I'm amazed that nobody has written a book of etiquette for the snogging generation. There's plenty of old-fashioned ones with marvellously coy names such as Growing Up Gracefully and Enquire Within, which tell you every possible way to starch your knickers, store your knickers and keep your knickers on, but there's no contemporary version that lays down nice and easy ground rules telling you what your choices are after you've snogged somebody for the first time.
There is, of course, a ton weight of self-help tomes with names such as The Rules of Engagement and Getting A Man If You Don't Really Want One, but the didactic tone in most of them is enough to make most of us feel like checking straight into the detention class.
"Don't, whatever you do, call him after your first date - he'll know you're eager." Of course, he'll bloody know you're eager - that's because you are eager, which is why you've gone against every instinct and rung him in the first place. Most of these books tend to overlook the fact that love, particularly the unrequited kind, is a disease that you suffer from, rather than a state of bliss.
No, advice is not what you need in these situations. What you need is a kind of anthropological study of all the different reactions that both of you might display in the aftermath of a first kiss. This, after all, is where all relationships start and where most flings both start and end, yet most of us have absolutely no idea what our own reaction means, let alone that of the person with whom we've just clashed teeth.
The first chapter could be devoted to the most boring situation of all - you meet, you flirt, you kiss, you both irritate your family and friends with tales of this wonderful person who obviously possesses God's phone number, you make a date and you live happily ever after - yawn, bloody, yawn. But, whether old cynics like me find it boring or no, the truth is that, when something is right, it can all work very simply indeed.
Luckily for romantic novelists, chocolate manufacturers and boy bands, the path of true love does not always run smoothly. More to the point, the number of variations on true love is as large as the number of people in the world. Not to mention the few hard and fast rules of attraction - old favourites such as "girls like cads", "playing hard-to-get works" and "boys don't make passes at girls in night classes". This last one I dreamed up myself after years of reading agony aunts telling Lonely from Leitrim that she should join a motor maintenance class, which must be full of unattached females by now.
The end result of all these difficulties thrown in the path of true love is that for many of us, a first snog will not immediately result in years of bliss with the partner of our dreams. It will result in hours spent hovering in the vicinity of the phone - "Actually, I need to sort the phone directories right now". It will result in hours spent in dubious bars simply because the cousin of the woman you like once worked in a place of the same name.
In other words, it will result in the kind of excitement and intrigue that you often miss when you're going out with somebody, and find tortuous if you're not. Which is where the rest of my post-first-kiss rules book would come in handy. After all, there are Lonely Planet guides telling you how to find your way to the local pub, so why not a guide book to the politics of the snog? The chapters could be broken down into subject headings like "Getting There and Away" - which would detail the snog which is perfectly wonderful at the time but an extremely bad idea the next day with a hangover. So, you look slightly confused when you next meet the person, and then vaguely pleased and then terribly in need of leaving the room for some reason.
Another chapter could be "Getting Around" - which would describe that situation where you've had a kiss and you've decided that you're madly in love. The only problem is that they don't call, so you get around a phenomenal number of places in an attempt to bump into Mr/Ms Marvellous by accident, as it were.
The possibilities are endless: "Local Attractions" - detailing the embarrassing snog you have with your neighbour or colleague; "Where to stay" - looking at the signs telling you that this might be somebody to hang on to, and "When to go" which is self-evident. There could even be a phrase section helpfully pointing out statements such as "it's not that I don't like you it's just . . ." actually mean "I like you but not that much."
The most interesting and complex chapter would be the one titled "Dangers and Annoyances" - into this section would go the two types of men that seem to populate my life as though on a mission from God: The first are ones we could roughly call Not A Good Idea - those with girlfriends, resident in another country or with a strong aversion to anyone called Louise. The others are an equally infuriating breed and are best described as people who manage to make me feel as though they think I fancy them. If you can work your way through that sentence you might recognise the type - you snog him, you meet again, he looks down, he looks shifty, he looks ever so slightly terrified. Within the space of 65 seconds he has managed to convince you that you fancy him.
If you're very strong-minded, you realise that you don't fancy him, but so impressive are the fancy tactics of this type (who, infuriatingly, is often completely unaware that he's using any), you will often get terribly embarrassed because you think that he thinks you fancy him, so you blush and say stupid things anyway. So, then he really does think you fancy him.
I've learnt by now that the best thing to do with these people is throw them from you. But it has taken me years to work that out - so, someone, please, get writing and make Cadbury's, Mills & Boone and the Boy Band Central Casting Office redundant.