How Not to Win a Local Election

I’m being stalked. First it was the letters through the door every 2.64 minutes. Delivered by hand by the mysterious minions of the group of stalkers better known as The Big Three. Then the stalkers started knocking at my door. Now the phone calls have started.

When the phone rang I of course hoped it was the man of my dreams. It could, in fact, have been the man of my dreams. He sounded suave and sophisticated and asked if I was me, the Physicist or the Lawyer. I was momentarily confused and said I was the Physicist. I hastily corrected myself. The Physicist is in Harrogate so I could hardly have been her. But then he broke the bad news to me. He was calling on behalf of one of the Big Three. I don’t like to think that the man of my dreams spends his leisure hours as a stalker.

At first the attention they paid me was mildly amusing. It gave me some spurious sense of being loved, to know that the fate of the local council and hence the whole of the British electoral system and the future of the Europe, the world and extraneous black holes was in my slightly mud-stained and keyboard-worn hands. The letters extolling the virtues of the Big Three and their exciting policies re my locality, including opening the footbridge (now mysteriously achieved without particular reference to any of them), the speed humps, the lamp posts, the drains, the felling of innocent trees and the unknowable smell emanating from the vicinity (although I suspect it is a political stench) made me smile gently at their dedication to the petty, superficial and minor-soap-opera-esque. I chortled humorously at the fact that they all were innocently espousing the exact same policies re the speed humps, the lamp posts, the drains, the felling of innocent trees and the unknowable smell emanating from the vicinity.

Now it’s really getting beyond a shaggy dog story. The footbridge is worn to a Tarzan-like rope structure with the amount of walking the minions have performed upon its newly polished surface. The speed humps have humped into even larger edifices with all their cunning driving with their wheels on either side of them. The lamp posts are completely eroded by minions’ shaggy dogs. The drains are as drained as I am. The amount of paper they have inserted through doors will have felled at least as many trees as they are trying to save. All our letterboxes are suffering leaflet fatigue and our doorbells are receiving expensive counselling due to the trauma of prospective councillors poking nonchalantly at them.

And so now it is very clear who I shall vote for. The Small One. Who put ONE leaflet through my door and trusted my ability to read. OK, the Welsh was challenging, but I assumed he was interested in the speed humps, the lamp posts, the drains, the felling of innocent trees and the unknowable smell emanating from the vicinity.

How Guardian Soulmates Became the Choice of the Moderately Eccentric

Good news. I have been re-visioned. That’s not like revision. No major studying, note-taking or sunbathing is involved. It is like reclassification except without the class. Reification.

Good news. I am no longer, mad, batty, insane, nuts, barmy, balmy or balm. I am now officially moderately eccentric. This, I feel, is an improvement. And it’s not just me who has been involved in this re-visioning. It has been validated by my whole family. All two daughters of the Oxbridge (or Camford as it’s been re-visioned) variety. What higher source of verity could there be? Verity denies all this of course. However the cats agree.

So, now, relieved of the burden of madness, battyness, insanity, nuttiness, barmyness, balmyness and skin cream I have once more joined Guardian Soulmates. Under the guise of sanity. Or at least moderate eccentricity. All my hard research led me inevitably and inextricably back to where I started. Just like the red shoe incident. And life. And roundabouts.

This is why the moderately eccentric chooses this particular brand of site in preference to all the others:

There is NO winking involved and thus we are freed from Painful Facial Distortion Syndrome.
There are semicolons in their lists giving a comforting veneer of intellectuality.
They ask you if you prefer a carrot or a stick (I chose string).
The carrot and stick thing is the total of their psychological profiling.
They consider it possible that once you took drugs (but we all pretend we don’t).
There are no annoying pop-up things telling you that you are being stalked.
There are no stalks.
Folk as eccentric and re-visioned as myself write long eccentric stuff that makes as little sense as this. I find this comforting.
The quality of the voyeurism sans subscription is totally top of the list.
My horoscope advised that I might find my soulmate.
The bloke I fancy is on Guardian Soulmates.

I already have 3 fans. He’s not one of them.

How Not to Seduce Olympic Athletes

I’ve just spent a deal of time on the floor with Iwan Thomas. This has led me to believe that perhaps the only answer is segregation of some sort.

This is what happened:

I went to the gym with the Physicist. She ran, I rowed, she cross-trainered, I went on the Kylie-Bum device.

In case you need to know (and you do if you aren’t sporting Kylie’s bum but would like to) (I am because I do know) it’s those recumbent bikes. At first it’s hard to understand why anyone should want to lie down and cycle at the same time, especially in the gym when any movement forward would lead one to collide with the bank of TV sets. But a quick experiment with one of these apperati reveals that your gluteus maximus undergoes such trauma that it is obviously Kylie’s vehicle of choice.

It’s also hard to know why every gym sports a bank of TV sets when there are so many other fascinating things to look at. Iwan Thomas for example.

So, we ran, rowed, cross-trained, Kylie-bummed and then I headed for that corner of the gym where the mats are in order to stretch my aching maximus. He (Iwan) was on the adjacent mat. Improving his biceps brachii. I smiled. He flexed. I moaned gently to myself. He had his iPod on so didn’t hear me. I had my iPod on so may have not moaned quite as gently as I imagined. I stretched my maximus by deftly touching my toes, glancing Iwan-ward hoping he would admire just how very flexible my maximi were. He flexed his pectoralis major. My gastrocnemius fluttered. I did an unlikely yoga pose that involved putting my knee in the general area of my ear and tried at the same time to catch his eye. I caught mine instead.

Meanwhile the Physicist had finished running and joined us on the mats. She proceeded to be blond, young, do fifty sit-ups followed by the splits. Iwan smiled at her. I turned the volume up on my iPod to cunningly disguise my middle-agedness.

I have written the gym a note and put it in the suggestion box. What I have suggested is this:

Could we please have gym segregation? The not-so-young of us would like not to be exposed the blond, beautiful and muscled Iwans and the Physicist/gymnasts of the world as it can cause strain of the gluteus maximus, impair our cardiac functioning and dissolve what self-worth we had applied prior to arrival.

The management replied:

You’ll find that it is written in the small print of your contract with the aforementioned establishment that all persons over the age of forty are, for their own safety and well-being, to keep their attention firmly fixed on the bank of TV screens provided for just this contingency. Any breech of this agreement is at your own risk.

How Not to Learn about Men on Internet Dating Sites

I’m still testing internet dating sites. It’s a big job.

This is what happened:

For a number of days, weeks, or possible millennia, I have been exhibiting my profile on a plethora of sites. In the interest of science you understand. Nothing to do with being sad, lonely, celibate and having discovered that Rolos are very hard to find these days. I am not an addict. And in the interest of fairness, equality and non-prejudicialness I have been reading other peoples’ profiles. Mens.

And this is what I’ve learnt:
All men are sincere, fun-loving and honest.
Many men ride motorbikes and believe this to be sexy, attractive and cute.
All men have a good sense of humour.
Most men have travelled a lot, thus forgetting to have a proper relationship.
Those who have travelled a lot are prone to list all the countries, beaches and small tributaries they have visited.
A large number of men are too shy/ugly/famous to put their pictures up.
A significant proportion of men don’t believe in spelling, punctuation or words.
Men are as bad as women re putting up photos of them that were taken 20 years ago.
There are others who lie about their age but forget to put photos up taken 20 years ago.
And yet others who put photos up but don’t let people see them, which is very mysterious and distrubing.
People use acronyms that I don’t understand. GSOH.
Some men have taken pretension onto a greater plane than one might have thought possible or even probable.
Some men are very cute.
The cute ones are out of my league.


And since there has been a lot of interest in ‘How to tell if a man fancies you’ and since the internet dating way of being is de rigueur amongst singletons these days I have also investigated how to tell if a man fancies you on an internet dating site.

Here’s how it works:

They wink at you.

Childish I know.

;-)

How Not to Internet Date (Again)

The internet dating voyeurism is hotting up a pace. Someone from Match.com winked at me. I winked back.

Truth be told it’s not really very satisfying. It feels somewhat shallow as relationships go. I expect it to continue like this for some time. Probably because neither of us can be bothered to pay the subscription. So all we are left with is winking. It’s tiring on the eyelid and leaves one feeling a tad lopsided.

But then I got an email from a man. Warning me that the incidence of STDs amongst the over 45s was on the increase. It would have been quite exciting, implying that he was willing to share his STD with me, or at least prevent sharing his STD with me. Only the man was my brother. He’d heard this good news on Woman’s Hour. At least I’m reassured that there’s a man with a feminine side out there concerned with my welfare. I told him that my life of celibacy is hardly likely to lead me to the land of STDs. He recommended that I try a different kind of internet dating site.

This is what happened:

I logged on the Parship.co.uk as advised. The premise behind this site is that finding the perfect mate is not down to good looks, chemical attraction, shared beliefs, STDs or the last Rolo. It’s all about psychology.

Simply take the simple compatibility-profiling test and the site will give you a list of simply compatible people who are a good psychological match.

I suspect that this is the hard drugs of internet dating. I’m beginning to wonder if this dabbling in dating sites is leading to true addiction.

I took the test. Twice. Under two different names. Is this illegal?

I had to answer questions as far reaching as the North Circular Road, as probing as my dibber and as questionable as my blog. There were even picture questions, I was expecting inkblots but none turned up, much to my disappointment.

They sent me my matches. Twice. Interesting men included someone in the military, an oil engineer and an egomaniac. I wasn’t allowed to see their pictures because I hadn’t paid the subscription. I’m beginning to think that the last Rolo thing is better than psychology. Chocolate usually is.

Now I’ve signed up to Datingdirect.com.

Can one get help for this sort of addiction?

How Not to Choose a Candidate

The Lawyer is going to be 18 soon.

There is going to be a local election for County Councillor.

These two facts are not unrelated.

So, the serious business of who to vote for now affects the whole family. The serious business of local elections seems to be very serious. Every five minutes or so another candidate’s minion hobbles by our door and inserts another exciting hand-crafted leaflet.

There are some pretty big issues at stake. We read the exciting hand-crafted leaflets very carefully:

The Tories have a two-colour printer. They are very keen to get the footbridge reopened. In blue.

The Plaid people’s candidate went to Oxford. This is obviously a point of division within our home. He’s very keen to get the footbridge reopened.

Labour also have a two-colour printer and are extraordinarily abandon with their use of red. They are very keen to get the footbridge reopened.

The Lib Dem candidate has a leaflet that folds. She’s a bit of a super-model. There are shots of her in various outfits in a variety of exotic locations – In an anorak outside the post office, in a twin-set outside the school, in tweed outside somewhere that could be a field. She is very keen to get the footbridge reopened.

The choice was, frankly, mind-boggling. At first we thought that really, on a local level, that we should leave our natural party-political prejudices aside and vote purely on the issues. We are very keen to get the footbridge reopened.

The election is next week, or possibly the week after, or, sometime soonish. If only someone had mentioned that in their leaflets.

Today they reopened the footbridge.

We are fairly stymied.

How Not to Internet Date

I’ve fallen off the wagon. Yes, for some whole weeks I stayed off internet dating. But, somehow, possibly without my knowledge, I’ve signed up to Match.com. It’s not that I had anything against Guardian Soulmates, they were fine, cute and moderately dandy. It’s just that, well, if I signed up to that one again then all my ex-dates would see that I was back and it would be revealed just how really sad, terminally foolish and obsessed I am.

Also, my friend, whom I met through Soulmates, would realise that all my swearing off internet dating and swearing on being single was a complete, utter and overwhelming sham.

The problem seems to be that it might be addictive. Like any good drug it is the promise of some high that is better than some low or medium elevation. Just click on this man and your life will be better.

This time, however, I have it all under control. I’ve got it sussed. No more disappointingly unanswered emails, winks, nudges, adding to favourites. Rejection is not on the agenda. There will be no more lying in bed at night wondering why WhiteKnight34 hasn’t contacted me, why HeavenGuy11 doesn’t want to have sex with me, why Wnaker26 hasn’t proposed yet.

I have a cunning and infallible plan.

This is it:
I won’t email anyone, or wink at them, or nudge them, or poke them in the bollocks.

It will be like coffee. The smell will be better than the tasting. For I am simply a voyeur. I will read the profiles but not touch the keyboard. I will fantasise but not indulge. I am not addicted.

How to Talk to Men in the Not Real World

Having recently retired from internet dating I decided that what I needed to do was practice talking to men in the real world. Since I don’t live in the real world this proved tricky. So I practiced talking to men in the gym.

This is what happened:

Expedition 1 -

I sat down at the rowing machine. A man sat down at the rowing machine next to me. So far so good. I chatted for a jolly thousand meters or so on topics as wide ranging as my children, my children and my children. The man was moderately interested in the theme. Even had a word or two on the subject himself. I then realised that it was the ex-Beloved and father of the aforementioned offspring. Still, at least I’d spoken to a man.

Expedition 2 –

I sat down at the rowing machine. A man sat down at the rowing machine next to me. So far so good. I checked that it wasn’t the ex-Beloved. It appeared not. Conveniently the display on his machine was broken. I helpfully suggested that if he followed me stroke for stroke he’d know how far he’d gone. He ran away.

Expedition 3 –

I waded into the Jacuzzi. A man was sitting next to me. We sat watching the swirling waters for some time. He looked at the clock. I said ‘What time is it?’ He said ‘Ten to ten’. I said ‘Thanks, I haven’t got my glasses on and am therefore completely blind.’ He laughed a nervous high-pitch laugh. He got out to reveal that he was wearing a bikini.

Expedition 4 –

I waded into the Jacuzzi. A man waded in next to me. I peered as closely as I could to ensure a genuine gender check. We sat watching the swirling waters for some time. He looked at the clock. I said ‘What time is it?’ He said ‘Ten to ten’. I said ‘Thanks, I haven’t got my glasses on and am therefore completely blind.’ He laughed a reassuringly deep although nervous laugh. ‘You look like a nice sort of chap.’ I ventured. He may or may not have smiled. At last, a result.

This real-world stuff seems a lot safer and more productive than online romance.