The Dating Game. Carolyn Caterer

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СКАЧАТЬ broken hearts, I was looking for someone who had glued theirs back together, just as I had done mine and was ready to brave the world of relationships once more. Alas Paul was not the man.

      I finished my coffee as soon as I could without looking as if I was in a desperate hurry to leave. Paul was beginning to realise that perhaps this wasn’t the meeting with the love of his life and thanked me for making his first date on the internet as good as it had been. He even admitted that I probably wasn’t his type, so I felt he had made some progress in just an hour or so and that there was hope for him in the long term. I then made my excuses and headed off to the sanctuary of my car.

      So two dates down and I realised that so far the exes were not coming out of this too well.

      “Remember that you are only hearing one side of the story” Anna said when I updated her on the latest meeting.

      “Yes, but at the moment it is a pretty depressing side! Do they not understand that the last thing you want to hear about during a first meeting is their ex and it doesn’t matter if she is the Snow Queen or Snow White either! Talk about a turn off!”

      “I guess the only thing to do then is to filter them out before you meet them”

      “Mmm, good idea. I will make it a rule that I don’t meet up with men who have been separated for less than a year and even then I will check via email the amount of emotional baggage that they are carrying around. It will certainly save me a lot of wasted time in coffee shops, though I fear it may severely affect the price of coffee in the short term!”

      “Well I have to confess that it is making coming into work even more appealing than normal.” Anna curled her long legs underneath her as she lounged in the big chair in the corner of my office. “I think Ben was wondering if I had a secret lover until I explained that listening to you and your stories of internet dating was far better than any soap opera and hence I was keen to get into work to hear the latest episode.”

      “Thanks a bunch” I laughed and took out the latest accounts, fixing Anna with a steely grin. “Now you are all agog let’s go through these figures and see how we are doing with the important matter of our company and its profits!”

      Later on armed with the information Anna had given me and new dating strategy, I applied myself to the website with renewed enthusiasm. The downside was that it meant I could eliminate about eighty per cent of the men who were contacting me with only a couple of emails, but I decided that it was definitely going to be a case of quality over quantity.

      Anyway I had only signed up to this website for three months so, if it didn’t work I would just have to try another one and there seemed to be so many out there I knew that one had to be right for me.

      I felt confident that, like any marketing guru I would find my target audience and make him an offer he couldn’t refuse. I just had to hope he was on the internet and had stumbled across this particular dating site.

      Chapter 4

      Date #3: Kevin

      Aha! At last, after spending a couple of hours searching the site, here was a promising one: he said he’d be happy to teach me to scuba dive, despite me emailing him and informing him that I become claustrophobic sitting in a full size football stadium, in fact I had a panic attack during a trip to one of the FA cup matches only a few months previously, a freebie courtesy of one of our clients and I had agreed to go, not because of my love of football (I couldn’t stand what I regarded to be the behaviour of a bunch of overpaid average players, compared to say the lovely well-mannered Jonny Wilkinson, but alas the six nations tickets were not on offer) but because I thought that I might at least meet a potential date there. Oh how wrong could I have been? The men seemed to be intent on consuming as much lager as possible before the match started and then kept having to go out to use the toilet. I was staggered at the lack of bladder control they were demonstrating. The women that were there managed to enjoy the whole match without missing any of it. I sat next to my client, who was about twenty years younger than me so not at all suitable and was looking forward to finding out who was seated next to me. It turned out to be a man who had arrived late, didn’t even acknowledge that I was even there and proceeded to pick his teeth with the little finger of his left hand, thus waving his wedding ring in my direction rather like a red traffic light. I sighed and realised I was in for a very long day at this rate and with no benefit whatsoever.

      But, back to the matter of Kevin. We had arranged to meet at a pub mid way between where we lived and that I realised I had not visited for four years. I drove over and rang him when I reached the car park. He was just turning in so I got out of my car and walked over to his car and we shook hands. He had short light brown hair and a hint of designer stubble. His eyes gave the impression that he wasn’t expecting much from this evening but they did at least look interested as I smiled at him. He was dressed in a white shirt and jeans with brown lace up shoes, that I noted had been cleaned quite recently and I laughed quietly to myself. My mother had always commented that you could judge a man by the state of his shoes and I was starting to wonder if this theory had any truth in it.

      We found our way along the path into the pub and walked up to the bar. I mentioned that I had last visited a number of years ago to the barman and it turned out that it had changed hands since then, so I asked him to recommend something from the menu. This threw him into a frenzy of indecision and he began to list the entire menu for me as I struggled to keep pace with him. Before I could ask for more details, Kevin suggested that we should order our drinks and decide about the food later, so I agreed and we went to sit down. Now, despite my heading towards one table he insisted on plonking himself down at a completely different one, much to my amusement as that was the same table I had sat at the last time I was there on a second date with Adam who eventually became my boyfriend.

      I made the mistake of telling Kevin this amusing tale and adding to my blunder with the following quip

      “So maybe it is a good omen”

      Silence. I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that we had not got off to the best of starts. Determined not to be put off and, having driven twenty five miles to meet him, equally determined to get my dinner as I was by now feeling very hungry as I had only managed an apple for lunch because we had been so busy and I had driven over to meet him directly from the office.

      I asked him how long he had been divorced and he said 3 years (good amount of time and should be over the ex wife) and then it all came out: she’d been having an affair with her boss which was bad enough, but they all worked for the same company so much anger and bitterness ensued regarding who, if any of them, should resign. In the end none of them did, she married her new man and Kevin had to go and work with them every day. Mmm, you can imagine what a happy and entertaining sort of guy that made him? Bitter? Don’t make me laugh!

      “Oh my God!” screamed Polly as I rang to give her an update, later on that evening. “Did you get out of there as fast as possible?”

      “No I didn’t. I was hungry and had driven over twenty miles to meet him, so I decided to order some food”

      “You did what?!!”

      “You heard me – God what a bad move that was.”

      “Why?”

      “Well I suggested ordering and he said ‘I’m not going to eat anything – I’m not hungry.’”

      “What?!!!”

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