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.

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!