Saturday 26 November 2011

Brief Encounters

"Oh, Elec, dear, I am so frightfulleh fed ahp of this Interweb dating malarkeh..."

 
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No, not that sort.

The sort that begin at 5.30pm and end but two hours later.

I became quite skilled at those over the summer. Dating lite, one might call it.

I prefer to call it a portent. But I always have been a little melodramatic.

After the shocktail of a date that was SSM, I was of the opinion that...


So I kept an open mind.

And I went on a duck-feeding date (that's not a euphemism) followed by Malaysian dinner-in-an-underground-yes-secret-but-only-to-the-non-Malaysian-population restaurant in Bayswater with an Australian-Malaysian; and by definition the date was a vast improvement on the last if only because this Aussie was friendly, easy-going and unpretentious -- genuinely nice.

...Needless to say he and I had nothing in common, so we did actually run out of conversation matter round about half seven. But that was OK. I think I'd decided by this point that I'd had my fill of internet dating -- plus it was bankrupting me, financially and emotionally.

So... since September it's been somewhat quiet on the Dating Front.

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But that's fine by me. Either a person is suited to the Whacky Whirlwind of Internet Dating...

...or they're not.

And I'm, er, not.

Sorry about that.

I just don't enjoy it.

Shocker.

...Of course, if I come by a date by less artificial, more personal means, I'm not ruling it out. Bring it ON. I'm open to that.

What I'm less open to is the judgment, the expectation and the subsequent disappointment leading to the inevitable Puncturing of the Morale time after time.

I'm significantly less open to having everyone tell me that their sister's housemate's cousin's neighbour found their life partner on the internet dating treadmill*. My closest friends (with the notable exception of J) met their partners because their partners appeared naturally in their lives.

But. BUT! In spite of the last few colourful months, I have absolute faith that if a person is meant to be in my life, he'll fit into it as it is and as I am (give or take a small amount of effort to Get Out More, admittedly).

*Speaking of treadmills... I've joined the gym, to train for a charity walk next year. And You Never Know how that might pan out...

Screenshot from Sex and the City, Series 4, Ep2, The Real Me

As a footnote, I should assure you, my two lovely readers, that although I have officially Leapt Off the Internet Dating Merry-Go-Round, this 'ere blog, in the manner of a certain theme tune about a certain sunken ship, will... go on for as long as it takes me to Find My Lobster.

Sorry about that. :-)

Oh and as another footnote (how many footnotes can you have before it becomes a legnote?) you may remember Back in the Early Days of Dater Overload I took issue with this advert:


There's been a new MisMatch advert out of late, and it's safe to say that the bile/vitriol currently rising in my throat is a direct result of having seen this MisLeading Schmaltz-fest:


in which a young man serenades a young woman (of 26, 28 -- because anyone over 30 is just not worth the effort, let's face it...) across the train tracks, only to have her disappear (yeeaaaah, you go, sista, don't fall for it) and then rock up at his side (Oh.).


My issues with both of these adverts are two manyfold:

1. These are both the sorts of people who in reality, will never, ever find themselves needing to internet-date.
2. Both of these scenarios imply that the couples are meeting spontaneously and not via the internet dating site they're actually promoting.
3. The virtues upon which Boy in the Second Ad is serenading Girl are as follows:

Best smile he's seen for a while
Great skin
Hair colour (he's fond of her because she's a blonde albeit not a natural one -- that's refreshing...)
Beautiful beguiling eyes...

So, her appearance, then. Reassuring.

Let's hope that if they get together it soon transpires she's a slob who leaves her toenail clippings on the side of the bath, never takes out the recycling, won't let him watch the Grand Prix because there's a Kardashian marathon on and only buys top-of-the-range clothes thus leaving them in £20,000 of debt by their thirtieth birthdays. That'll learn him.


4. The train that goes past at the beginning of that ad is a Southern Failways train going through a Southern-line station, shortly before an announcement is made for a Southern service, so how on earth is she just "off" to Hull? Leeds? Wigan, home of pies (yes, because this girl clearly feasts on pies on a regular basis...) on a Southern service?! (Well, via London Victoria then Euston but it's at least a four-hour journey, dude. You're never seeing her again.)

Congratulations, MisMatch, you just shot yourself in the foot(note). Again.

Thursday 3 November 2011

Shaken, Not Stirred...


007 he wasn't.
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Tom Cruise he wasn't.

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(Well, the height was similar but we'll gloss over that.)

But Smiley Salsa Man (SSM), the self-proclaimed cocktail aficionado, seemed to have a spark in both his photo and his profile description that led me to harbour High Hopes about our Date, which had been some weeks in the planning as he was in the throes of moving house.

I'd been prospecting SSM after he had viewed or Nudged me on QuirkersAnonymous, and I admit that while I was still on the fence about KIB/IHP I was reassured that there was still the possibility of SSM to keep me buoyant.

He was definitely Good on Paper -- he described himself as successful in his job but still a kid at heart (tick), into cocktails and salsa dancing (tick -- not that I've ever been into these things myself but I could be) and by the way he marketed himself he was something of a cheeky chappy with a cheeky smile and sounded like the sort o' chap to show a gal a Good Time (and no kinky business). WIN.

So, one Wednesday evening, with the reassurance of a virtual wingwoman (my work friend K who was also participating in The Dating Game) I took myself off to Covent Garden to meet SSM for cocktails. Our original plan of visiting an aquarium, as decreed by the QA website, was kyboshed by the ridiculously early closing time of such establishments, and I was more than happy for SSM to educate me in the ways of flaring and such.

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See? Check me out using cocktail terminology.

I was in Covent Garden early and I hovered as unsuspiciously as I could outside the exit to the tube station, witnessing as I waited a man approach the girl standing next to me on the offchance that her disgustingly handsome boyfriend wasn't about to turn up and embarrass the chancer. He did, of course, and I found myself pondering how some girls (usually the empirically pretty ones, less so the quirkettes among us) are magnets for nice, normal men, leaving the hair-pullers to the rest of us...

Anyway. I got a text from SSM apologising for running late as work had been chaotic (See?! See, KIB?! Some men are capable of being civil after a mad day at work and don't feel the need to send blunt huffy texts... Watch and learn...).

At around 7.40, I got another text, asking more exactly where I was in the heaving crowds outside Covent Garden tube; I gave him Ordnance Survey co-ordinates the details of the shops opposite, and shortly thereafter he found me.

The greeting was polite, and we made with the small talk as we walked towards a very well-known cocktail bar in the area. He told me he worked in I.T. for a financial institution in the City, which is fine, you know, I can cope with that even though in principle I object to the pretentious capitalisation of the C in City. As if the arty crevices of London aren't quite as relevant as Canary Wharf.

As we approached the cocktail bar, which I'll call Eaglestether (!), SSM, who I think had Smiled once in the last few minutes (and just seemed more intense, and a lot more Serious than he had portrayed himself in his profile) said, to my slightly flabbergastery, "I need to tell a little white lie to get in here".

OK...

Was this his idea of charm, lying to get us into a bar? I wasn't charmed, yet...

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Colour me Jiminy.

But... I went along with it. And when he bluffed his way in with, "Bill told me to stop by" he was quite believable, and lo and behold, the bluff got us in.

And it seemed as though he did know people there. He shook a couple of hands, made with the banter... and left me notably unannounced.

Deemed Persona non grata in the first ten minutes.

This was promising...(!)

Admittedly, how was he to introduce me? Bill, this is QB, my date?

...It doesn't have a particularly jazzy ring to it, does it.

(Well, actually, it does. But hey, I clearly didn't make the grade for an introduction even as a date. Either that or in the throes of pants-on-fire methods of bar entry he'd forgotten my name. It happens.)

We defected to the bar immediately. Never mind that it was 7.45 and my evening meal had thus far consisted of an apple bought to tide me over until SSM rocked up, though admittedly I had told him in a previous email that I'd probably grab something to eat before we met as it was quite late. I'd kept my options (and stomach) open just in case things went well and we progressed to dinner. But given his lack of ability to make eye contact with me all the time we were walking to, er, Eaglestether, I'd gathered that I was an aesthetic disappointment that he was somewhat embarrassed to be seen with. Dindins seemed unlikely already.

"So what cocktails do you like?" he asked, as I gazed at the rows of bottles.

At this point, dear reader, I made my first faux-pas.

I listed a Woo Woo as a cocktail.

Yes, a Woo Woo.

One of these. Peach Schnapps, vodka, cranberry juice. Job's a good'un.
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Well! It's schnapps + spirit + fruit juice, does that not render it by definition a cocktail?

Apparently not.

With a barely veiled haughty sniff of derision SSM informed me that "They don't serve Schnapps here".

Well, that was me told.

After that, I found myself thinking that he was only asking me questions to grade me by his "high" standards, as if I was answering a questionnaire to enable him to see whether I was worthy of his time and attention.

So far, I was doing as well as I did in my cycling proficiency test age 10. Which I failed, by the way.

We came by a cocktail menu.

It was like reading a restaurant menu in a foreign language. I was waaaaay out of my league.

He ordered a Martinez

A Martinez, incidentally, is gin, vermouth, bitters & maraschino. Hardcore.

And it was knocked back pretty quickly.

I ordered a White Lady. It appeared on the menu; I'd had one before (as made by J). I felt safe.

Oui, c'est moi avec une Dame Blanche, faite par J. Photo aussi par J.
And then the barman cracked an egg into it.

An egg.

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O...K...

"White Lady cocktails have egg white in them. Didn't you know that?" I was enlightened by my aficionado compadre.

Not the one I'd had at J's; that was gin, Cointreau and lemon juice. And perfectly delectable thank you.

"That's fine," I bluffed.

He can bluff, I can bluff. Bluffing marvellous.

Despite the egg white froth on the top (could have done without that, frankly) it was pretty good though at that price (£8 thereabouts) it chuffing well ought to have been.

And I savoured it. My word I savoured it. I was drinking on a near-empty stomach. (My stomach and I have a very earnest relationship. She's needy.) I'd barely got through half of mine when he ordered another cocktail. No idea what it was. Something commoners like me would never have heard of.

We made Conversation. I asked him how his move had gone and he said he'd been worried he would go home after his first night out (on moving day) to the wrong house.

I made some remark (an attempt to jest, dear readers) about how it was probably just as well he hadn't gone out drinking that night (or words to that effect).

Oh but he had, he informed me.

And it seemed like mass drinkage was the order of the day most weekends/evenings for SSM. Which was a resounding indication that he and I would never gel. Never mind that in the world of cocktails I was a rank amateur and should probably hereafter stick to bars that serve Schnapps-based cocktails.

I didn't drink alcohol until I was nearly 19 (peach Schnapps was my seal-breaker, so I've always had an affection for it) so even now I drink in quiet moderation (with just one or two seasonal exceptions), and I grew out of disclosing regular-drinking anecdotes when I rocked out of my twenties.

SSM? Not so much.

I admitted, at this juncture, that these days (i.e. maturity, i.e. my 30s) I was more of a wine girl. And I honestly thought that to say this would be enough. That he could finally, after an evening of looking down on me, just accept me for the quirkette I am and the quirkette he had signed up for by Nudging me in the first instance and arranging this date.

But no.

"What sort of wine do you like?"

"Red. Mostly shiraz or merlot."

"Old World or New World?"

??????

I don't know; is Australia classed as Old World or New World? I like wine, dangnabbit, do I have to classify it?!

Either way I'd obviously committed another faux-pas.





Shortly thereafter he related another anecdote about how he'd been up all night not long after he'd moved in, playing cards. Or, specifically, a card game with some very arbitrary name. Something like Clodhopper or Crockalock or something. In my commoner-naivety I asked how one plays said game. He then elaborated and my eyes glossed up as he explained the contrived set of rules which involved having to have a certain number of kings, aces... I don't know.

"What card games do you play?" he asked.

At which point I made the third faux-pas of the evening in terms of Keeping Up with the Joneses.

I listed UNO as my pastime of choice.

Yep, UNO.

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Hey, my mother and I get very competitive with this game.

"I don't know that game," he said, in the same derisive tone in which he'd told me This Bar Doesn't Serve Schnapps.

"Oh," I breezed, "you have to get rid of all your cards by changing the number or colour. ...We also used to play Pontoon and Newmarket when I was younger. With buttons for money..."

I'd lost him for good.

I was clearly Not His Sort of Person. I was TOWIE 

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to his Made in Chelsea.

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And ya know what? I didn't care.

I couldn't have cared less about trying to impress him or live up to his standards by this point. I felt short-changed -- where was the carefree salsa-dancing smiler as advertised on his profile?

Who had bodysnatched him and replaced him with possibly the most pretentious individual this modest little chick had ever met?

I made a last-ditch attempt at dating the man I'd hoped to be dating, and asked if he'd been salsa dancing lately.

"I don't do salsa much any more. I'm more into tango or merengue..."

Yep, bodysnatched.

"Excuse me..." he said, then.

And promptly disappeared into the toilets for the best part of nearly ten minutes. (Or so it felt.)

Which -- at the risk of sounding a Little Wrong -- for a man seems like a mighty long time to be in the toilet...

I suspected he was Phoning a Friend (maybe the friend he'd told me was a winner of Mixology Mastermind... and although SSM himself had renowned knowledge about the make-up of cocktails he wasn't a professional mixologist and couldn't possibly have partaken in Mixology Mastermind although his friends thought he would have definitely won... More pretention from the house of extreme pretention...).

Either that or he was diabetic and topping up his insulin. But the imbibement of cocktails would suggest that wasn't the case.

Or he was making a dive out of the window having decided that I wasn't the skinny Sloane-Clone he probably thought he deserved. (Though he'd left the dregs of his second cocktail on the bar so he was clearly coming back to finish it off.)

Either way, in my (limited) experience of Men, anything longer than five minutes is considered a long time to be in the toilet. IMHO. I sat at the bar on my own for quite some time, making desperate eye contact with the barman who I hoped had appreciated my conundrum (How did a nice girl like you end up on such a pretentious date?)... and eavesdropping on two Americans asking for "bourbon" (which to me will always be a biscuit). And thinking, somewhat drunkenly, and crudely I admit, for someone with such potential, with your combo of arrogance and snobbery you re-hea-lly put the c**k into cocktail.

He returned, and I took the cue to utilise the facilities myself.

When I came back (a mere four minutes later), he had already paid for the drinks (one last tick in his diminishing favour), and was looking to make a move.

It was about 8.45 at night; we'd barely been able to impress each other for an hour. FAIL.

...I think it was inherent that we wouldn't see each other again.

But later, in messaging friend K, my wingwoman, to advise of my safety, then in ringing my mother to bewail another sorry date and complain of the utter snobbery of SSM, the idea of this blog came to me.

So it wasn't a total waste of my time.

And the rest, as they say, is history...