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.

Mandatepeter is funny, witty and a quick thinker.

Mandatepeter has green eyes.

Mandatepeter is a musician and knows how to tango.

Mandatepeter is visibly kind.

Mandatepeter asks me about my previous dates.

I tell Mandatepeter everything about Mandatejohn; he commiserates.

Mandatepeter lends me his phone to call my bank after my bag gets stolen from under my chair in the restaurant, and walks me to the tube station.

I don't find Mandatepeter sexy at all, and I sigh inside.

I am a terrible, terrible date.

We won't see each other again, then.

One day, perhaps in the year 2070, I'll be sitting by the virtual fireplace, in the company of my (probably adopted) grand-daughter; she'll ask me about my life and smile an indulgent smile about how quaint all of this was - the way I do when I see my own real life grandma, except that I won't be so deaf.

Of course, by then relationships between the sexes will be infinitely simpler.

Won't they?

Anyhow, it might go a little like this:

- So, gran, what happened with mandatejohn?
- Ah, to this day it remains a mystery, my dear.
- You did shag him, didn't you ? (the young of the year 2070 will have no qualms about asking their grandparents about such things. I would get a slap, of course.)
- Not really, dear, we gradually seemed to lose our clothes and just rolled around a lot.
- How much is a lot?
- I don't know, half the night?
- But no shagging? And then he just faded away, didn't call, and you didn't, I don't know, set fire to his front door as a revenge, put slugs into his letterbox, do voodoo on his ass, something?
- I couldn't find any slugs, and I was too nice for any voodoo.
- So... what did you do? She'll ask, shaking her head disapprovingly at my niceness.
- I tried to distract myself by going out on more dates with more strangers. Obviously. And kept checking my email.
- And?
- Well, tomorrow, I'll tell you about mandatepeter.

Puto culebrón*

Blogfolks, I don't know what to do with myself ; also Anita my Carribean fairy godmother is away and unable to provide counsel/kicks up the arse.
I am clearly not equipped to draw a convincing list of New Year resolutions without her help, so in the meantime I'll be sitting here in my little corner of Limbo, waiting, agonising and generally calling myself a self-deluded idiot.

You see, Date II happened, and all was well, really it was; I think I blushed when I saw mandatejohn, those eyes, those lips, and such a musical voice - lovely.

Perhaps I shouldn't have spent the night..
Perhaps he was disappointed, that I wasn't what he thought I was.
Perhaps he hasn't called or texted or emailed since I left because his phone was stolen by an army of rabid garden gnomes who also left him tied up to a tree.

Perhaps when it comes to relationships I am more challenged than most.




*un culebrón is a grass snake; as well as, for the unsuspecting reader not necessarily accustomed to Latin american television,  a fairly bad, poorly acted, extremely long soap opera with too much makeup, illegitimate children, nylon shirts stretched tight across hairy chests and much hand wringing.

Blogfolks, after twelve (12) days of Christmas-related limbo, today is the day when I hop back onto the Glorious Eurostar and go back home.

I am limp with inactivity.
If you are what you eat, I am curently a gigantic piece of chocolate.
My brain cells put up a 'away on holiday' sign over a week ago and have gone missing ever since.
I have tiny little tangles in my hair.

But! as soon as I get home, I will have to resort to extreme measures to turn back into the lively, witty, shiny and ever so enticing, albeit sweaty-palmed creature I can be - tomorrow is date II, at long last and what have I been doing with my life, Christmas should be abolished.

Wish me luck!

I am about 800 miles and 9 days away from Date II, the one that, in popular lore, makes* or breaks.**

Doesn't it?

In the meantime, exiled and bored and trying to not perspire in anticipation, I turn to friends for advice.
What to do, play it cool, remain elusive and non-committal, or just admit that yes if I could beam myself anywhere in the world right this second it'd more than likely be into his bed?

One does not want to be thought easy.

But one is definitely feeling very eager.

- What's your man-date upto over Christmas? asks Lady J, who, most generously, doesn't think ill of me for having a man-date in the first place.
- My man-date (I'll call him John when/if he becomes more than a date, let's not jinx it) is going up to Wales. In the meantime, we email. I reckon someone who writes 'Wish you were curled up under my blanket with me tonight watching a film' has to have honourable intentions, wouldn't you say?....
- Aww I like mandatejohn already. Do you know much about him and his life? Kids? Interests? Ambitions? Hobbies? Starsign?!!!! 
- Actually I don't know 2 crucial, life-defining things : 
1) his starsign 
2) if he likes cats. 
The problem of course is that these are extremely girly questions to ask. And what if he turns out to 1) be scorpio with pisces rising 2) hate them? Should I run in the opposite direction? What do you think?
 - Whassuup with the scorpio with pisces rising combo? (Aside from being terribly conflicted, naturally). And, you can always ditch the cat and get a puppy/snake/rat/stick insect, depending on his petual tastes. His job and life sound interesting. Maybe you could serve as a muse for a book about lesbianswhomandate.


I believe that as I type, Lady J is creating www.lesbianswhomandate.com and giggling about it, too. Off to the kitchen now, just to check that Glögg really is as lovely as I think.

*general sexiness is confirmed
**diaper fetish is revealed

Anita is on a mission.

- This one, no. Next.

- Why not?

- Not good looking enough for you. Next!

- But.. if he's ugly then I won't feel inadequate!

- Aha, this one there...

She reads out the poor unsuspecting man's profile, commenting on punctuation, use of vocabulary,  alleged relationship history and looks.

- Write to him. This one.

So I did.

Four days later; there was a Date.

A five hour date, the type of date where, unfortunately for a blogger, there was nothing to poke fun at, no-one to ridicule, nothing to sigh about and swear I'll never do that again. A seriously fun date of conversation, food, laughter and obvious mutual attraction.

I am so boring sometimes! I'm sorry, blogfolks.

Let's see how it goes - it is bound to go seriously wrong next time, when I find out about his diaper fetish. In the meantime, I'll be over here for Christmas, trying to not get too excited.

Be well!