly lollipop was my copy of The Sims 2. Goodbye Summer social life.

I stayed up tinkering for about an hour and created the most perfect boy alive (current existential thinking on the sentient status of computer game characters notwithstanding). The aforementioned Mr Barney. I’m now so obsessed with him that all I want to do is go home and watch him sleep, or dance that cute little half-jig of his or just make him try on different pairs of jeans all afternoon.

Before you think me completely tragic with just a little pinch of psycho, I should mention that I am someone whose first crush was on Esteban from The Mysterious Cities of Gold. I think he was also my first vaguely erotic dream - something half-remembered about Mendoza making us take our shorts off because we had to go swimming, and I said to Esteban I only would if he did first…

… What? Why are you frowning like that? I was only seven.

I started reading this earlier today which I’d found by chance. Immediately I thought “oh good, I’m not the only person in the world so emotionally suicidal that they fall in love with fictional characters.”

That was before I kept on reading however.

Suddenly I ceased seeing myself as someone foolishly infatuated with someone I’d never met (and unless dimensia sets in earlier than expected, most likely never will) and was instantly transformed into a sad old loner perving over a junior clump of fictional pixels taking his top off. Of course I’ve completely rethought my life, and am not remotely looking forward to going home and wasting the rest of this incredible weather indoors playing computer games that involve little strategy beyond finding a nice T shirt to match Del’s blond bob, or orchestrating him sharing a first kiss with the paperboy.

Not even slightly.