Every woman on this board has twenty years behind her. I have three

Every other advert here is written by a woman with two decades and a long arrangement behind her. I have three years and one that lasted eight months. I did think about presenting it differently and decided that a woman who lies about that in an advert gets found out inside a fortnight, in a city where everything is checked anyway.

Thirty three, Stockport, three years leading, one arrangement of eight months which ended because I was not yet good enough at it.

What went wrong is worth saying plainly. I set rules I had not thought through, and then when he kept them and it became inconvenient for me, I let them slide. He noticed a long time before I did. What he needed was somebody who meant it, and I was still working out whether I did.

I do now. Since then I have run nothing at all and thought about it constantly, which is a strange sort of apprenticeship and the only one on offer. What I want is a domestic arrangement with duties, a fixed day, and standards I hold to whether or not they suit me that particular week.

Nothing here is for hire and no money passes in either direction. What I do not want is a man who would like to teach me how to do this, which has been offered four times and is a completely different arrangement wearing this one's clothes.