Just a quick spouting of vitriol...

So, two Thursdays ago I found myself pootling along on the London Underground with a merry bunch of colleagues, on our way to a work shenanigan in darkest Holborn.

There I was, daydreaming away when I spied an advert for an online dating site whose lure on said bulletin was that "Mr Right could be sitting right under this advert" -- which in itself was a little misguided as my lovely, but slightly more mature, and also by the way ineligible, colleague was sitting directly underneath.

The ad then went on to proclaim that "He's in London somewhere".

At which point the bile did begin to flow. Well, given I was in polite company it was more of a spurt of vitriol but my rant went along these lines: "What if the mythical 'he' is not in London?! What if he's in Brighton? (Yes, please...) Or Barnstaple? Or New York???" There are a good few gazillion cities, towns, villages, hamlets in this world -- why should I be forced to assume my Lobster's a Londoner?

London is so flaming egocentric these days (case in point: the Pushy McShove-Me's who barge me onto the Overground on a daily basis and breathe last night's garlic/egg/vodka in my face) that no wonder all London-based industry operates under the delusion that if you don't work in London then you must want to, and if you do, well, London is the still axis of your spinning world and don't you dare look elsewhere.

Capital city? Cr@p-it-all city more like. London egocentricity was one of the reasons I had to step awaaay from QuirkersAnonymous (that and all the "secret shenanigans" that went on down there that eventually just seemed like London was trying too hard). And just because I work in London does not mean that when I clock off of an evening I think, "Gosh, I don't care that everything in this city is grossly overpriced and people walk five abreast on the pavement and stop dead in front of you and spit, or say 'Can I get...' instead of 'Please may I have...?' I am blessed and privileged to even set my measly little foot in this mighty city, my world revolves around it..."

As Mercedes in Glee once rightly decreed, Hell to the No!

There are other seas in the fish... oh wait, that analogy doesn't work. But there are other seas.

Brief Encounters

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

 

via here

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.

via here

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.

We're Gonna Score-ore-ore Tonight...

Yes, my friends, I am back from a temporary blog-abyss – I'm running out of anecdates so in order to keep you interested it has become necessary to string out these entries I like to keep you lovely readers both in suspense. :-)

And in case you're misled by the post title into thinking I gave in to the demands of the KIB (far from it) this blog title paraphrases a song "ostensibly" about bowling; really about, well, 30-year-old teenagers getting it awn, from the filmic fabness that is Grease 2.

Here it is, just in case you feel you're missing out on something having never seen Grease 2*:

Yes that is a young Michelle Pfeiffer. She went on to better things. I'm told.

During my last meeting (I shan't say Date) with KIB in which he poked his noodle salad and narrated the Museum of 1951 to anyone who may be hard-of-caption-reading, he had managed to bait me again and subliminally persuade me to give him one more strike... with the promise of bowling.

Oh man. I'm making bowling/baseball puns. This is not good.

Now. I like to bowl. I'm fairly heinous at it (see: all sports and games involving co-ordination) but occasionally I pull one out of the bag (like when I play pool after a couple of drinks) and hit a pin or two.

...like zis. via here

And from what KIB had said, and based on his fetish penchant for all things vintage** he would find us an old-fashioned bowling alley where You Actually Had to Keep Your Own Score. Imagine.

Well, he didn't. He found us a contemporary alley in Bayswater and was (typically) keen to have me commit to the bowling so he could book it. And by book it, I genuinely thought he meant, just ring and reserve. So after his barrage of texts (including two within twenty minutes without even waiting for the reply to the first…) I said aye, or, in non-committal language, "That sounds OK".

Of course, there was a small amount of time between PseudoDate The Third and DeciderDate the Fourth (six days) and in those six days I'd Done a Lot of BrainThinking and Worrying and Overanalysing that Actually I Wasn't Sure I Wanted to See Him Again.

And I'd been doing a lot of Overheating too.

Yes, the day we'd chosen for our bowl-fest was a Wednesday in early August when it had been absolutely broiling all day. And the air-con (or lack therein) in my office had left me lethargic and in need of an evening of Doing Nothing and essentially feeling a little bit like this:

Yuuuuuuuurrrrhhhh... via here

Bowling, i.e. Something That Involved Exertion and Also Finding My Way in the Heat to Bayswater was not something that appealed. Plus, I knew I'd be grumpy in the heat, and for all his flaws (and one of mine) I didn't think I could inflict Grumpy QB on him yet again.

So just before the end of my working day I sent him a text to apologise, and pull out. It went something like this:

Hi KIB. I'm afraid I need to cancel this evening. I'm sorry if this is a pain as you've already booked. QB

Which I thought was fair. Wasn't it? Who knows? Much like Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory my grasp of social cues isn't all that strong. I thought it was polite, anyway, and apologetic. A little cowardly, maybe, but hey, that's just me.

via here

I did not expect this reply five minutes later:

30 quid non refundable

That was it. No salutation, no signoff. Just STROP.

WHOA. Back it up, huff-boy, no need for that.

At which point, I hate to admit, I think I gave a little primordial growl, right there in the office, to the tune of, "Arrrrrgh! MEN!"

This little one-liner actually served two purposes: 1) it guilted me into retracting my cancellation and yet 2) made me see KIB in a whole new light, and let's say, it wasn't flattering. It was the sort of light that makes Dates who were Once Good Prospects actually seem Scary and just a little bit Sociopathic. The kind who if irked will lash out. And I wasn't sure I could be doing with that.

But yet. I then sent a grovelling apology (that I'm not sure he deserved).

And he sent an overlapping apology asking me to excuse his last text. It had been "a rough day at work".  

Yes, I have those too. And when I do, I try to spare relative strangers from Grumpzilla QB by calculating my responses. But anyhoo.

He said he appreciated my text and was sure I had a good reason. Which made me feel even guiltier because, well, it wasn't like my pet gecko had died or I'd misplaced a limb under a vehicle somewhere.

I was just hot and bothered, and wanted out of the Date.

Colour me this bird:

BOK! Bok bok bok! via here

but I also still had considerable reservations about KIB after the Hair-Pulling Incident and although he'd been well-behaved enough at our last meeting, the Over-Narrating (or, as I perceived it, Treating Me Like an Illiterate Imbecile) was also Something of a Deal-Breaker.

And yet… off I toddled to darkest Bayswater via my coffee retailer of choice (which rhymes with Foster Toffee) for something cold and tasty, and sat in Hyde Park for about an hour with my book and my continuing reservations over the integrity (and incidentally the mental status) of KIB.

We met, we chatted, we popped into another coffee retailer (which rhymes with Tar Sucks) then headed to the alley. And by and large, we were actually fine. It was actually sort of fun. He was kind enough to steal back our bowling balls from the Japanese teenagers in the next lane who appeared to be stockpiling them. Plus there was an interview with dishy Dominic Cooper playing on the TV that hung over the alley so I was neatly distracted.

...Smoulder. via here

(Yes, I was ogling Le Cooper while KIB was bowling. But I did mention it wasn't a Date, not really. And besides. Mr Cooper is but fantasy. Sadly.)

All was going well.

Except for one small snag.

Either KIB is the worst bowler known to humankind, or I'm the worst bowler known to humankind and he was humouring me but I Won. Two games in a row, I won.

And he seemed almost incapable of accepting that I was winning. Maybe it's a Male Competitive/Ego Bruising Issue but he seemed to feel the need to give me a near-patronising congratulation every time I hit more than two pins (Well done, little lady! You can throw a ball in a near-straight trajectory, even though you're a girl…) and then proceed to throw a ball down into the gutter as if that was the way to score.

Je pense que NON.

I did ask him outright if he'd let me win and he denied it… but I have my suspicions.

After my TRIUMPH we decided to grab something to eat and settled on a Tex-Mex place on Notting Hill Gate. Ordered a non-alcoholic cocktail (some sort of daiquiri) and a heap o' nachos and he ordered some sort of potato-skin dish. And I thought, marvellous, we can just eat and be.


No chuffing chance.


Now, not that I'm one to disclose the ins and outs of my innards but I'd recently been suffering quite horrid bouts of indigestion whereby I'd actually looked somewhat pregnant after eating (talk about a food baby…) and felt really uncomfortable and balloon-like.

...like zis. via here

After much Google-based self-diagnosis I'd finally put it down to not letting myself sit and just eat quietly whether it was at lunch at work, or out with KIB – there always seemed to be the need to talk or break up the monotony of digestion with, I don't know, doing something less monotonous. Like Holding Conversation.

He hadn't helped matters in the past -- on the night of the Incident we'd been looking for somewhere to eat after the gallery, but I was just after something small following our chips earlier that night, and he'd made some comment along the lines of, "Ah, are the chips layin' heavy on you?".

A world of urgh.

Concern it may have been, but there's nothing less attractive than a man drawing attention to your stomach and its contents. Of course we then had that Black Forest Gateau but we'll gloss over that.

So having concluded that talking-whilst-eating was my problem I was all ready to sit quietly and scoff my little self silly on tortilla chips and cheese (and yes I expect my carb-tastic diet may have contributed to the afore-mentioned discomfort but we'll gloss over that too). And bask in his company comparatively safe in the knowledge he wouldn't try pulling my hair again, and there were no captioned pictures nearby for him to narrate to me.

But of course not.

He talked.


And talked.


And talked.

Which would have almost be OK if at each juncture he hadn't waited for my response on questions relating to my recent activities. Such as my visiting friend J for a weekend in Somerset.

Now. Before you label me Queen of the Hypocrites after smiting down ODNU for not upholding a Conversation, at least with ODNU we were just conversing over a drink, not trying to eat as well. Two very different media, people. Very different Kettles of Fish.

via here

Subsequently when I did respond to KIB's Spanish Inquisition – or should that be Texan-Mexican Inquisition – after pointedly finishing my forkful very slowly I felt the need to emphasise that one of the many upsides to spending that weekend with J in Somerset was the Quiet.

Yes, the Lack of Need to fill every moment of silence with Words.

And he seemed to agree.

Yes, the man who could not just let me wander in Silence around a gallery or exhibit without filling the void with his insights claimed to like Silence.

Je pense que NON!

**you thought I'd forgotten those double asterisks, didn't you. No, never. I never abandon punctuation.

(Except maybe parentheses.

) < there you go.

**KIB was one of those overly perky puppies for whom London is not the overcrowded, overpriced every-man-for-himself metropolis that it really is; it is full of tiny vintage hidden alleyways, secret vintage dinner clubs, secret vintage cinemas, secret clubs for Those Who Like to Pull Hair, secret vintage rooftop pubs, everything that a Londonophile with a Thing for Vintage could dream of.

And yes, to begin with I was almost convinced that there was more to our c(r)apital than this:

"MOVE DOWN THE CARRIAGE!" via here

but then reality set in and the London Love was soon lost in the crowds of Very Unvintage Pushy Me-Me-Me-ers barging me onto the Tube of a morning/evening/mid-afternoon.

I did find a good opportunity to "sit quiet for a while" (as my grandmother used to say) and ingest my nachos while he regaled me with the details of an Average Week in the Life of KIB. This usually went along the lines of:

Monday, tea in a secret tearoom

Tuesday, secret gig

Wednesday, secret vintage car rally

Thursday, secret BSL class

Friday, secret evening class in Gallery Narration for Insecure KIBs

Saturday, secret cinema screening

Sunday, watching a motor race on a rooftop. A secret rooftop, natch.

[some incidences contrived for comedy value but not by much.]

And yet here he was telling me that, just like me, he liked his Me-time, and his Quiet.

I'm not quite sure when he ever had time to be Quiet with all the secret vintage carryings-on with which he filled his every day.

And then...

...he raised the Big Question.

"So… I really like you, like. How do you feel?"

…

WHOA.

I have to answer that?!

OK. OK, admittedly I'd seen this coming and if anything I was hoping this discussion would happen as at this point I had reached the inevitable conclusion that if KIB and I were ever anything more than Friends we would just get on each other's gourds he would just get on my gourd. And that's not criteria for a Lobster, I'm sorry to say. If he were my Lobster I could have overlooked all of this.

But no.

So, I took a deep breath, finished my forkful of nachos, and decided that honesty was the best way to go.

…uhmmm…

Oooh!

…Er, well…

I'm not sure what I want at the moment. [Read: Or, I know what I want and it's not you. Soz.]
 
Aaaand... I think I'd like to try just being Friends. [Read: Abandon hope, ye KIB. Soz.]

...

Silence.

Actual silence.

REJOICE! I'd actually left him with Nothing to Say.

...

After that little bombshell I may have mentioned that I'd be incommunicado for the next couple of weeks as I was off to Austria.

I may or may not have committed to getting back in touch.

Either way, I didn't.

To his credit, neither did he. Obviously he wasn't in to being Friends, and all honesty I was relieved to sever the connection at this point.

So... thus endeth that nonDate... And subsequently thus endeth all Dates with KIB.

...It was too weird an experience and also far too stressful given how friends seemed to be promoting Dating as Fun when I found myself all too often trying to find a way to get out of a Date, or to concoct an answer to a question like, "Do you like having your hair pulled?"

So, onto the next...

Flaws and All

When I started this blog I should have included in my sidebar a proviso that, for comedy value, I have deliberately masked about 95% of my flaws in order to portray my Poor Unsuspecting Dates in the most unfortunate light possible.

That proviso aside, I'm not taking all the blame for unsuccessful dates upon myself although I can accept some, being peculiar and unused to the Dating Malarkey as I am was. Because my word I tried my hardest to spark with Mr Shorts in Winter aka ODNU. And as for KIB no human being is at their best after a twelve-hour day and a blatant display of follicle-fetishism.

But yes, it's safe to say that I'm no Meg Ryan-in-any-rom-com-she's-ever-been in. I'm not cute and sparky, I'm just quirky. And flawed. And I accept that.

Yes, I acknowledge and bewail my manifold quirks and weirdnesses.

Here be they:

• I'm picky.
• I can be judgmental.
• I'm pedantic about spelling, grammar, punctuation and punctuality. And the misuse of the word "myriad".
• I have fluctuating levels of tolerance especially of people who have no handle on the above.
• I cringe at the use of the word "foods" (plural) as in "I like all sorts of foods" – arrrgh. I don't even care if it's grammatically correct versus "food" plural, and that's saying something.
• I'm not fond of "movies" for "films" either. We're British. It's a film.
• I'm grumpy as feck when I'm tired or hungry. Or tired and hungry.
• I'm stubborn as. 

via here

• I have my whiny moments.
• I have my drama-queen moments.
• I can be insecure about my mediocre intelligence to the point whereby I can't be patronised … but I also can't Miss Out and need to be Kept in the Loop.
• I obsess about odd things, about which most sane folk wouldn't have any interest. Aussie serials. Actors in Aussie serials. Bad 80s dance films. 80s rock and 80s rockers. Camels.

Yes, camels. via here

• I have my moments of immaturity.
• I also have my moments of old-lady-dom.
• I play The Sims on Facebook or chain-Sudoku in my spare time.
• And I'm not a great hugger. In fact I'm a pretty appalling hugger. I suspect shoulders have been bruised in the process of my attempts.

BUT!

BUT!

I'm also arty, daft, quirky, medium-maintenance, and capable of love.

And if someone transpires to be my Lobster, two things will happen:

1. They'll love me for all those flaws above
and
2. I'll love them, flaws and all.

I've been told that's how it works.