Hot desking: the way to romance

Looked at from a purely dynastic point of view, glossy magazines are the worst possible places to work.

Why? Because they are entirely staffed by women, apart - usually - from a gay fashion stylist and a preening male art director who rules the sexual roost with his casual mastery of traditional male spatial and graphic skills.

Trapped on Harpers & Queen, as I was at 24, I had a snowflake's chance in hell of meeting suitable life-partner material, especially with the competition the girls in fashion were putting up. Yet romance flowers in the strangest places. Other people fall in love in war zones and refugee camps; I stumbled across my future husband Ian in the far less hospitable environs of a women's magazine.

Fate smiled on me that day. After all, if you don't meet your husband at work, where in heaven's name do you meet him? A new survey has just revealed that an amazing 62 per cent of people who work in offices have had an affair with a work colleague. Granted, 42 per cent of them were already married to somebody else, but that still leaves the majority available for long-term commitment.

Where else but in an office will you get such a chillingly accurate picture of exactly how your potential husband functions on a day-to-day basis? You can discover how he copes under pressure, whether he is polite and kind, or a monster of bullying and egotism, and whether he manages to turn up on time and smelling pleasant most days?

No amount of dating, mutual vision distorted by alcohol and lust, will give you that kind of vital information. In fact, it's a miracle to me that anyone ever decides to get married without first putting their fianc? through his paces in an office environment (indeed, they should run workplace simulations for this purpose). Christmas 1992, and I was ensconced on the sub-editors' desk at H&Q, while Ian was the magazine's arts editor. While I worked at the journalistic coal face, carving out useable nuggets from the sometimes unyielding rock of our regular writers' prose, Ian would saunter in for a couple of days a week, airily commission the small number of pieces needed to fill his pages, talk and laugh on the phone a lot, and go out for lunch.

Was it infuriating, or seductive? And how did I feel about the turquoise linen jacket which was obviously a favourite and which accorded ill, I couldn't help feeling, with his bearlike Scottish build and colouring?

All these reservations were to be swept aside at the H&Q Christmas party, held at a small members' club called The Academy, which then served as the H&Q "college bar".

I'm much too sensible now, but in those days I believed that office parties were a manifestation of the medieval custom of Misrule - you know, when everyone swapped places and the serfs were allowed to be rude to the lord of the manor. Getting drunk and behaving badly and cheeking and/or flirting with senior members of staff was part of the fun.

AS it turned out I spent the whole party, which extended from lunchtime to early evening, cheeking and/or flirting with Ian. Later, much later, I made a not very convincing effort to leave, and got as far as outside the door of The Academy, where Ian caught up with me and where, I'm very much afraid to say, we snogged.

After our massively indiscreet behaviour, you might think we would realise that, by Monday, our affair would already be providing some welcome light relief around the coffee machine. But we didn't. We thought it was all top secret.

Then came the day when I hesitatingly, shyly, coyly 'fessed up to a friend in the office only to have her hoot with laughter and say: "But darling! We've all known about that for ages."

Things probably weren't helped by the time Ian arrived in the office after a particularly good lunch and kissed the back of my neck. Or did he pat my bottom? Whatever: it was pretty incriminating.

Now we were "going out" I took a proprietary interest in any copy written by Ian, much to the irritation of my fellow subeditors. If his jokes had to be cut out for reasons of space, by God I was going to cut them. For obvious reasons, we frequently arrived at the office together, and it was peculiar to shuffle towards our separate desks and ignore each other for the rest of the day.

Working within earshot of each other made ringing up girlfriends to discuss the relationship impossible for me, while he was unable to organise any social arrangement without me tearfully enquiring if I was going to be included.

In short, we had no privacy from each other - useful, as I've indicated, pre-relationship but not so good once you're involved. Plus, there was the embarrassment factor of how we were meant to "be" with each other at work - neither girlfriend and boyfriend nor simply workmates - never went away and made us feel very self-conscious.

It was a relief when he got a full-time job elsewhere, and we could start to have the normal telephone rows that other couples enjoy through their working day.

Incredibly, it's now 11 years since that first snog. We are still married, as Garrison Keillor puts it, and have a flat in Blackheath and a little girl. And the turquoise jacket? Mercifully, it was stolen in Paris during our honeymoon.