I love my girlfriends, I have four that I share my life, all my secrets and who I trust with my shoes (kind of). You’ll hear a lot about my girls in this blog, but for the sake of their privacy I’m going to simply call them Uno, Due, Tre, Quattro. The numbers roughly translate to their arrival in my life, so Uno I have known for….Well, let’s just say we use to speak to each other on mobile phones so big that they carried us rather than the other way round. Three weeks ago Quattro got involved in my love life, over and beyond the mandatory, prolonged phone calls dissecting recent random dates (mine not her’s); she’s happily ensconced in the suburbs with her 6ft, Mr. GQ. She placed me on that, oh so trendy of dating websites, My Single Friend (MSF).
At first glance MSF is a scary place. Bright, eye-watering colours, it had none of the subtlety of Encounters, The Times Online dating website, or the never-ending form filling of E-Harmony (oh, yes, my dearies, this isn’t my first foray into the world of dating 21st century style; but more on that later). And it was so very straight forward, no bells or whistles, no personality questionnaire; it felt like being tumbled into bed by a witty, attractive stranger without even an alcoholic cocktail. All the members, well the ones in London, were happy, smiley people, with friends who sang their praises and heaped them with laurel. Quattro wasn’t standing on the sidelines to watch me dither around and procrastinate, no; MSF allows your “friend” to recommend potential dates that they think might suit you. I have to say Quattro’s choices were very good, I would have “favourite” them myself; though I was hoping that this site would shift the burden of actually contacting them onto Quattro’s shoulders as well. She would do all the hard work and then present the nicely packaged specimen at a central location bar for my deliberations, maybe with Uno and Due (and Tre via satellite feed) sitting beside me, like the panel off the X Factor. Because if there is one thing I hate about internet dating it’s the Initial Email. Christ, trying to fake interest in a complete stranger? When really you know that the only reason you’re bothering to write to them at all is because they look hot in their profile photo. I’ve been here before, as I’ve said. So this time I just wrote a generic email, yanking very hard on their ego’s chains, and then copied pasted it to all the guys I/Quattro liked the look of, with a little tweaking here and there to match the individual’s profile.
Oh what a tangled web we weave; I soon got into a complete mess in all sorts of ways. Chatting on the phone to one but referencing another’s email response, I cringe just remembering the horror. I narrowed my scope to 6 possibilities, I broke my rule about not dating outside the M25 and made contact with a hottie from Ipswich. Unfortunately his predilection for sex texting (maybe I yanked a little too hard for this weirdo) was way too creepy and even after telling him how uncomfortable it made me? Once, twice, three times, he continued…..masturbating. A sexy medical type emailed me sweetly to tell me that, though he liked the look of me, he no longer dated women with kids as it “invariably broke your heart”? Quattro and I are still trying to figure out what he meant. A silver fox tried to persuade me that smoking wasn’t the most disgusting habit ever to be taken up by stupid people. Who else? Oh! There was the northern creative that spoke in a language I couldn’t understand, but apparently he was “properly mint and skill”.
Perseverance, Perseverance. I ended up accepting a date with an IT gentlemen who had all his own hair. As with anything in life, well no, as with anything online it’s important to read the small print. And accept that the actual item may not look exactly like it does on the screen. And I have to confess this photo looked pretty good. Taken on a beach somewhere, IT Bod wore Bermuda shorts and nothing else; abs, chest, arms all in tip-top condition. “Cut” my son would say, “result” I proclaimed. Small (pardon the pun) print, 5’9. Still I wasn’t worried, I’m only 5’2 so even in Choos I wasn’t going to be dwarfing him. IT Bod arrived for our date in a shirt that badly needed an iron and was too small for his overly developed chest, (it was a chest that belonged on someone who was 6ft, so made him look even shorter). Worn, badly scuffed shoes and proceeded to tried to cover up his embarrassment; when faced with the fact that I’d made an effort to make myself presentable (and we’re not talking A game effort here, strictly B- game), by proclaiming that he’s not much into appearances. The date wasn’t awful. It’s a sad state of affairs when that’s the highest praise you can give to four hours of your life you’ll never get back. Quattro and I have decided to give Mr. IT another chance, but I’ve insisted that we make it a ‘group’ outing next time, it’ll lighten the pressure and if I see someone I like better, I can ditch him….as they say on the E-Harmony ad, my time is more precious than ever.
