Heeding my own advice

How is it possible that I have learnt nothing from my previous disastrous dating experiences? When did I become that sort of girl that knows something is 100% a bad idea, and yet cracks on with it anyway, just to make sure? I don’t know how or when it happened, but I have certainly taken my ridiculousness levels up a notch or two recently.

For some reason, despite the fact that I have said from the off that The Word Smith is most certainly not the one for me (please see pretty much every blog post with his name on for supporting statements), my Sunday afternoon now has his name pencilled in in my diary. Honestly, what was I thinking?!

A hung-over Saturday spent playing online led to a text exchange with The Word Smith, in which he very quickly asked me out for dinner. Fortunately I had a good excuse lined up for Saturday night, but when he asked about my Sunday plans I drew a complete blank and found myself agreeing to a coffee on the Kings Road.

I was under the assumption that a quick coffee would require an initial meeting of 30 minutes or so, and that I would be able to make my escape having made a swift assessment of whether it was a meeting worth repeating. I’m sure that this would have been the perfect plan, and it’s one that I am hoping to actually stick to the next time I go on a date with a complete stranger, but unfortunately, this time it didn’t pan out perfectly.

I received one particular message that changed the plan for the day. It had one notable sentence that is worth commenting on for two reasons – “I’m currently on my way to Harrods to buy a dvd for this evening.”

Firstly, the only person I have ever heard of using Harrods as an actual shop rather than a complete and utter luxury store is Eddie. I’m talking about Edina Monsoon, of Absolutely Fabulous fame, and whilst I love her dearly for her ridiculousness, I can’t honestly believe that anyone genuinely lives that life. Secondly, there is only one reason I go to Harrods, and that’s for the Food Hall, the ice-cream parlour and the pizzeria with the opera singing chef, which I have never eaten at, but that has been on my list for quite some time.

I suppose you can see where this is going? Coffee is out and pizza is in – that’s taking the half hour coffee session to a 2 hour+ dining experience. All for the love of ticking yet another restaurant off the list. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. 

Miss Fifi Update 4

I can report that I had a lovely time the other evening enjoying fine wine, delicious food and good chat with a boy…disappointingly though, this man wasn’t sourced from militant trawls through POF, but my old friend The Faux Boyfriend.

We have that rarity of male and female friendship that for over 6 years, has not once been marred by as much as an accidental snog or drunken groping. Despite getting on like a house on fire, we have a mutual understanding that however many M&S meals for two we share, or Sunday’s spent with eggs benedict in Clapham’s coffee shops, we will never be anything but good friends. The Faux Boyfriend, like many of my good friends, has been unusually keen to meet up recently – clearly, to mock my internet dating exploits!

So, I filled him in on my less than perfect dates with The Cute Geek and The Weird Fish – stories which left The Faux Boyfriend spluttering out his glass of merlot with laughter. I also confessed to him an incident from last Saturday, when I was kissed (note who’s the perpetrator), by a suave stranger on a snowy Battersea street at 1am. Admittedly, this was not my finest hour, as said stranger later casually mentioned a live-in girlfriend. The Faux boyfriend tutted and shook his head at this escapade, whilst demanding access to my POF messages as punishment for my ridiculous behaviour.

For your viewing pleasure, here are a few of our favourites – crimes against punctuation, spelling and common decency are the author’s own:

1. Hi hun, saw your profile and thought I’d send you a message to say hi. So about me, I’m 27 and live in south London too. I like keeping fit as well – in fact, I think my biggest achievement was losing 10 stone over last year. Perhaps we could meet up and get sweaty? LOL x


2. hi there i just looked at your profile and liked what i saw and wondered if you would like to chat sometime if not its cool. Do you like the pic of my baby chantel? Be nice if you could maybe meat her somtime. anyway i wish you all the be on here and hope you find your mr right soon take care hun. xx


3. Hi, so say we lived together and you walked past my room and saw me w***ing what would you say? Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Er..so I hardly need to mention that none of the above received a response. After reading these and the other "interesting" messages I received, The Faux Boyfriend was clearly caught somewhere between absolute horror and crippling laughter.
           "Fi, you REALLY need to get off this site" he said emphatically, as he emptied the wine into our glasses. I think he may have point! 

Date developments

Um, I seem to have gotten myself signed up for a coffee date with The Word Smith tomorrow. How the bloody hell did this happen?

            There a bit of a crazy Australian who’s also building up for a date when he’s back from his trip home, and the posh sailor who I was in touch with before has mentioned meeting for a drink next week.

            Is it wrong that I’m starting to panic a bit about the whole thing?

Words of wisdom

A fabulous friend from home recently sent me the below email to offer me inspiration in my online hunt. I have to say, this suggests that I ought to completely abandon all conversations with The Word Smith, and maybe take advantage of the slightly more simplistic ‘hot chav’ “Your face is nice and that innit” messages…I’m sort of inclined to agree with her:

Resimay

To hoom it may consern,

I want to apply for the job what I saw in the paper.

I can Type realey kwik with one finger and do sum a-counting…

I think I am good on the phone and I no I am a people people, People really seam to respond to me well. Certain men and all the ladies.

I no my spelling in not two good but find that I can Offen can get a job thru my personalety.

My celery is open so we can discus wat you want to pay me and wat you think that I am werth.

I can start mediatley. Thank you in advance fore youre anser.

Hopifuly yoyre bestest aplicant so far.

Cinserely,

BRYAN

Pee Ess: Cause my resimay is a bit short – below is a pikture of me

Employers response:

Dear Bryan,

We’ve got spell check.

See you TOMORROW!

Ready to call time?

I’m struggling to work out whether it’s really time to call time on my chats with The Word Smith. I know that it is, because let’s face it, his intelligence is so beyond me it’s insane and I have no idea what made me message him in the first place. However, I find it very hard to ignore messages from anyone, added to which he has now included a numbered list, and there is a small part of my brain that forces me to gravitate towards lists like nothing else.

There’s only one thing for it; I’m going to have to reply with 100% honest answers and see whether he feels the need to respond. I can’t help but assume that, when you ask someone if they enjoy the FT weekend edition and they reply with “I like the colour, but other than that, I don’t think I have ever even touched one before” it’s only going to go one way isn’t it? I guess we’ll find out fairly soon. 

Just for fun, below is a selection of other exciting questions that he put to me complete with my, I think, rather well thought through replies:

TWS: Have you seen a 1972 movie called Death Train, which is a semi-horror (I think). and rather interestingly involved the London Underground?

Miss P: No.

TWS: Olive green tights and brogues down the Kings Road. Yay or nay?

Miss P: Olive green tights and brogues pretty much anywhere makes me feel a bit sick. That fact that people would be rocking them on the Kings Road is just unnecessarily vile. So, nay.

TWS: Would you object to flying business class on the grounds of suggestions of inequality?

Miss P: If you’re talking about transatlantic travel then I will willingly sign a petition publically celebrating the realities of inequality in all its gory detail if it means that I get a fully reclining seat and a glass of bubbles upon arrival.

TWS: Does wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt make you feel as though you should be painting the roof?

Miss P: I don’t think I’ve ever painted a roof - I have a tendency to fall over / off things, so it would be a little dangerous. I’ve also never worn a plain t-shirt (well not since I was about ten at least). If I had to guess though, I would say yes. That’s something that really shouldn’t happen.

OkCupid developments

I’ve been a silent member of OkCupid (my free dating site of choice) for a couple of weeks now, and I still haven’t yet been moved to break the silence. When compared with Guardian Soulmates, the site isn’t really as great to use and search through, I don’t like the layout and the fact that they insist on your answering ridiculous questions about whether you would allow your 13 year old children to watch films with full nudity in them, plus the boys on there are all a little bit…well, not really my bag.

            I assumed that this was because, as a free service, you get an awful lot of people on there (a bit like POF, although considerably less offensive, and with less of what Tit’s McGee and Miss Fifi refer to as ‘hot chavs’ – men with lots of tattoos and their shirts off) so your searching has to be more intensive.

            Apparently not. According to the email that I received from OkCupid this morning, it’s not that the calibre of people on there are lower, it’s just that they have only just opened my profile up to what they refer to as ‘more attractive people’. I kid you not – this was waiting for me when I logged in this morning:

“Hey Miss P,

We just detected that you’re now amongst the most attractive people on OkCupid. We learned this from clicks to your profile and reactions to you in Quickmatch and Quiver. Did you get a new haircut or something? Well, it’s working.

            To celebrate, we’ve adjusted your OkCupid experience. This won’t affect your match percentages, which are still based purely on your answers and desired match’s answers. But we’ll recommend more attractive people to you. You’ll also appear more often to other attractive people.”

Are you kidding me? I really hope that this is a somewhat desperate attempt on their part to make me engage with the site more and help them build advertising revenue by getting me addicted to clicking through multiple pages (wah-oh – work chat, I’ll stop now, I promise), because otherwise, I find this all a little bit wrong, and if nothing else, it’s making me even more inclined to bid farewell to yet another site for the general weird feeling of wrongness that they give me.

            Well, maybe I’ll just wait and see how outrageously hot the people they send my way are going to be from now on in. I’m not going to lie, they better have something pretty darn impressive to pull out of the bag here…

Miss Fifi Update 3

They say that in life things have a nasty habit of going from bad to worse. Sadly, this can certainly be said for my POFfing tales. Despite the nice-but-dull evening with The Cute Geek, I was feeling surprisingly buoyant as I made my way to date number two on Saturday. I was optimistic about this guy– he looked quite cute from his photos and his messages inspired an image of a carefree personality with sparkling chat and a love of travelling. What could possibly go wrong? Well, the answer to that as I’m sure you’ve already surmised, is plenty.

            He had sent me a text that morning suggesting we meet at the café by The Globe. and informing me that he would be wearing a blue coat so I would know it was definitely him. I assumed The Globe Theatre; he (as I later discovered) had meant The Globe Pub. To add another aspect of panic, whilst waiting impatiently at The Globe (theatre), a man decidedly on the wrong side of 60 in a very blue coat came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. I began to panic, instantly assuming the ultimate horror had occurred – that I had hit rock bottom and was on a date with an OAP masquerading as a 26 year old! Thankfully, his intent was to alert me to having dropped my glove, not to make true everyone’s nightmare of being caught out by a sad old man with a fake profile.

Anyway, after two confused phone-calls, the boy and I rectified our location-crossed wires and I made my way to meet him at The Globe (pub). In hindsight, I am not entirely sure it was really worth the effort.

What was waiting for me on my arrival was someone who fortunately looked young enough to be his promised 26 year old, but whose charisma was not in keeping with his emails. He was quite sweet, but “weird-fish” as we shall now know him, certainly had what we’d describe in the trade as ‘social-communication difficulties’.

Conversation was stilted, leading me to panic and barrage him with questions in the manner of John Humphrys. Once again, I was left pondering how such odd men appear so nice and socially adept by email… Is there a secret team of witty and charming POF ghost writers out there ruining a girl’s ability to separate the genuinely fun guys from the truly tedious?!

After forcing down two drinks at a rather alarming speed, I made my excuses and legged it (becoming a bit of a habit) to meet my housemate The Banker Beauty and her boyfriend. Whilst we were in the pub watching the rugby, I gave her a blow-by-blow account of the painful 80 minutes I’d just endured. As we chuckled together over another disaster, I received a text from date number 1, The Cute Geek: Hi, nice to have met you the other evening. I kind of got the feeling you won’t want to see me again, but if I have got this wrong, then let me know. X

Ouch. Am I that obvious? Clearly need to work on my manners. I replied with what I hoped was a nice message, explaining that though I thought he was lovely, I didn’t think we were well suited. Seconds later, this was his response: That’s OK. I joined ”My Single Friend” this morning anyway. If you have any friends you think would like to go out with me than let me know! Also, I’m still trying to find your blog….X

You’ve got to admire the man’s determination.