Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Or. Not.

So you guys must Love the hell out of me by now, right?

Look, I know. It’s been a while. How the devil are you? You look great. Is that a new shirt? Ah come on, don’t look at me like that. I have my excuses. I’ve been on holiday. I washed my hair. And, er, I quit. That’s right, I quit. I quit Love. I gave up on the whole thing. I retired and started drawing my quite generous misery pension.

But then, spurred on to fight the good fight for Love by the presence of the latest Jennifer Aniston vehicle, Love Happens (joining ‘shit’ and ‘stuff’ in the elite list of things that happen) and the forthcoming and genuinely terrifying Valentine’s Day (which appears to have evoked some kind of clause in every working Hollywood actor’s contract - seriously, everyone’s in it, I think I’m in it somewhere), I decided to come back to save you ALL. Whilst we’re on the subject - I have a fantastic plan to make the world a much much better place in a very short space of time. Follow the above link to Valentine’s Day and watch the trailer. If you think that this is the kind of film that you’d like to see, then take these steps. 1) Sell all possessions and property. 2) Give all money raised to charity. 3) Walk into the sea.

I couldn’t sit idle whilst this kind of horror was being perpetrated in the name of Love.

Hollywood better be quaking. This is it. I’m back.

Think Presley in ‘68. Foreman in ‘95. Backstreet Boys in ‘05 (who don’t get the credit they deserve for audaciously releasing a single called ‘Backstreet’s Back’ when they genuinely hadn’t been anywhere and then following years of being out of work with the album ‘Never Gone’ - in America 117 teenage girls died of confusion after merely reading the album‘s title. A forlorn Nick Carter was quoted as saying the Boys were ‘disappointed’ as they had been aiming for ‘something closer to a thousand, to be honest’. It’s rumoured that next year Backstreet will be a releasing a greatest hits entitled ‘Some old shit’, which will contain nothing more than a series of desperate answer phone messages left between March and June 2003 by A.J. McLean to his psychiatrist, as the whole edifice of his life and ego was being swept away like carrier bag full of tiny polystyrene balls in a fucking storm.)

But that’s as maybe.

I’m back. This is the greatest comeback since Christ’s over-hyped power nap (I mean, come on, THREE days? He was only crucified. We’ve all been crucified. I was crucified only this weekend. And did you hear me moaning about it? No. I was in work Monday morning, a waterproof plaster over each palm, ready to do a bloody shift).

Enough parentheses. Let’s get to business.

Ah, I’ve missed you guys.


NINTH DATE REPORT - 15/08/09

Think my quest is futile, do you? Think that it’s impossible to meet someone through so spurious a system as internet dating, yeah? Think that you can never replace the physical chemistry of face-to-face encounters with a series of emails and grainy headshots, huh? HAH. Ahaha.

Well, Love may have had me on the ropes but until I’m out for the count it’s not wise to bet against this old slugger. But let‘s be honest, in Match.com terms, it’s the twelfth round. I’ve already lost on points, I think we all know that. If this goes to the bell, I’ve lost. It’s total knockout or nothing.

Picking myself off the canvas, knees buckling, arms like lead weight, I staggered forward, praying I still had one last haymaker left in me. A good fighter never knows when he’s beaten. If your heart still beats, anything is possible.

And so I met Louise.

Pick your metaphor - breath of fresh air, ray of light, an oasis in the desert. Feeling I had already wrung the final drops of human decency out the filthy Match.com dishrag, I searched through Match’s flesh database hoping against hope that there’d be one more, spurred on somehow by an unrealistic optimism, like a death row prisoner praying for a power cut.

And. There she was. A poppy in Flanders.

Apart from the usual caveats - attraction, things in common, sense of humour - she was a NORMAL person. Woo! She seemed like the kind of person I would love to spend time with, in the actual real world and everything. Louise was interesting, creative and intelligent and I couldn’t for the life of me work out why she was on Match.com.

And I still can't.

We met. I was really looking forward to meeting Louise. It just felt right. I knew, even having not met her, that Louise would never want to see the gargantuan shitfest Valentine’s Day, a film so flimsy it makes Damien Hirst‘s career look substantial and considered. Louise was not going to let me down. It felt so right that even when she enquired whether we could meet in a location that I can never usually set foot in, so inextricably linked is it with a previous relationship that the mere glimpse of it makes me want to ram my fist through my chest plate in an effort to stop my rapidly sinking heart from getting tangled in my intestines, I agreed without hesitation.

So, standing quite literally in the shadow my previous relationship, I met Louise. And I really wasn’t prepared for what I was to see. I didn’t pick this up from any of her photos. There wasn’t the slightest hint of resemblance. Nothing. Would never have guessed what I was to be faced with.

Yes, poor Louise had the misfortune of looking eerily like my ex-girfriend. Frighteningly similar. No, not that one. I wish. Another one. A bad one. Ah.

Oh, Louise. Where can we go from here? Where could we go? Well, we went to the pub, obviously.

Hmm. So, sipping my pint I considered the fact that somehow the world had contrived to transplant me slap-bang into the middle of what surely must be Matthew McConaughey’s worst offence to date, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Which would be typical. And, before you ask, it truly is even more charmless, witless and chinless than The Wedding Planner. And, yes, I have just learnt how to do hyperlinks.

No. No, no, I thought. I wasn’t going to let this minor thing (her face) get in the way of falling in Love with my perfect woman. It was fairly dark in the pub anyway and, if I squinted, most traces of my ex were eradicated. Fine. We’re back onboard the Love train. Next stop Loveville. Choo choo! Tickets please!

Despite finding it difficult to make eye contact, the evening went wonderfully, rapidly and boozily (told you she was perfect). There is little to report from the next part of the evening. To the outsider it would have been entirely unremarkable. For me it was a revelation. After a while I began to realise something was wrong. No, not wrong… different. Yes, something was different this time. What could it be? I scritched and scratched inside my tiny mind before stumbling across the answer entirely by accident. Louise said it for me. Fate, innit?

‘This is nice, I feel completely relaxed.’

Aaah, that’s what this sensation is! I’m relaxed! Actually relaxed! Comfortable in the presence of another human being in an awkward social situation. The common denominator for all of the previous dates had been my crippling awkwardness, inner tension and nervousness. But no more. With Louise I hadn’t even thought about the fact we were on a date. It felt natural, normal. Just two people. Who got on well. There was nothing remotely awkward about us. Yes, relaxed. Lovely.

Even when she said some rather alarming and personal things (ah, alcohol) that usually would have made me run a mile, I didn’t mind. In fact, her own problems and issues only made her more attractive to me. She’s a human being, we all have problems. We’ve all had bad moments. We all have issues. Usually I can’t palate this sort of nonsense. But. These were Louise’s problems. This was different. This was texture. I was delighted she comfortable enough to open up to me. I drank up her insecurities in large gulps, slaking a thirst I didn’t even realise I had. Ah, alcohol.

We talked about our lives, our hopes and dreams, our families. Not wanting the evening to end, we moved from bar to bar, reveling in the company of the other. And, yeah, you can cry cliché all you like, but it genuinely felt like we’d known each other a long time.

I walked her to the bus. We didn’t kiss.

We could have done. We should have done. But it was ok. I didn’t regret it as I walked away, elated. Why should I regret? There would be plenty more opportunities for that. I tried to calculate how soon it would be acceptable to call her. I decided I’d throw the rulebook out the window and call her the very next day. To hell with being coy. I walked home with a spring in my step, London looking more beautiful to me than I ever thought possible. I skipped and giggled. I even took a joyful little wee down what I thought was a dark alley but turned out to be, in actual fact, the side of St Paul’s Cathedral (sorry, God).

The best date I’ve ever had and a wee on one of London’s most iconic landmarks. TOP THAT.

Everyone do a nice, happy sigh now. Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh. Lovely.



A couple of weeks later, my colleague asked me if I was going to see that girl again. The one I had spent such a wonderful night with.

‘I don’t know’ I answered.

Since we parted at the bus stop, I hadn’t so much as thought about her once.