Why waving goodbye to Mr Wonderful may be the wisest folly of all...

Alice Evans has got a GSOH, GFCH (gas-fired central heating), a cat and a Mitsubishi colour portable. People have told her she can look pretty if she tries. She's thirty-eight and single, so will someone please pass the message on?

What Alice thinks she needs is Mr Wonderful. A man like her pottery teacher, James Mitchel, who's warm and wise and gorgeous. But as one long, hot summer disappears with no sign of her snaring the man of her dreams, Alice is forced to consider the alternatives.

Should she settle for Mr Mediocre, her dull but dependable ex boyfriend Eamon, and spend the rest of her days trying to like golf?

Or could there be another way for a woman to ditch all the longing - and really start living her life?