The Dating Game. Carolyn Caterer

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СКАЧАТЬ Erica, the alarm in her voice starting to show as the colour drained from her cheeks.

      “I’m afraid not. Her name is Susie and he met her at a yoga class in the village.”

      “I don’t even want to go there!” was Anna’s horrified reaction.

      “Apparently she’s the teacher and is very bendy, according to my Dad”

      “I think I am going to be sick.”

      “Can you believe it?” I stood before them, wondering how this had happened. OK my Dad was pretty fit and I guess a good catch, but it had never really occurred to me that he would be interested in another woman in more than a platonic way.

      “What, that he’s having rampant sex with a really bendy woman in her sixties? Oh Jen, please don’t tell me she’s twenty years younger than him, or worse still, our age?” came Erica’s worried question

      “No, she is in her sixties, but that isn’t it. It’s the fact that my Dad has managed to get married twice and I haven’t even made it up the aisle once!”

      “Wow, I never knew you wanted a church wedding…..”

      “Aleks this isn’t the time for a conversation about wedding venues.” Erica shot her a look which quickly caused Aleks to fall silent from further comment on the subject.

      “This is the worst birthday ever!”

      “No it isn’t Jen. Stop being a drama queen, You have always told me that your worst birthday was your twenty-first when that awful boyfriend of yours, wasn’t it Duncan who was a biochemist or something, threw up over your birthday cake and then over you.”

      “Thanks Erica, I feel so much better now being reminded of that incident. Oh God can this really be happening to me? Can it get any worse than my Dad getting remarried?”

      “Well only if your Mum remarries before you as well I guess” was Anna’s slightly hesitant reply.

      I started to laugh.

      “Well so far her comments on the single life seem to be very favourable. She said when they got divorced all those years ago that she was glad she didn’t have to cook a roast every Sunday, but also that she didn’t have to wash anyone else’s dirty underpants!”

      “Eew!” chorused the girls in unison.

      Erica stood up and addressed the room.

      “Now is the time for action and we really need you to get out there and go on as many internet dates as possible. Remember that statistically the more men you meet the more likely you are to find the one that suits you or in other words as beautifully summed up in that well known phrase ‘You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you meet your prince’”.

      “Thank you Barbara Cartland. Personally I’d rather not have to kiss the frogs, if that is at all possible, but I get your point so now, let’s get out the cake and have a great evening.”

      Determined not to be outdone by my Father, let alone both parents, I awoke the next day feeling full of determination and ready to meet my Mr Darcy, but feeling that even a Mr Bingley would be acceptable at this stage.

      Chapter 6

      Date #5: Greg

      Determined not to be put off by stereotypes, my next date was with Greg who was in IT. Now I am not saying that I am a technophobe, because I do have a computer and a mobile, but let’s just say that my technical expertise on both is probably only at GCSE standard and most twelve year olds probably have a greater ability with Power Point than yours truly, but I would beat them each time when it came to a touch typing test!

      The photograph on his profile certainly looked ok, but I couldn’t work out his hair – it seemed to be slicked back and fairly short, though I couldn’t see where it ended, which suggested he must be keeping Brilcreem in business, but I could cope with that.

      We exchanged a few emails and I managed to establish that he was an unlikely candidate to be an axe murderer so I agreed to meet him for a coffee in the shopping mall at Basingstoke (plenty more shopping opportunities for me if he proved to be a challenge too far). Erica often commented that she wondered if I was perhaps not focussing so much on the men on the website, but on the additional things I could do with my allotted time if my date failed to be of any interest. While I thought this might be a little harsh, I had to acknowledge that there was an element of truth in it, but that was mainly due to my natural leaning towards making the best use of my time no matter where I was or what I was doing.

      I arrived a couple of minutes early and took my seat in the Starbucks along with the shoppers, retired couples and Mums with young kids that seemed to frequent it late in the afternoon, but just before the schools managed to get there.

      When Greg walked in a few minutes later I didn’t recognise him. Even as he approached my table I assumed he was coming over to borrow the sugar or something until he said my name.

      “Hi Greg”. I tried not to look as surprised as I was feeling. For there in front of me stood a man with the greasiest hair I had ever seen, tied back in the longest pony tail ever sported by a man (and perhaps even a woman).

      I wracked my brains trying to remember what his picture on his profile looked like compared to the stark reality before me and, I realised that of course his hair wasn’t short and slicked back at all; it was long and tied back. Oh hell!

      Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against long hair on men in principle, but I want it to be clean and, dirty hair does make you wonder what other parts of them are perhaps not conforming to basic hygiene standards. I felt the immediate need to find some alcoholic gel and ask him to apply liberally from head to toe.

      Desperately attempting to conceal my feelings of horror I fixed a smile to my face and motioned to him to sit down. I checked the time on the clock located behind the counter and set myself the challenge of staying to talk to him for a mind blowing sixty minutes, wondering if this would indeed feel like the longest hour of my life so far.

      At this point I feel I should point out that, while the ways of the characters in Jane Austen’s novels seem antiquarian and staid, there are many advantages to that quaint way of meeting potential suitors. For at least there was the chance to ask questions from a distance before you even agreed to meet the gentleman in question and, once meeting him, you could then feed back via friends or relatives. This surely had to be preferable to meeting someone who, while seeming normal on a website, turned out to be nothing like his description and I was driven to wonder how much he paid his friend to write such a stunningly inaccurate report.

      After brief chit chat about the weather and the state of the parking in town, he seemed no nearer to offering to sort out the coffees, so I decided to volunteer in order that he would get the hint. It then became clear that subtlety was perhaps lost on this particular man who put his order in for a strong black coffee with four sugars and explained the state of his teeth, which would have done a brilliant audition for Fagan at the local amateur dramatic society auditions being held close by that evening according to the poster on the café window, which was becoming more and more interesting as the seconds moved slowly by.

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