I'm invited for afternoon tea at the Dorchester next week end!

I've browsed feverishly through my closet - I have nothing even remotely smart to wear!

It's official!
I'm frumpy!
My government might have to take my passport away!

 That's all. I've used up my daily quota of exclamation marks.

1. Blogfolks, I am cold.
My boiler has died again; the end of the world feels pretty fucking nigh: I am currently under two itchy camel pube blankets, typing with fingerless gloves and not looking forward to more cold showers - how very Dickensian.
I'm considering having watery porridge for dinner just to stretch out the theme a little.

2. Just when I was having a non-date weekend, eyeing up that ever growing pile of DVDs. I should have gone out tonight, really I should have, and warmed myself to the flame of casual banter and light flirting with a stranger - don't you think? I do. Instead, I'll put on a woolly hat and watch 'let's talk about the rain' ,  feel slightly sorry for myself and polish off the rest of the brownies. Aha, not feeling so flirty now, Y, are we?
No, we're not. Meh.

3. I find myself somehow addicted to the constant stream of attention that comes from all this hectic dating I have been doing. 
Blogpeople, I check my email three hundred times a day, give or take a few.
I shake my phone just to make sure it's still working.

4. I saw Mandatearnold again yesterday. In fact, I went round to his place for tea and cake.
Tea and cake, blogcitizens!! That is far too civilised.
I should be ashamed of myself.
We just...chatted. Then had tea, and cake.

This is going horribly wrong, isn't it.

Blogfolks! I've slept and been watered and yogaed and fed - ah, synapses are happening again now.

Over the past four days, I have:

- been called 'desperate' by an ex-lover who clearly resents not getting all my attention anymore. It was also warmly recommended that I 'get a life' and 'get over the boy-fixation because relationships are fucking overrated'.

It didn't hurt. Well, it did a little - for him.

- slipped on icy pavements, trudged in sludge, regretted wearing those boots.

- been enthusiastically encouraged by my mother to carry on with my dating activities.
It made me smile.

- seen Mandatearnold again, three times. Three times, Blogfoks! For some people, that's practically a relationship. He definitely doesn't deserve this stupid name and I apologise to all that is sacred and kind.
He cooked me dinner, told me I was pretty and made me laugh til I cried. I basked in his attention and went home feeling like a well-stroked cat.

- spent an afternoon in the National Gallery with a tall, blue-eyed, bushy-haired, shy individual. It was a lot of work getting more than monosyllabic sentences out of him. At the end of the afternoon, he made it clear - monosyllabically - that he was really quite into me.
I'm not sure what to do. See him again just to check that yes, I'd probably get bored with him?

- been surviving with a broken boiler. No heating, no hot water. I can tell you that cold showers in a very cold bathroom are one of the most depressing things to do at 6 am on a work day. Don't try it at home. Just don't.

Today, all is quiet on the dating front.  Batteries need to be charged up, work needs to be done. Be well, thank you for stopping by!

Blogfolks, this serial dater has stayed up late, very late for the past five nights - almost as many dates as nights, in fact.

Is dating burnout looming already? Surely not, I'm only getting started.

Off to bed I go - breathtaking revelations tomorrow.

1.Blogfolks! I can tell you one thing: the main highlight of my evening with the tall blonde was that I got a lift home in a porsche. Or something similar, I don't know, but for 15 minutes of my life I felt like one of those silky-haired, giggling broads who date very rich men.

2. While I'm a at it I can tell you one more thing: he may have looks and money and power and lots of words and a crisp white shirt - but this was my least interesting date so far.
I almost said yes to his invitation to salsa on Monday, because I wouldn't mind a little dancing but I think it's best to keep it at that.
I mean, I looked at my watch!

1.Tonight, blogfolks, I have a date with a very very tall very blonde South African in a public place with numerous exits. 

2. His height and the number of exits are unrelated.


3. The good thing is that if after spending the evening looking up I end up with a crick in my neck,  I have a date with a chiropractor tomorrow. I'm sure asking him to crack things back into place would be an ideal ice breaker.


Be well! Thanks for stopping by!

After how many dates does one turn into a serial dater?
If someone is considered to be a serial killer after three murders, should serial dating should follow the same criterion?

Hello, bloglandia, my name is Y and I'm a serial dater.

This is getting fun, blogfolks, I admit it.
Fairly wonderful for my ego, yes, certainly, but also a whole new perspective for me.
I have always been so serious, so single-minded, so fixated perhaps; channeling whatever hopes and emotions and desires I had to channel into a given person at a given time.

For the first time my itinerary is different, allowing me to look and consider and pause and understand more about myself, what I want, what I inspire in others, what different people inspire in me. I'm not seeing this dating process as a cynical shopping trip at all; my posts about mandates may sound flippant, but that's just a pretense, blogfolks, just a show. The mandatejohn fireworks and subsequent fiasco has been a learning experience and I won't get carried away so easily now.
I'll pace myself now and just enjoy the ride.

Guess what, blogpeople : I got an email from mandatejohn today; it said 'I'm in Africa for two weeks; I look forward to seeing you when I get back',

Well, I said, I'll keep busy in the meantime. Oh, and make sure you don't get eaten up by a lion or anything.

Be well, thank you for stopping by!

Mandatearnold doesn't deserve this terrible pseudonym.

Mandatearnold is hilarious, quick witted and rather cute in spite of the mandigan.

Mandatearnold makes sure I get home safely : the pacements are frozen, lethal.

But of course Mandatejohn looked like this, there, on the right, which is hard to beat in terms of sexiness.

I am so shallow.

1. Today, I'm rocking the woolly socks and multiple layers look, alternating stuffing myself with cold and cough medicine and doing little snow dances, imploring the skies for more.. but not so much that I can't go to tonight's date.

2 Mandatearnold (definitely not his real name) knows a lot about my previous dating and relationship record. I fear I might have revealed too much. He seems to find it... alluring.
Pervert.

 3. Mandatearnold has threatened to wear a cardigan to our date. Or is that a mandigan?

4. I have no high expectations of Mandatearnold and I hope he doesn't either, sartorially challenged as I'm going to be.

5. Oh look, it's snowing!

Be well, thank you for stopping by.

Today, I'll be spending the day in bed with a red nose, a pot of tea and a supportive cat.

Last night, blogfolks, I had a MUD (Moment of Utter Despair) about the state of my love life. And by extension about the state of my entire existence.
Do you know why? I do.
Because I logged onto to the dating site I'm currently subscribing to and found my competition (single women between the age of 30 and 40) all infinitely much brighter, wittier, prettier than I am.

That was definitely a curiosity-killed-me moment.

I don't know what happened overnight, but when I checked again this morning I thought - actually.. there isn't that much competition. Ok, maybe her, but she sounds even more neurotic than I am and she shows too much cleavage - and that, blogfolks, is either cheap or desperate or both. Or perhaps I just wish I had such a cleavage to flaunt..

Almost poised again. Almost ready to tango.