Tuesday 22 March 2011

Pass me my pinny!

I have a date tomorrow. And I’m kind of excited about it! I’m trying my best to keep a lid on the day-dreaming - and restrict it to work hours only - but as my current temporary bedroom has no blinds I wake up at 5am and it’s that or endlessly rearranging furniture in my head for the flat I’m, hopefully, buying. Both pointless yet horribly compelling exercises guaranteed to drive all hope of sleep away.

So, yeah, why am I so excited? Well, quite apart from the fact he has the the sexiest eyes I've ever seen - think Russell Brand but with no hair (I'm going through a bald man phase. Don't ask), he’s also passed all the little tests I like to set. Chief of which is decisiveness and ability to tell me in as few texts as possible where and when we’re meeting. I love this. I may pretend to be a tough, independent, home-owning, career woman but really I just want a man to take charge, and perhaps also fling me over his shoulder and drag me home for some good old fashioned ravishing. Oops, day-dreaming again . . .

Other excellent things he's done include a complete lack of smileys, LOLs (and their ilk) or even kisses. All of which gladdens my retrosexual heart. Yes, I am a frilly pinny away from the 1950s and frankly I don’t care. In fact, I read an article in The Stylist the other day that really got on my wick. They were chastising modern women for demanding equality in the workplace but sticking to traditional roles at home. The article even claimed that there are hordes of women out there sitting in darkness rather than changing a lightbulb themselves. Ridiculous. They also cited women who, when single, had been capable of simultaneously wielding a drill, cooking dinner and changing a lightbulb but who, once partnered up, became too princessy to even take out the bins. But isn’t that the joy of a relationship? It’s a division of labour, a sharing of skills, and although I know I can knock up a log store or re-wire a light if I have to it didn’t do much for my ex’s ego (and therefore our relationship) whenever I demonstrated that ability. And you can be damn sure he never once cleaned the toilet* so why shouldn’t I get my bills sorted out for me and my tyre pressure checked?

So for me it’s time for men to man up. You Tarzan, me Jane. Now how about that rumble in the jungle sexy eyes?


*I once overheard him boasting about this fact to a girl at a party. Not. Happy.

Thursday 17 March 2011

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO QUIT YOU

Yesterday I was dumped by text.

For shame! But worse, far worse, is the fact I should have done it myself weeks ago. I just never know when to cut and run. Even when it’s plain the relationship is deader than Kerry Katona’s career I’m still plugging away at my latest comeback angle (Strictly Come Dinner Dating On Ice anyone?). I get fond of people you see. Even (especially?) arseholes. I don’t like saying a fundamental goodbye and I feel genuinely sad at the end of dates with nice people that you don’t fancy. This is probably how I get into the accidental passion kissing scenarios (that and my borderline alchoholism) and then have to spend hours of my life constructing overly tactful thanks-but-no-thanks messages. The latest of which resulted in a lengthy conversation with the bread baron while he was in Sao Paulo! I dread to think how much that dumping cost me. Oh and somehow we left it that he’d be in touch in a few weeks to see if I’d changed my mind. See! I suck at dumping people.

In the past I’ve tried the ‘heads-up’ method. I used this on my very first boyfriend – the sweetest loveliest man ever - whose bottom lip started wobbling so furiously when I mooted us splitting up that I backtracked and somehow ended up suggesting that he just think about the possibility and that maybe if he went on a lads holiday and let his hair down, so to speak, that would be ok by me. That way by the time he got back from said holiday – with an orange tan, a serious bleach job and very probably an STD for all I know – he was fully adjusted and ready to take his dumping like a man. So far so successful but since then I’ve found the heads-up method just gives them time to get in there first! Nothing more humiliating than finding the rug’s been unceremoniously whipped from under your feet leaving you firmly in dumpsville, population: you. And this is precisely what happened with KB2. Having identified in the past year the things I do not want in a boyfriend as well as the things I do want in a boyfriend I was at first thrown off the scent when all the things I do not want came packaged in what looked very much like the things that I do want! Are you following me? Almost certainly not but I’ll press on. Eventually I caught on and realised that a 36 year old man who can’t juggle the ‘stress’ of cats and his job is not for me. But despite being deafened by the alarm bells ringing in my ears I still kept plugging away, just long enough for him to clock my displeasure and get in there first. Dammit!

So my new year’s resolution (I am aware that it’s March but the resolution slot is still vacant so I think it’s valid) is this: trust your instincts, cut your losses and at all costs DO NOT GET DUMPED AGAIN! It is very bad for the ego.

Thursday 10 March 2011

GROUNDHOG DATE

The anaesthetist* has gone! Vanished! Disparu! Which means my merciless (not to mention pointless) online stalking of him must cease.

This is a shame because I’d only just figured out courtesy of fashion friend - the original internet dating queen - that it’s possible to search for people by name on Soulmates WITHOUT LOGGING IN (and therefore disclosing that you have ‘looked’ at them). This is epic, life-changing information and opens up a world of repercussion-free perving possiblities which fashion friend and I have been exploiting shamelessly ever since. For example, we had much fun recently deciding whether One-EyedJeff really did have a glass eye or not (he did) . . . And it took several glasses of cava before we could decide if it was ok that one guy wanted to cover fashion friend in fluorescent paint so he could see her sleeping at night (we decided it was fine – must have drunk more than we thought). Crazy times I tell you. Still, we were justified in a little pointing and laughing session given she’d just hot-taxied it over to mine to download after a truly disastrous date. I’ll let her post that one for you though…or I would but she’s jetted off to be glamorous somewhere hot right now. Oh how the other half live.

Meanwhile, back in my world, things with KB2 (Kent boy the second) are grinding inexorably to a halt. He’s charming, and pretty (in a beat up, slightly chavvy way) and he has the ability to reduce me to a giggling mess just by looking at me but the movie of my life right now would be GROUNDHOG DATE. I like a bit of momentum, me. A bit of giddy, girlish excitement – who doesn’t? And dates that take 4 days of tedious emailing to set up do not set the scene for romance. Neither does an invitation to his house which turned from opportunity-to-demonstrate-husband-material-cooking-skills into cheese-on-toast-and-a-bonk. The fact that in the 3 hours I was there he took no less than 3 phone calls, during one of which I found a woman's hair grip on the floor, and then unceremoniously packed me off home so he could prepare for a meeting didn't help either! Oh and did I mention the cat sick on the bedroom floor? Not that I can really talk on that score...still, less than impressed! Naturally I expressed my less-than-impressedness to him a couple of nights ago and he swore blind he’d make it up to me and that from now on he would show me ‘a whole lot of love’. Love shown to date: one text message.

NEXT!


*the man who broke my heart after one date.

Thursday 3 March 2011

Fancy yourself as the next Carrie Bradshaw?

Are you unlucky in love? Terminally single? A magnet for dating disasters? I have just the thing for you . . .HDOJM is looking for new contributors as every bugger except for me has been well and truly struck by Cupid’s arrow since signing up and, well, I’m only one woman and I’m doing my best but there’s only so thin I can spread myself without crossing the line between serial dater and hooker.

What’s the worst that can happen? Chances are you’ll meet the love of your life within two posts so it’s a win-win!



You know who I am...email me.

Wednesday 2 March 2011

Gently up the stream

Dear readers,

Touch me – I’m real: living, breathing, surreptitiously-farting-at-my-desk proof that yes,
IT WORKS.
I found one.
On the internet.

It was instantly obvious that this one was different. He’s completely brilliant. So brilliant that there is nothing remotely blogworthy about him – I don’t want to jinx it. However, before I toddle off happily into the sunset (and you’re all sick in your mouths a little bit) I just wanted to tell you about my second-to-last ever internet date.

May I present to you….The Rower.

There are a lot of rowers on GSM – I think they find it hard to meet women because all they do is row and they get up ludicrously early. If you search for people who live in Putney or Richmond you’re bound to find one. This particular rower had specified that it was VERY IMPORTANT that anyone he went on a date with lived in Putney, so I don’t know how I slipped through the net. Anyway.

The rower was late. Luckily, I was on a pre-date date so I didn’t particularly care, but I was interested to hear his excuse nonetheless. He finally arrived, huge, breathless, sweaty, hirsute (he looked a bit like a well-fed homeless person if I’m honest, but that’s sort of my type) and full of the most wonderful excuse for tardiness I’ve ever heard ever:

“I’m sorry I’m so late, but I haven’t worn these jeans for a while and when I sat down on the bus they ripped because I’ve been in training and my thighs are a lot bigger than they were when I last wore them. So I had to go to the shop and buy a needle and thread to sew them up. I’m really sorry. It was a bit obscene though, so I thought it was better to be late than to flash my tackle at you in the pub.”

GLORY BE. Despite the obvious error at the end, this was and still remains my favourite excuse ever. He was late because his thighs were so big and manly he was literally bursting out of his clothes – it was obvious his gargantuan muscles wouldn’t fit in the piddly extra large shirts he was forced to buy, so he had to make little rips in the cuffs before he could roll the sleeves up. Woof.

I’m not normally a perv, honest, but I couldn’t stop looking at his arms. I wanted to lick him. I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying (mainly because it was BORING) as I kept imagining him picking me up and throwing me over his shoulder, rowing me away to a desert island somewhere etc etc.

I was so distracted that I didn’t notice how much we had been drinking. I’m a hardcore Gin and Tonicer and can put away 6 without much trouble, but the thing about rowers is that they don’t drink. They row, they train for rowing, they eat enormous bowls of pasta and they sleep. They are very dedicated. This guy was a professional rower, and told me the only time he really got pissed was after a race.

The upshot of this was that I suddenly found myself with a six foot four, 220 pound brick-shithouse of an inebriated man on my hands – he couldn’t walk properly, he was slurring his words and he kept falling asleep a little bit. I half wondered about taking advantage of him while he couldn’t think straight, but that felt a bit rapey so I put him in a cab (from Holborn to Putney – a small act of revenge).

So there you go – my last (hopefully) ever internet dating whinge. Over and out!