I keep meaning to write one of these properly and then I talk myself out of it, which is very on brand. An About Me page always feels like standing up in assembly and explaining yourself to people who did not ask. Still. If you have found your way here, you might as well know who is talking.
I am Dingo. I am thirty one. I was born and raised in Basildon, Essex, which is a sentence that already tells you half of it if you know what that means, and nothing at all if you do not. It means council estates and Saturday markets and aunts who clock your business before you have sat down. It means you learn sarcasm early and affection even earlier, usually in the same breath. I moved to Hackney in my mid teens and I have been East London ever since, except I still go home for Sunday roast every other week if I can help it. That is non negotiable. You can take the girl out of Essex. You cannot take the gravy.
People meet me at work first and get the wrong idea. I supervise a small team at a bank in the city. Under twenty fives, mostly. The girls wind me up. The lads I pretend I have not noticed. I am told I come across harsh, stern, strict. Fine. That is the job. Numbers have to add up. People have to turn up. I did not get a six figure salary by being everyone’s mate in the meeting. The work face is a front, though, and I know that sounds convenient, like I am giving myself a glow. It is still true. Outside the office I am softer than I look. I live in gym kit, baggy hoodies, trackies, onesies, the lot. Blonde hair tied back. Minimal makeup. Nails usually red or pink because I like a bit of pretty even when I am pretending I am practical. I am comfortable barefoot at home. I train when I remember, running or walking more than anything carved and shiny. I vape occasionally and I am not going to write a speech about it.
I am quietly competitive. I do not advertise it because I find people who advertise it exhausting. I like being good at things. I like money. I like knowing where I stand. I would call myself a proper feminist in the ordinary sense, the one where you want women paid fairly and left alone to get on with it, and I do not preach. Preaching is a hobby for people who need an audience more than they need a point. Politically I sit a bit centre right and I keep it to myself. Nobody at work needs my views with their coffee. Nobody on this blog needs a pamphlet either. I would rather tell you what I actually care about, which is loyalty, privacy, and not performing a personality for strangers.
I keep a very small circle. Once you are in, you are in. I would rather sit in silence with someone I trust than fill a room with people I have to manage. I am good in a crisis. I show up with food, or a film, usually a chick flick, or just the kind of quiet that does not demand you tidy your feelings into a presentation. I will be a shoulder. I will not moralise your mess. I am also terrible at texting back quickly, which my friends have been moaning about since Nokia days in spirit if not in fact. I prefer voice notes or seeing you in person. I hold grudges longer than I admit. I can go emotionally avoidant when things get heavy. There. That is the unflattering paragraph. You might as well have it early.
The blog started because I got tired of swallowing stories. City life is loud and polished and full of people pretending their lives are a mood board. Mine is not. Mine is Sunday trains back to mum’s, a kettle that works overtime, trash reality TV with full running commentary, and the private hope I do not always say out loud. I want a tall, dark haired, handsome man who can handle me and still put the kettle on. I want regular affection. I want cuddles and foot massages and someone who does not treat kindness like it makes him less. I have not found him yet. I have had fun looking, which is a polite way of saying I have been single on purpose for a stretch because I like my freedom and I do not like explaining myself to men who wanted a quieter version of me.
I love men. That is not a slogan. It is just true. I also hide how much I want, because the world is weird about women who admit appetite without turning it into a brand. At work I am the supervisor. At home I am the girl in the onesie who gets ridiculously invested in whether two strangers on the telly should get engaged. Both of those people are me. If that bothers you, this is a long page to have clicked.
Basildon still sits under everything. People from outside Essex use the word like an insult. Let them. I learned how to clock nonsense at a kitchen table. I learned that family can wind you up and feed you in the same hour. Roast potatoes have done more for my sanity than any wellness app. When I say I go home every other week, I mean I actually go. I sit there being the quieter one until someone starts, then the accent thickens and we are off. Emotion does that to me. Alcohol does it faster. I am sweary, affectionate, a bit timid at the edges until I am not. My one liners come out dry and I rarely mean harm. If I have upset you it is usually because I said the true thing without wrapping it.
East London is different air. Hackney in my mid teens felt like the map had widened overnight. You get used to the mix, the late buses, the way the city pretends it never sleeps and then looks exhausted at 8am same as everywhere else. I like it here. I like being able to disappear into my flat after a day of being the stern one. I like that my neighbours do not need my life story. I also like that I can still get to Essex without it being an expedition. That in between is the whole point of me, I think. Not quite the girl I was. Not fully the woman the bank thinks I am.
I am good with numbers. That is the unsexy talent. Maths settles me. Spreadsheets do not argue back. When work is messy, figures are honest. I put extra hours in more often than I should. Work life balance is stable on paper and imperfect in practice, which I suspect is how most people actually live if they stopped lying about their inboxes. I can be stubborn at work. Quietly. The competitive streak turns into a refusal to let something sloppy leave my desk. My team would probably call that a flaw. They would not be entirely wrong.
What I will not do is pretend I am above ordinary pleasures. I watch rubbish television and I give it the respect of a sports commentator. I will shout at the screen. I will take sides. I will text my friends mid episode like it is breaking news. That is not irony. That is joy. I think women are allowed joy that is not elevated. You do not have to be reading a prize winner every night to have an interior life. Sometimes you need a show so stupid it rinses the day out of you.
Money matters to me because I have seen what the lack of it does. I am not interested in looking poor as a personality, and I am not interested in looking rich as a personality either. I like security. I like being able to buy the nicer bottle of wine on a Friday without doing mental gymnastics. I like sending myself home to Essex with a bit of ease. Obsessive is a strong word and also not entirely unfair. I notice prices. I notice who pays their way. I notice when someone thinks a woman with her own wage is a challenge rather than a fact.
If you read the other posts you already know I write about dating, want, the gap between the story and the night. I try to keep it human. I am not here to shock my mother and I am not here to write a brochure for being single in the city. I am here because I think women recognise the specific loneliness of being competent all day and still hoping someone will look at you like you are not a project. I think we recognise the itch of wanting intensity and tenderness in the same person. I think we recognise rolling our eyes at a rumour and then thinking about it on the way to the station.
I am idealistic in a way that surprises people who only get the work version. I still believe the right person can exist without me having to shrink. I still believe sex and affection are allowed to live in the same sentence. I still believe a Sunday roast is a love language. I still believe loyalty is rarer than chemistry and more useful in the long run. I have been accused of being too much and not enough in the same month. That is dating, I suppose. You get used to the static. You do not have to like it.
There is a version of me that stays silent when it matters. I am not the girl who needs to fill every gap. I can sit with you for an hour and only speak if it is needed. Some people find that unnerving. I find it restful. Noise is cheap in this city. Attention is not. If I give you mine, it means something. If I let you into the small circle, it means more. I am non judgemental about mess because I have made my own. I have cheated in past relationships when I had no control and I am not going to tidy that into a lesson plan. I stayed single after that because I did not trust myself with other people’s feelings while I was still greedy for novelty. That is the least glamorous honesty I can offer. I would rather you hear it from me than invent a cleaner story.
I write long because I think in long. Short captions make me itch. I want the texture. What the room smelled like. What I told myself on the walk home. What I got wrong. I want the bit where I am nervous and trying to be breezy. I want the bit where I am at my desk the next morning with my stern face on and a secret still humming under it. If a piece is tender, I let it be tender. If a piece is filthy, I try to make it felt rather than just listed. I care about mood. I care about the difference between being wanted and being handled. I care about the joke that arrives a second after the feeling, because that is how I survive most things.
You will notice I do not do the polished influencer autobiography. There is no morning routine with seven steps and a branded journal. I wake up, I swear at my alarm, I put the kettle on, I decide if I am a hoodie day or a slightly more assembled human. I commute. I manage people who are younger than my patience. I eat lunch that is sometimes proper and sometimes whatever is nearest. I come home and drop the performance by the door. If that is disappointing, I am not sure what to tell you. Most lives are built out of repetition with the occasional lightning strike. The lightning is what I write about. The repetition is what I live.
Friends get the running commentary. They get the voice notes that start mid thought. They get me turning up with snacks when someone is heartbroken. They do not get a polished advice column. I am better at sitting with you than fixing you. I think that is underrated. Everybody wants a speech. Fewer people want company. I can do company. I can do a film and a blanket and the kind of silence that does not require you to be entertaining. If you need a guru, there are thousands. If you need a girl from Basildon who will tell you the truth and then put the telly on, I am closer.
I am not going to pretend I have the city figured out. London will take your evenings and call it opportunity. It will make you feel behind even when you are doing well. It will introduce you to men in good suits who are empty, and men who look ordinary and are not. It will make you miss the simple things, which is why the roast matters. It is a reset. Same table, same faces, same arguments about nothing. I leave lighter. Then I come back to Hackney and put the supervisor back on like a coat.
If you asked my colleagues to describe me they would use words like blunt, demanding, organised. If you asked my closest friends they would say loyal, funny, a nightmare to get on the phone, unexpectedly soft. Both descriptions can sit in the same body. I am tired of women having to pick one register and stay there. I can be strict about a deadline and still want to be held. I can be good at my job and still get giddy about a text. I can have a high drive and still want the kettle and the foot rub and the daft film. None of that cancels the rest out.
I started putting words here because the alternative was letting the stories rot in my notes app. Writing makes a shape out of the week. It also makes me braver than I am in person, which is a funny thing to admit. On the page I will tell you I was nervous. In the room I will throw charm at the nerves and hope you do not notice. The page is where I stop pretending I am unbothered. I am bothered. I am interested. I am still half waiting for the man who can keep up without turning it into a contest.
What I want from this space is simple. I want it to feel like I sat down with a cup of tea and told you the thing properly. Not a highlight reel. Not a confession booth. Just the voice I use with people I trust, cleaned up enough to be readable and left messy enough to be mine. If you are here for the city gossip, there will be some. If you are here for the dating wreckage, there will be some of that too. If you are here because you also go home to your parents and then come back to a flat that is quiet in a way that is both freedom and a question, you are in the right place.
I do not owe strangers my whole inventory. I will not name the team. I will not name the bank. I will not hand out my friends like content. Discretion is not a brand strategy. It is manners. The people I love get to stay people. The men I write about get enough detail to make the feeling true and not enough to turn them into a hunt. That line matters to me. Curiosity is not a warrant.
Some days I look at this page and think, who do you think you are. Then I remember I am just a girl who likes sentences and Sunday lunch and the possibility that the next story might be kinder than the last. I am well educated enough to write a long piece without turning it into a lecture. I am Essex enough to undercut myself before anyone else can. I am city enough to know that looking capable is often a costume. Underneath it I am still the kid who wanted to be chosen without having to audition every hour.
If we ever met I would probably be slightly shy at first. Then I would relax and talk too much. Then I would make a dry joke and look at you to check you had taken it in the right spirit. That is the rhythm. I do not mean harm. I do mean what I say, which gets me in trouble and also saves time. I would rather be known than branded. I would rather be read by a few people who get it than collected by a crowd who want a mascot.
So that is me, as neatly as I can do it without lying. Basildon and Hackney. Bank and onesie. Stern and soppy. Competitive and loyal. Single on purpose and still hopelessly available to the idea of someone tall and dark and decent who can ruin my evening in the best way and then stay for the quiet bit. I have not met him. I have met a lot of almosts. I have met nights that were only nights. I have met my own reflection in the morning and laughed, which is healthier than the alternative.
If you keep reading, thank you. If you only wanted the short version, you should have stopped after the roast potatoes. I did warn you I write long. I think a person deserves more than a bio line and a job title. I think you can be a professional and still have a soft centre. I think you can come from a place people mock and still have standards. I think you can want a simple life and a vivid one at the same time.
Put the kettle on. That is the most honest instruction I have. The rest is just me trying to tell the truth at a length that feels like company rather than a pitch. I will be here, toggling between the city face and the girl who goes home for gravy, writing it down when it gets too loud in my head. If that sounds like someone you want to sit with, stay. If not, there is a whole internet of tidier women. I was never going to be tidy. I was always going to be this.
