How Not to Become Very Famous via Guardian Soulmates

It’s happened at last. I’ve been discovered. Right now as we speak I’m being filmed as a maniac late-night internet addict. Hammer house of horror woman in front of back-lit laptop.

This is probably not how I wanted to be portrayed. Still. I’ve been discovered. Discoverees cannot be choosers.

My discoverer found me via my penchant, or previous penchant, for internet dating. The Guardian sent me an email. This is almost what it said:

‘Just stumbled across your wonderfully wise and witty blog. Hope you'll submit your stories to the Guardian Soulmates competition over the next few days: there are lots of prizes and no limit to how many times you can enter. The deadline's next Tuesday.’

That was quite few Tuesdays ago. More Tuesdays than can be contained in a small red shoe. I did as suggested. After all, who can resist being called wise and witty? Or prizes. Or Tuesdays?

I had many return emails saying ‘Yay! We are publishing your wise and witty piece.’ ‘Boo we are not sending you prizes!’. Then one said ‘Yay! We are coming to film you!’ I’m being filmed by a real documentary film maker. Not just my cat leaning on the record button.

Filming is an interesting process. It’s a method of distorting time. Not in the way one might like. The film is going to be 3 minutes long. Not long even in terms of cooking noodles, creating works of mediocre fiction, dates, dried fruit of any proclivity or a good night in. However filming is not like life. Filming is long and has numerous déjà vu moments and again and just again because they haven’t turned the camera on or haven’t got a valid battery or it seems just not to be in just exactly the exactly right light.

Filming in public is akin to trying to cook a noodle soup whilst waiting for form of a public transport. You keep getting interrupted. An old man wanders through shot making gentle farting noises. A group of lads decide it’s their turn to be a star (whereas actually it was mine). A toddler makes a lovely face into camera – didn’t understand what the objection to that was because frankly she was a lot more cuter than me and was liable to be an internet dater in due course. After all 50% of single people do. And 20% of people are single and another 80% of people wish they were single and therefore, given the maths, the small girl with the pink bow and the shoes that were mini Jimmy Choos will definitely be a future internet dater.

Meanwhile, back on the shoot, a man with a dustpan and brush tells us we can’t shoot here. Not where he sweeps. We might produce dust, small pieces of paper or possible litter the area with awkward sound effects.

Filming is an interesting process. It’s a method of distorting time. The film is going to be 3 minutes. As yet we have been filming for 3 weeks, 3 days, 3 hours and 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes … It is not a way of making your life longer. This could be a worse hazard than smoking, chocolate cake, never getting off the sofa and Smarties all put together on a very sunny Spanish afternoon with no factor 50.

We await the results with nervous anticipation. I am applying sunblock.

The book Soulmates: Adventures in Online Dating featuring a great deal of my disastrous exploits is supposed to be out for Valentines day. Although I have been discovered I’m not going to be famous as we were required to use a nom de plume for our entries in the book. Just so as to make things clear for any innocent readers of the book I’ve used the nom de plume ‘Nom de Plume’ in case anyone thought it was me.

The True-ish Confessions of a Guardian Soulmater

It’s time to fess up. It’s tidier than fessing down. Although cunningly disguised as a friend of a friend of a person quite likely to be a friend, I met him on the internet.

I know.

But everyone’s doing it. All the friends of friends of people one is quite likely to know. It has real advantages over real life. Things like:

We all know why we’re here.

It’s possible to talk to his/her photograph without ever having had the painful experience of having a photograph given to you as a token of love and then just being left with the token when the photographee has wandered off.

We can pretend to be better/wittier/saner/realer/less menopausal people without the real better/wittier/saner/realer people actually finding out that you’re sitting there having a hot flush.

There is no one to ask if you are really better/wittier/saner/realer. (Soulmates haven’t cottoned on to the whole reference thing which is the usual requirement of the matchmaker) (aside from being in those cute slidy boxes)

It’s nothing to do with one’s mother’s conception of who a nice boy/girl would be.

It’s possible to judge people on purely spurious basises like –
the quality of their punctuation,
whether they’re capable of making it through an entire form-filling process,
and how they look in a photograph obviously taken in a moment of desperation as they came to the bit in the form when asked to upload a photo (hence the lion-king pyjamas).
Their fondness for orange vegetables.

There is a great deal of interest in the subject of Guardian Soulmates. I have just designated myself in the role of spurious Soulmate expert. Experts, after all, are only people who know stuff that is basically unknowable. Questions like why? How? What? And most of all with whom? All of these, and probably many more questions, I might address in forthcoming posts. Next exciting episode, coming to a screen near you – First Contact – what really happened, what might have happened, and carrot soup.

How To Tell If a Man Will Continue to Fancy You Using Statistics

I just read that 31% of people aged 45-54 who married in the last year in the USA had met on the internet. This is heartening news. Of course statistics have a tendency to belie the realities of life in the same way that life tends to inflate vital statistics.

A famous statistician once said ‘we are not concerned with the matter that is uncertain.’ But that’s what’s the matter. Uncertainty.

Having established that The Man probably does fancy you (note the use of the second person as if we aren’t really talking about me at all), how does one discover whether he will continue to fancy you or if it was just a passing fancy? And if passing is fancy why is it comparatively popular?

Statistics may prove to have some insight into the problem. So:

How to tell if a man will continue to fancy you using statistics –

1. Gather your sample (no, not that, that’s how to use biological techniques) (we may come to that another day).
2. Observe the experimental setting (bed, sofa, hillside, kitchen or bicycle).
3. Take extensive and exhaustive notes on extensive exhaustion (try not to get your pen confused with anything else) (oh and try and be subtle or the Man may wonder why you have to write everything down and take this as a sign of early-relationship-memory-loss, evidence gathering or belief in astrology).
4. Use numbers.
5. Analyse the numbers using statistical analysing sort of things.

Statistical analysing sort of things can be either
a) Descriptive – where you make a nice graph (usually shaped like a breast), a tasty pie chart (shaped like a pie that some bastard hasn’t divided up fairly at all), or a bar chart (shaped like New York). You can also use numerical descriptors about deviation. In my case I will stick to just the usual deviation.
b) Inferential – this is said to account for randomness (that’s handy) and draws inferences (don’t we all?).

I set about the task. This is what happened:

From my sample I inferred that due to the randomness of life, the exhaustion occurring from experimentation and my inability to understand the setting of my bicylce, I came to the analytical and statistical conclusion that the answer to ‘Whether the Man Would Continue to Fancy Me’ was:
14
with a mean of 78
and an average of 28,892,892.
Or, in a more descriptive manner:
a graph that was shaped like an aardvark pole-vaulting,
a pie chart that was pencil and onion flavoured
a bar chart that strangely resembled Einstein’s hair-do in 1953, or possibly the Outer Hebrides.

The problem with statistics is that, like men, even when one has them, they are more or less impossible to interpret.

How Not to Email a Guardian Soulmate

They say that money can’t buy happiness but where’s the empirical evidence for this? Strangely, then when I Googled ‘money can’t buy happiness’ it turns out that there are a number of scientific studies that appear to demonstrate just that. However, never one to be put off by evidence, fact, science or the truth I have decided that money will buy me happiness and have done it again. Subscribed to Guardian Soulmates.

But this time it’s going to be different. This time I’m not going to sit there and hope that my well-worded (or wordy anyway) profile and glamorous picture will bring the Soulmates flooding in. Or trickling in. Or thank you the person who emailed me last time. Nor am I going to believe that simply ticking ‘Any’ for all the boxes in ‘my ideal mate’ will attract Mr Right. Or that adding all the cute guys who are way out of my league to My Favourites will mysteriously make them in my league. This time I’m being proactive. I’m taking control. I’m actually emailing people.

I have a technique. This is what I do:

I find a man I fancy. Or a man.
I carefully read what he’s written.

I then craft a cunningly worded sentence or two to say how interesting and sexy they sound. Examples include:
‘You sound interesting.’
‘You look nice.’
‘I read your profile.’
And
‘I fancy you.’

I then craft a cunningly worded sentence or two that lets them know just how interesting and sexy I am. Examples include:
‘I have written a load of bollocks on my profile.’
‘I can catch a ping-pong ball on my nose.’
‘I know how to read.’
And
‘My shoulders match.’

Then, finally, and this is the important part, I craft a cunningly worded question so they can answer my email without the awkwardness of not knowing what to say. Examples include:
‘How do you come to be living in Iceland/London/The World?’
‘Why have you put up that appalling photograph?’
‘Can you direct me to the Caves of Redemption?’
And
‘How?’

So far three people have replied. One of them didn’t have a subscription yet, one of them had let their subscription lapse and the other was the man who emailed me last time. And they say money can’t buy happiness. Pah!

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 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 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.