My perspective. It is useful to have a detached, big-picture mentality in many ways, but chiefly a) in finding humour a great deal more places than you might expect and b) in never being defeated by life's vicissitudes :)

I can find something to like about everyone.

I went out with someone because I fancied them on Twitter once. True story. Sadly it went the way of most relationships that don't start with an in-person physical click.. there wasn't enough of one when we were together to keep it going.

I'd see how much it would buy me with these guys: http://www.spaceadventures.com/

Oh dear. I really have neglected this corner of the Interwebs for quite some time, haven't I?

They're tasty. Not as tasty as the vanilla ones you can get in the Baltics, but I can't have everything I want all the time - that wouldn't be good for me!

That's like "what's your favourite food?" -- what I want changes several times a day! Actually it's an even trickier question than that because you can at least predict the awesomeness level of a meal you're familiar with to within an acceptable margin of error. To name a specific kind of experience that's your favourite.. well that's impossible. A good giggly wander round a supermarket beats a bad trip to a beach - there's too much of an element of chance and flux. And, and.. this may well be horribly cheesy but to be honest, with the right person EVERYTHING is a good time, even shifting boxes of heavy stuff from one place to another.

OK I'll stop hedging. In the absence of any ability to pick a favourite, here is a non-exhaustive list of family-friendly stuff I love or would love to do with the other half:

- Aimless driving with stops at destinations that attract us on a whim.

- Cooking together with music on.

- Cwtching up all strokably close to watch movies by candlelight.

- Going to parties.. or throwing them.

- Sharing best interchangeable wearables.

- Reading the same books at the same time.

- Talking and laughing.. actually not sure if this counts so much, as it's a constant extra dimension to everything we do anyway.

- Going to gigs, shows, exhibitions, lectures, events that look interesting to one or both of us.

- Playing with the camera in vain attempts to catch magic in two dimensions.

Tricky question that, could do with more definition. Think it was Saturday.. met a certain special friend for lunch in Carmarthen after I took the smallperson to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Wait, does it count as a date if I bring my child? Does it count, too, if you spend time having adventures with someone you're romantically inclined towards without specifically arranging it as a date? Because if *that's* the case I've been on some kind of date on 19 days out of this month so far...

Well, the Steph part is my actual name, shockingly enough. As for the rest, a predilection for wearing cat ears and collars, liking being stroked and generally living a better life through selective attachment much like a cat led to me getting dubbed 'mog' by a handful of people in my late teens. It's kinda stuck as a useful handle for the rest of my days..

Good question!

The clear winners:

1) Sadly common: people who are jealous of my child and try to push her out by monopolising my attention. To a slightly lesser extent this hacks me off when about my friends, too. I have a wonderful life with many much-loved people who are priorities for me. They were here before any partner came along, and loving them and maintaining my relationships with them and responsibilities to them makes me who I am. The deal is to accept sharing my love. There really is plenty of it to go around, and I'm not into being owned.

2) I find there's a fine distinction that some people miss between 'earthy, playful and open' (which is good) and 'crude' (which is very, very bad). It's a hard one to define but if they get the wrong side of it, revelling in talking about bodily functions and/or appearance with a crass attitude or playground terminology... bye bye libido.

3) Chewing with your mouth open = a big GTFO.

4) People who are grumpy, or tense and tightly wound most/all of the time, don't fit into my chilled little world. Fair enough, be stressed when it's appropriate, but if you're going to flinch and stiffen at every movement when everything is calm and relaxed, or angst about what could go wrong instead of getting enthused about and carried away on adventures, you're going to ruin everything and make me sad.

5) Those folks who don't LOVE something. Anything. Passion is underrated, and I meet so many people who just leave me thinking "but who are you?" because nothing gets them going. I cannot understand how people who have spent a couple of decades or more on this wild planet can have managed not to pick up any idiosyncratic fascinations. Much less can I understand people who only accidentally own a handful of albums, movies or books. Just, love something. Or hate something, even! Get carried away when you talk about it. The most attractive a person can be is when they are animated and expressive.

Dishonourable mentions:

Astrology nuts; other assorted fluffy new agey types; the totally vanilla; those who live in branded sportswear; cat haters; non-smoking evangelists; txtspkrs; senders of cock picture messages; people old enough to be my parents; neat freaks.

I wouldn't know the difference, I'm afraid. Alcohol isn't my poison of choice, or even anywhere near the top of the list, and when I do partake it tends to be liqueurs and cocktails.

Depends if you're asking family and friends from Manchester, or anyone else. I've been here for seven years now, which gives me a detectable lilt at times, but my accent is still recognisably if subtly northern.

I don't go in for labels, and that's one of the worst. Have you ever noticed how people who publicly declare that they're "witches" also tend to be tedious arrogant wankers with no social skills or sense of humour about themselves?

The sooner people realise that we're all essentially just pieces of the growth on the out-of-control petri dish this one little planet has incredibly become, the better. We are born, we breed to replace ourselves before we die. We have no real power except in the way we choose to relate to our circumstances and the way we behave towards others. There's no external power controlling what happens to us, either. The best way to enjoy what you have is to realise your lifetime is as finite and likely as a lottery win - enjoy it! You can blow it all on things that won't do you any good, or you can share it and use it to build the foundations for others (whether it be your family or the species or the planet as a whole) to go on enjoying and sharing the fruits of your investments. Take what you want, and pay for it.

Suppose the flippant answer is to say something like 'in the usual way, you know'. Truth is, I broke off a serious years-long relationship in the Spring of 2002. A few weeks into the anguish and self-destructive behaviour that followed I fell head over heels into something all my friends could see was a rebound, and I thought was the most intense and beautiful thing that had ever happened to me. By the end of the year I was pregnant, broke to the point of dropping out of uni, and living in a flatshare from hell with someone who turned out to be really quite spectacularly mentally ill. My parents rescued me and moved me to Pembs in April 2003, my daughter was born with my mum at my side in the July. We've done pretty well since, all things considered :)

Beyond nice. Especially since I got my car. Mountains, beaches and woodlands to get lost in everywhere. The trade-off is having to travel for at least a couple of hours before you can get to any big events, but you get used to that.

Ah, my friend Emma taught me this so it's not that easy to communicate -- quantities are just kinda made up as I go along, and the trick is to boil it and stir it for a good long while, taste it and adjust quantities of the ingredients as you go til it tastes good to you. You need cinnamon sticks, ground ginger, star anise, whole cloves, cardamom pods, a few black peppercorns and brown sugar, in a big stock pot of water.. chuck in a couple of teabags for the last two minutes, then strain it and serve one part chai mix and four parts hot milk. Stunning!

Foursquare. I actually quite like Formspring, apart from the woeful lack of notifications. I've found out some really interesting things about people I only knew peripherally. Whereas foursquare is just the smartphone equivalent of Dom Joly shouting I'M IN A LIBRARY or I'M ON A BUS. Dull.

The recognition of the same in another and the desire to reconnect the pieces of the whole, by kindness, companionship and closeness.

Every time I remember that this is all just a temporary situation, I'll be leaving at some point and I might as well enjoy the ride :)

Whatever you want. I'll probably be eating nachos again.