For Sale: Love - bit battered, one wreckless owner, less mileage than I'd hoped for

You know those little Chinese finger traps? You stick your finger in and the harder you pull the tighter it gets? The only way to get it off is to completely relax. But your instinct is to panic and keep pulling. The more you pull, the less chance you have of getting the thing off. In the end, filled with a unique sense of embarrassment and a niggling fear that you’ll have to wear the stupid contraption forever - like some kind of massive floppy finger extension, rendering you partially disabled and a complete laughing stock - you wrench the thing off, breaking it forevermore.

Trying to find Love in a limited time period is very much the same. With every date I go on I seem to get further away.

Confucius said - 'It is hard to find a black cat in a dark room, especially when the cat is not even there.'

I can't even make a joke about this. This so accurately and profoundly sums up how I currently feel about Love that you're lucky I can still type, so overwhelmed am I.

I think I’ve broken Love. Sorry everyone. I know how much you were looking forward to it.

The point is, I find this all very unfair. Because I have been following the accepted advice for years - relax, don’t look for it, don’t force it and you’ll find it. When you least expect it. Like when you’re in the bath or breaking the news to a 4 year old boy that Daddy won’t be coming back from his holiday in Afghanistan. Suddenly love will leap out at you like Jeremy Beadle, possibly wearing a novelty costume. And a little withered hand.

Well. WELL. I have sat here. I have waited. Patiently. I put all thoughts of finding Love out of my mind. I tootled about in my ivory tower as everyone I knew embraced Love with a big, warm sigh. No matter, I said, when I least expect it, it’ll happen.

SO WHERE ARE YOU? Are you dead or something? Oh that would just be my luck. That's probably it, isn't it? The love of my life probably died of leukemia when she was eight. 'Cos we've only got one each.

So. Waiting patiently hasn’t worked. Yet actively searching for it seems to be burying it deeper than ever.

Which simply leads me to the conclusion that either a) I am incapable of love, or b) I am incapable of being loved, or c) the whole love thing was made up in order to sell estate cars and riverside condos and that the rest of you are lying to me or idiots.

My head says a), my heart says b). I’ve ignored both and am plumping for c). In your meaty faces, internal organs.

Anyhow. Since we last talked, I’ve been on two dates. One report below, the other to follow in the next couple of days. And, believe me, it’ll be worth the wait. Oh boy.


GERI’S SECOND DATE - 30/06/09

Ah ha. The second second date. The last one didn’t go fabulously, if you recall. Surely I will have learned from my experience? If there’s one thing you nice people have learned from this blog, it’s that I am incapable of learning from my own, or other people’s, mistakes.

So. Geri. Remember her? Thought that I looked like Wilf from The Bash Street Kids and whom I didn’t so much engage in conversation with but rather subjected her to, and received in return, the vocal equivalent of a sustained and fascinatingly violent assault. We ended the evening like two perfectly matched prize-fighters, trading exhausted swings, praying the other would just fall their knees and succumb before one of us actually died. Lots of talking. Not a lot of listening.

I vowed that this time things would be different.

I also once vowed to stop playing Championship Manager. But. Once you’ve got Torquay United to a Champions League final, quitting would only make all those hours perfecting formations and scouting the Belgian lower leagues seem like a tragic waste. Plus in real life I’m not a professional football manager. In Championship Manager, I am.

People call it ‘verbal diarrhoea’. However, to suggest that it was liquid shit that flowed from my mouth all evening would be very generous. Very generous indeed.

I get ahead of myself. What I should first mention is that it was a really hot day. Really hot. A scorcher. Glorious stuff. And I wasn’t meeting her until 8. And there’s this pub near my work with a great little beer garden. And my colleague suggested we have a drink after work (it may or may not have been my suggestion).

Now. You’d think that turning up late and a little bit drunk (empty stomach, that’s my excuse) for a date would be a bad thing. But given the circumstances, I think I covered rather well. It may have even worked in my favour.

At first I even listened (yes!) as she talked words at me. I asked thoughtful questions, allowing her to elaborate on her chosen subjects. However, once we had relocated ourselves to a delightful little spot by the river I suddenly realised, with a jolt, that I hadn’t heard quite enough of my favourite sound that evening. My own voice.

Plus, with the sun going down over London, it was the perfect setting for my lengthy pontifications on life, politics, the arts and fact that Woolworth’s was shit anyway and the only people that went in there were shoplifters or the deranged or people in those little provincial towns where they still have, you know, a Wimpy and everyone is overweight and it's not surprising as there's a Greggs every two yards.

Yup. I was drunk and getting drunker.

Maybe it was the drink but we got on very well. I started noticing little things about her that I found attractive. The wrinkle of her nose when she laughed, the way she held her drink, the fact that she treated most of what I said with a slight sense of disapproval.

After ending our first date by suggesting she had had a terrible time and that I shouldn’t call her, she ended the second by suggesting we definitely see each other again. Bang. What’s that? No, Adonis is over there. This is just little old me. Smoother than a pane of glass. Hotter than a crematorium in the summer.

That’s it, fellas. That’s the secret to wooing a lady. Just turn up drunk. It really works. If this turns into a full-blown relationship I’m going to be necking stolen nail varnish remover this time next year.

Looking forward to that. Looking forward to seeing Geri again too. Whenever that’ll be. Might even turn up sober for the third date (I know, I must like her).


Although I shouldn’t rest on my laurels. Victoria couldn’t see me this week because she’s ‘going to Germany’, Mel couldn’t see me because she’s ‘going to Sweden’ and a couple of other people took rain checks on meeting up this week because they’re ‘going on holiday’.

Hmm.

Now, it has been pointed out to me that this is ‘the summer’ and people ‘go on holiday’. But I’m not listening to this guff (the facts). I prefer to let natural paranoia kick in and believe that they’re either all lying or I am literally forcing the women of Britain to emigrate one by one until the whole country becomes one massive sausage-fest and I’ll be publicly lynched in Hyde Park by 20 million very angry, sexually exasperated men. If I’m lucky.

Check in later this week for Date Five. It’s a date with a whole decade of age difference. Fruity.