Monday, August 14, 2006

Love is just a click away ....

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a good job must be in want of a gormless twerp she picked up on a dating website.

Sadly, at the time she wrote Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen was unaware of the modern socially accepted norms of picking people up over broadband, and instead subjected her lead characters to a number of demeaning episodes to ensure that love blossomed. Luckily for single chaps in the city it is no longer necessary to hurl oneself headlong into the Serpentine to impress a girl. All they need to do now is to post a personal ad, and Bennett-esque wannabees will come flocking. At least that’s the plan.

Eighteen months in London has led to a certain amount of idle curiosity about the extent that people will go to to find a partner. Having waded through the quagmire of dating on public transport, and beaten off supermarket stalkers with a well aimed bunch of celery, I felt it was my duty to boldly march forth into the world of online dating. It was this I did for you, the reader, to enjoy my exploits, and not to quell my fear of sitting old and alone in a manky wedding dress beside a tiered cake long past its sell-by date. I want to make that very clear now.

Online dating is a bit of an unknown quantity in the wild Westcountry. Where electricity has reached far enough into our little peninsula, some people may sit hunched over an Atari 400 idly batting a pixel back and forth between two lines, whilst raving about the wonders of new technology, but the joys of online love has yet to take hold. Should the farmer want a wife, heigh hi addy oh, and his sister or another close relative is unavailable, he’ll likely advertise in ‘The Farmer’s Friend’: “Ere, Oi needs a strong woman whose not ‘fraid ‘o ‘ard graft, can castrate a ram in under 30 seconds, an’ can lift three ‘ay bales in one ‘and, see? Please send family tree to the farm so’s Oi can check you’m good breeding stock and from the same family as me, see?’. Generally a good partner can be found by consulting the family matriarch and establishing which of your three-headed cousins has yet to marry, and lo a match is made.

Not so in the big city. Up here bemused singletons find themselves barraged with websites promising the promise of eternal love within six months, or you get another six months fruitlessly scraping the barrel for free. What an offer! Online dating has moved on from its early days, where hapless singles could make up 50 words of complete falsification in the hope that someone would fall for it. Now, not only do you get to misrepresent yourself in a series of short sentences, but you can also fib your way through a personality test to ensure you meet your perfect match. However, such a test is by no means straightforward. Entrants aren’t asked a series of pertinent questions: “Have you ever married a farmyard animal/relative/both?” (this is regarded as an ice breaker in Devon), “Have you ever chopped up anyone and buried their remains in your windowbox?”, “Do you own any Gary Numan records?”. Sadly, no, they are asked to answer such brainteasers as “If you wanted to dig a hole to China where would you start?” (about 10 centimetres over the border in Mongolia seems like as good a place as any), “What is happiness?” (not answering stupid questions like ‘What is happiness?’), “Name three Gary Numan tracks in order of preference” (Oh God, Kill Me, Now). Based on your answers to these breathtakingly profound interrogations the website will then search its database to find your perfect match. Now this is where the fun REALLY begins! You are absolutely guaranteed to find love, provided that your ideal partner has an addictive personality, a hygiene problem and a tendency to bend the truth.

We all know that there are various abbreviations and acronyms that are used in dating advertisements: GSOH – must be able to laugh at my one appallingly bad joke in which a man walks into a bar, WLTM – I’m looking for a partner but I’m too cheap to pay for the extra words, OHAC – I have my own fancy trailer and a clapped out Skoda. However, I was unaware of the multitude of hidden meanings behind the ads when first I ventured into online dating. Who knew that people could lie with such breathtaking audacity?! I feel duty bound to expose the lies so that I might save you from a fate worse than mine …

Young at heart’ – on their third or fourth donor organ due to their propensity for drinking cooking sherry and smoking 300 Gauloises a day.
‘Spiritual’ – has a long beard and believes strongly in the power of not washing.
‘Independent’ – has been disowned by family and friends due to an unfortunate incident with a 17 year old, a marrow and a can of Mr Whippy cream.
‘Solvent’ – lists glue sniffing amongst their many and varied hobbies.
‘Youthful’ – 75 or older.
‘Lonely’ – collects stamps, reads comics, has a model railway in the bedroom.
‘Cuddly’ – Pavarotti’s larger brother.
‘Athletic’ – when they were in the running team at school. Now they wear trainers and tracksuits at weekends and power walk to the newsagent to buy the Sunday Telegraph.
‘Affectionate’ – bunny boiler.
‘Professional’ - hooker.
‘Lively’ – needs constant doses of Ritalin and Valium.
‘Fashionable’ – dresses like Jodie Marsh. Usually over 65.
‘Creative’ – compulsive liar.
‘Adventurous’ – thinks that bestiality is a fun game for family pets.
‘Sociable’ – has verbal diarrhoea.
‘Bubbly’ – has a crack cocaine problem.

I hope that this handy guide will protect you from the perils of online dating, and will prevent you from becoming an unwilling participant in an obsessive relationship with a bearded, comic-collecting pensioner with a substance abuse and weight problem. However, should you find yourself in such a predicament, ensure that you carry a file and a teaspoon with you at all times, and in about 20 years you should have been able to dig yourself out of your damp basement cell where your beloved feeds you titbits and croons Gary Numan songs through the bars. See you on the outside.