Ed Start

2010-10-07T14:29:00.005+01:00

A few more text messages have been exchanged but no meeting as yet. It’s becoming rather unlikely there ever will be.

The next one she sent after my last post was to ask if I was on “the dreaded Facebook”. This was obviously a ploy to find out what I looked like. I thought about replying saying that I’m not telling, or lying and saying I wasn’t. But her investigations were fair enough. I wouldn’t mind getting a reminder myself. So I gave her my surname and a brief description of my affected profile photo.

All of this after a few minutes of frantically de-tagging photos, of course. Actually I only de-tagged 4 or 5, and they really shouldn’t have been allowed to exist for anyone’s perusal.

It was all a waste of time as she replied saying that she wasn’t on Facebook! She said she’d deactivated her account but would re-emerge next week and look me up. That never happened.

About a week later, last Friday, she sent a text apologising for not being in touch and saying how busy she’d been. Could we meet next week (now this week)? I didn’t reply till Sunday, not for any game playing reason, just wasn’t sure what to answer. I was feeling ill so didn’t feel like it. I also had to help Charlie prepare his cycle clothing brand for the bike show this weekend. That was the excuse I gave her.

The cycle clothing story is quite a long one. It could have been great news, but ended up as only good news. I won’t go into too much detail for two reasons: it’s boring and I probably shouldn’t divulge all the details as this place is probably the only place that has a link to it thus far.

The much abridged version is that I’m going to help out Charlie with his cycle clothing business. He’s put up all the cash (for stock), so initially I won’t see any cash, while that debt is cleared. But if things go well I could buy in further down the line. At the moment it’s just a good way for me to get experience in the industry and learn more generally about running a business.

The website is www.torm.cc. There are a lot of ways in which I’d like to improve it. But it’s now up and running, which is pretty exciting, and Charlie’s at the bike show today. I’ll be helping him on Saturday and Sunday.

Any suggestions for improvements of the site are welcome. The only thing that’s 100% excellent is the male model on the front page.

Back to the most protracted organisation of a date I’ve ever known... When I suggested meeting next week H&H said she may be abroad but that hopefully our paths will cross eventually. I’ll send her another text on Saturday or Sunday. It was perhaps stupid to brush her off this week, but I am still feeling like shit physically.

2010-09-20T21:18:00.002+01:00

Ah hubris, my old friend. Got bumped by H&H. She activated her get out clause of an early start on Wednesday. She has a costume fitting for a extra part she has in a film on Thursday. Intriguing.

I replied suggesting we do the fitting on Tuesday night. No of course I didn't. I'm chivalrous, right?

I suggested meeting next week. No reply as yet.

2010-09-19T19:02:00.004+01:00

I plucked up enough courage to text H&H and ask her out. I dressed it up in my mind as good blog fodder, but it wasn't really that. More that I thought it wasn't worth not asking out a girl who I drunkenly fancied. Moderately expurgated, the exchange went as follows:

Hi [H&H]. We met last Sunday at The Troubadour at the end of the night. Don't know if you remember.. it was a pretty brief meeting. I wondered if you wanted to meet again for a bit longer. Ed
8:48:12pm

Hi Ed oh dear please refresh my memory I was a bit intoxicated.. Sorry!!!
8:50:43pm

Yeah yeah my memory isn't great either(1). You asked me how old I was but didn't believe me--32--and then left with your friend whose name I didn't catch. She had blonde hair(2). Probably best to consult her. We were all outside together.(3)
9:10:47pm

She was worse then (sic) me so I doubt she will remember! Ok I have a vague memory... Very vague! I am probably going away next wknd but maybe (sic) free at some point this wk. Apart from wednesday/Thursday. What did you want to do?
9:13:58pm

Tuesday? I want to suggest a drink so I will. We might not remember it.
9:24:36pm

Funny:-) (sic) Am on a detox now so not drinking sorry! Can watch you get drunk though. I have just moved out of central London and in [..]. Where were you thinking?
9:26:10pm

I'm in [..] which is on your line right? There's a bar called [..] near there. 8pm? My phone's about to run out of battery. If it does I'll ignore that sign from god/the pope and take it as a "yes". (4)
9:33:54pm

Ok let's communicate before just incase (sic) as I may have an early costume fitting on wed morning in which case will not want a late one. Have a good nite and charge you phone:-) (sic)
9:35:42pm

1) Not really true obviously. A poor attempt to appear carefree.

2) I really wanted to capitalise 'blonde'.

3) Desperately listing everything about the meeting, apart from the 'kissing', and it doesn't amount to much.

4) I was quite pleased with this--allowing me to not have to write any more texts. It was true, though the phone didn't die for another hour or so.

I wasn't being deliberately slow in my responses but was distracted by stuff, in particular a phone call--between the second and third texts--from Charlie about going into business with him. Another post there.

Besides, too long spent between texts stops looking cool and starts looking considered.

So Tuesday it is then, assuming it isn't derailed by the costume fitting, whatever that means.

It the first time I've been on a date proper, that wasn't organised via a website.

I'm really quite nervous. I've pretty much totally forgotten what she looked like as the drunken images have slid away. And her images of me never really registered in the first place. To all intents and purposes it will be a blind date. Blind (because) drunk.

2010-09-14T19:35:00.000+01:00

I have been thinking over the events of Sunday night. (I haven't got in touch with H&H and am still weighing up whether I will do, on Thursday, or whatever the agreed best day is in these situations.)

The unusual thing about the episode was her forthrightness combined with her attractiveness.

Ugly though it is, the better looking someone is, the less hard they need to try and the less hard they tend to try. Everyone knows that. An ugly rule, but a rule nonetheless. Looks are inversely proportional to effort made in the theatre of getting-off-with-people.

In making virtually zero effort, I follow the rule with devastating accuracy. Any doubt in this accuracy is swiftly squashed by looking at the amazing results of my lack of effort.

But others are not so accurate and the rule is often broken. H&H seemed to be taking it to the extreme--doing to the rule what that Italian singer did to wills to live.

I am perhaps exaggerating and may find this out if I do ever meet H&H, with the visual clarity of sobriety.

Booze was, of course, a large factor on Sunday. Another thing I may find out in due course is that it was crucial.

2010-09-13T16:06:00.021+01:00

I went to a gig last night for the first time in a long time. It was Adrian's friend Sue, who I'd never seen/met before but had heard good things about.

She was really good. So was her sometime collaborator Cameron, who played a set after her. He wasn't quite as assured as Sue though, and offered some sort of apology before each song. He seemed a lot more comfortable as Sue's backing singer. They were both really good though. Especially when compared to the Italian girl who followed them on stage. She had two distinct singing styles, one of which was passable, the other brain-liquifyingly awful. Unfortunately the second strain was also thumped out at top volume. Jon apparently saw the sound guy frantically scrabbling at his knobs, about 30 seconds in.

Despite the enjoyableness, or otherwise, of all this I remembered halfway through the evening that I really don't care that much about music. Looking around the room, everyone else was really getting into it. I just can't muster the same enthusiasm.

My apathy is reflected in my music purchases over the last 10 or so years, which number three. Three songs on iTunes. And one of them--the best one--is by East 17.

If there exists a more damning indictment of musical taste, awareness and enthusiasm, I'd sure like to hear it.

It was still a really fun evening and I must emphasise how excellent I thought Sue was. (Whilst fully aware that being given the thumbs up from me is about as thrilling as finding out you're Hitler's favourite Jew.)

The evening's ancillary fun came from girl things. The first was the rather cruel amusement of Anthony having to explain himself over the phone to a girl he'd tried to dump via text. The text had proved ineffectual as she'd refused to turn her key.

The phone call apparently worked better. It seemed to take a while.

Aside from that, when trying to reassure Adrian I got to use my favourite line that Teri had told me: "It's not about being in a band". I think I repeated it a few too many times.

The most ridiculous girl situation of the evening involved me. After the awful "headline" act had scuttled off I found myself sitting at a table with Jon and Anthony, two girls I didn't know (blonde and dark haired) and maybe some others. As an opening gambit, Dark asked me how old I was. I trotted out the usual tedious responses: "Why?", "How old do you think?", "11." and so on.

But she was fairly insistent, so I told her. 32. She didn't accept this and decided I was 25. Good news I suppose, though I was a little self-conscious that I was wearing Maharishi snopants (not that exact design and minus the jaunty knee-bend) and a t-shirt I'd bought from Urban Outfitters sometime in the wrong half of the naughties.

My wardrobe suffers almost as much as my hi-fi.

The clothing situation really needs to be addressed. I will sort it soon. I was only wearing the Maharishis because all my other trousers have holes of various sizes in them. My recent favourites gained an unfortunate hole on Friday night when the zip broke.

So I looked like a 25 year old and was dressed like one. A 25 year old from 7 years ago. Me in fact.

Dark didn't seem too bothered by all this as her next question was "do you want to kiss me?".

I had suspected from fairly early on in our acquaintance, which was still in its first minute, that she might be rather drunk. This second question had done nothing to allay this.

I can't recall exactly what my response was. I'm pretty sure it was an unintelligible mumble, but it had apparently been translated as "Hell yes! On the lips?! Woo-hoo!!" as I was led by the hand up the stairs out of the club.

The other detail was that Blonde was leading the way in front of her. But Blonde definitely hadn't asked me the same questions. They were in fact going home. I was Dark's last roll of the dice for the evening.

Out on the street it was a bit awkward as she lunged and missed the lips, with Blonde just standing there. Fortunately Blonde found it amusing and asked if she should go. I said "no". I had never intended to do any kissing, I just hadn't been given the time nor freedom of movement to extricate myself till now.

I did find her really very attractive. As I was also drunk, perhaps my ability to judge was compromised. But I haven't found my judgement to be affected by drink before*. It usually remains steadfastly extreme. The kind of extreme that is totally unrealistic and totally unjustified by my own appearance, whether or not I'm dressed like someone from the not very distant past.

And I'd even had the walk up the stairs as a chance to apply my body fascism. She'd got to the top of them unscathed.

It's just that she was really really drunk and I was merely drunk. I couldn't resolve the two.

She gave me her number and I said I'd call her. She's in my phone as "H&H Bagels". (I couldn't find the relevant Seinfeld clip to link to but it's from "The Strike".)

*It really should go without saying, but I am only referring here to judgement of whether I find someone attractive or not. In every other sense, the sentence does not bear even the most fleeting scrutiny.

2010-08-07T01:55:00.003+01:00

I'm a little drunk but am annoyed at the crappily bullshit last entries which portray me as some sort of mealy mouthed massive cunt.

Not much to say except that since I vowed to give up drinking for ever after last weekend's debacle, I am now currently drinking. I will expound in due course.

Suffice to say that on Wednesday of this week I thought that the half can of Red Stripe that I found chilling in my fridge was a sign that I should give up for good, was not. Said can has now been drunk and its neighbour too.

2010-05-13T17:35:00.005+01:00

I bailed out of the Yuks N Yetis booking. The prospect of a rank meal and a rank subsequent 48 hours overwhelmed the pleasure of a weak link to a holiday from 11 years ago.

I found a much nicer looking curry place online and have booked us in there instead. The food looks good and a website is, of course, one of the best ways to judge such things.

The party is now down to 10, thanks to a couple of dicks pulling out at the last minute. (They aren't really dicks Al, if you're reading. I just said that in order to make a crude joke.)

(They are really.)

10's a good number though. 9 will start to become a little annoying as we'll have to cut down on the number of canoes. So hopefully there won't be any more withdrawals. Kroft, I'm looking in your direction.

2010-05-10T15:33:00.003+01:00

Another weekend of not enough cycling. Another year that will pass without me breaking an hour up Alpe d’Huez.

Once again drink got in the way. I should have stayed in on Friday having worn myself out by staying in the office till 3am on Wednesday/Thursday and watching the election till 4am on Thursday/Friday. I’ve got to stop such late nights. These weren’t particularly exceptional. The reasons were perhaps, but that’s all. Last night, for example, I didn’t go to sleep till around 4am, listening to podcasts.

Despite the lack of sleep, I’d thought it a good idea to book myself on to a train to Gloucester at 10am on Saturday. I had planned a day trip to Ross-on-Wye as reconnoitre of Al’s stag do. Ross doesn’t have a train station, so I would get some cycling in, about 40 miles to get me to and from the stations.

The plan for next weekend is to canoe down the River Wye, camping in Ross on the Saturday night. The camping will be outside a pub which backs on to the river. And we’ll be eating in a restaurant in town (village) called Yaks N Yetis. Nepalese and Tibetan cuisine. What could be nicer? Absolutely anything.

The only reason I was keen to go with YNY was that Al and I went on a Tibetan trip in the summer of ’99. It was a great trip for many reasons, none of which featured food or drink. Yak Butter Tea is about the foulest thing I’ve ever consumed. It’s absolutely fucking disgusting. I really cannot heap enough opprobrium upon it.

I thought therefore that it might be wise to check out YNY before I subjected Al and 10 of his friends to it. I also wanted to check out the camping pub to see how much space we’d have, and double-check that they wouldn’t shut us out at 11pm. Although it seemed unlikely that Ross would have the most kicking nightlife any of us had ever come across.

Saturday started badly. My alarm did not wake me at 9am because I hadn’t set it, so I missed my train by 5 hours. It would have been 4 but the guard didn’t let me on to the first train with my bike as there were already six others in the dedicated rack.

Such an occasion indicates how very different Al and I are. When I went to see Chris and him in Madagascar last year, my Kenyan Airways flight was delayed, meaning I would miss the Malagasy Airways internal flight we had booked. Upon hearing this, Al stormed down to the airport and demanded a replacement ticket for each of us, despite Malagasy Airways not being in any way to blame. It worked, of course.

Back on platform 6 of Paddington station and all I was able to do was call the guard a cunt, in my head, whilst watching the hourly train roll off westwards.

After a very hilly bike ride, I made it to Ross at around 6pm. It appeared to be shut. Hardly a soul about, no shops open apart from a newsagent who charged me 30p to use one of those new-fangled debit card things.

I found Yaks N Yetis and it gave a good first impression. It was not too twee and the menu seemed good.

I got four dishes and tried ordering things that they’d most likely fuck up, or which sounded leftfield. Squid to start—you’ve heard of Tibetan squid I expect. World famous. I got some momos as starters as well. Then a spicy lamb steak and a fish green curry.

The squid was horrible. Massive tasteless hunks of rubber in way too much batter. Exactly what you’d expect from a bad squid dish. The curry was ok, if a little light on the fish. The lamb steak was dry but nice enough and the momos were ok, good even.

I’d probably give it a 5 out of 10. But only a fool would order Tibetan squid, and without that dish they would have fared a lot better.

So I was reasonably happy. Most people don’t care much about food even at the best of times. On Saturday everyone will be concentrating on the Gurka Beer (which wasn’t very nice despite me giving it two large tries).

Even though YNY could have been better, it was getting late and I didn’t have enough time to check out any other options. I still had to visit the pub, which turned out to be all positive. The campsite was big enough and in an idyllic spot. There was unhindered access from the road so all boxes were ticked. I had another beer for the road and set off back to Gloucester feeling fairly chipper.

It is now Monday. I’ll spare you the scatology except to say that the good gut feeling I had initially has given way to a bad gut reaction.

Should I change my mind? The owner will recognise me on Saturday because I told him I was part of the party of 12 so I could make sure he put us in a good spot. Therefore I won’t be able to feign ignorance when everyone is doubled up in pain on Sunday.

Are camping and canoeing amongst the worst pastimes to endure under such circumstances?

Will Al read this before Saturday?

I’m going to risk it.

2010-04-30T15:53:00.008+01:00

I joined Freecycle recently, which is like eBay but without the money. Its purpose is to help people give stuff away that they no longer want or need, in order to keep it out of landfill.

But I would not want anyone to visit the website unless they have to. It must be one of the worst I have ever come across. The principle is so straightforward that you would think the site probably only needs about 10 lines of code, but they have managed to make an ass of it.

Freecycle is split into groups according to location. Once you've joined your local group, the straightforward principle is that you add a post describing the item that you want to give away. The title of the post is of the form "OFFERED: [the item], [your location]". You can fill in more details in the body of the post, but you cannot attach photos. Instead you have to create an album in a different section of the site and refer to the photos in your post.

After you've posted, people get in touch with you by replying to the post or emailing you directly. It seems a little bit off that this should be possible. I hadn't realised that my email address would be made public when I signed up.

When you have chosen who you want to give the thing to, you arrange for them to come round and pick it up and, when that's happened, you add another post with the title "TAKEN: ..." and delete the original OFFERED post. You cannot simply alter your original post to say that it's taken. And this is despite the moderators insisting on you using the words OFFERED and TAKEN.

They apparently haven't heard of drop-down boxes.

GSM this ain't.

You get what you pay for I suppose.

I joined so as to get rid of a couple of old TVs. One 13" and one 24". Neither flatscreen. The 24" one was massive with, the screen only taking up about 60% its front. It was really heavy as well. Both TVs had been sitting in a cupboard in my bedroom and hadn't been switched since I moved in over two years. I once thought it might be nice to have a TV in there but I have since realised that it definitely wouldn't be.

Having posted both items separately on the site on Wednesday night I was expecting a fair amount of interest as the other items alongside it included glass beads and a 500g tub of M&S reduced fat spread (sealed).

Sure enough there were a few messages waiting for me on Thursday morning. Not too many, five or six. Strangely all of them were very brusque. I would have thought that if someone was offering to give you something for free you might think to chuck a little politeness their way. Of course I was also aware that there are probably a lot of career freecyclers who'll grab anything they can in the hope of selling it on, and these people don't have time for pleasantries. (I had, incidentally, wondered how such people would go about getting cash for all the crap they'd accrued and it wasn't until Jon reminded me of the car boot sale phenomenon that it made sense.)

For example:

Hi,
Have urgent need for 13" TV. Can collect any time. Mob Ph No: - 07xxx xxxxxx
Best wishes,
Richard

Richard was unsuccessful. But I do hope he finds a 13" TV before it's too late.

Another person replied to both posts with exactly the same message:

Hi there,would like to come pickup d tv soonest.send me ur number and address for collection.thanks chuks
07xxx xxxxxx

Really? "d tv"? Am I really going to consider you chuks, even though you haven't bothered to hit the space bar after your commas and full stops?

I wasn't expecting fawning deference. After all I was only giving away a couple of old TVs. But none of the messages I was getting were even asking me a question, so it was a relief to get a normal sounding message. A request:

Hi Ed,

Just saw your advert for the TV - I've just moved to a very empty flat in Hampstead and would love to take it if its still free. I could come this evening if that suited?

I've never used freecycle before so no idea if this message will reach you. Presuming any reply will come to my yahoo mail inbox...?

Thanks!

Dionne

She even remembered my name. Perhaps this was better than GSM after all.

I offered her both TVs - blessed are the meek - and we arranged for her to pick them up that evening.

Scheduling would have to be quite tight. These last couple of weeks I have been on a health binge which has had me doing an hour on my turbo trainer when I get home from work every night, as well as long rides at the weekends. I've also cooked a freezer load of cooking so that I eat well. There are about 50 portions of brown foods ready for thawing. Brown foods = bolognese, curry, chili ... (The ellipsis should really be replaced by "and lasagne". Diversity in cooking is not a forte of mine. ("Diversity in" should really be replaced by "".))

The health binge has been pretty successful as I've lost about 3kg and probably gained some muscle.

I wasn't going to allow Dionne to derail this with her desperate greed for televisions.

I also had an appointment with the pub quiz at 8:30pm. If I got home from work by 6:30pm and started cycling straight away I could feasibly shower afterwards and eat some brown food before 8pm. I could then help Dionne carry the TVs to the taxi rank by Waitrose at the end of my road, buy some milk and apples, return home and get on my bike to the pub in time for round 1.

8pm it was.

At 7:54pm I was desperately shovelling brown food whilst sweating heavily, despite having had a shower. Or perhaps because of it. I should have had a colder shower.

This was turning into a date. However, I had taken the precaution of moving the TVs into the hallway outside my flat just in case my date was packing heat. I hadn't fully worked out just how this would help me in such a scenario. I had a half-baked idea that I would close my flat front door and open the main door to the freecycler and as a result my flat and I would be better protected from her, and her gun. Perhaps I would pretend that my girlfriend was inside my flat, poised to dial 999 when she heard me say our mercy word.

At 7:59pm I realised that I hadn't checked my email since 5pm to see if Dionne had had to cancel. First I thought I'd look out of my front window to see if she was there but had buzzed the wrong buzzer. I was net cutain twitching without the privacy afforded by a net curtain. And, of course, an attractive 20-something female walked through the front gate and caught me mid-twitch.

On my way to the front door I caught my reflection in the mirror. Skin colour: puce. Skin dampness: extreme.

We exchanged pleasantries and she thanked me a lot for giving her the TVs. She worked for the BBC and thought it was probably a good idea to have at least one TV about the flat.

"So shall I go and get a taxi to drive round and stop outside in the street."
"No no it's fine, if you can carry that one then I'll take this one."
"You sure?"
"Yeah yeah yeah [maybe more]. It's fine. I promise I'm not sweating at the prospect... it's just that I've been... on a run."
"Oh right. I'm sweating too."

Eh?

We walked the 50m or so to the taxi rank. Sweat was now dripping off me, and I was struggling under the extreme weight of the fucking TV. She was being really nice, asking if I was ok, asking what I did for a job and what I thought of Freecycle. We laughed at the reduced fat spread person and she asked if I wanted to have a rest. There was about 10m to go. Machismo won over my aching limbs and I said that I was fine. 3 steps later and my foot tripped on a paving stone. It was a half trip that one would hardly notice if one wasn't carrying an unweildy television weighing more than oneself. I was so close to falling over but somehow stayed upright.

A Waitrose shopper coming the other way grimaced at my near miss, but we were nearly there.

(I wondered later what I would have said if I had fallen over and the TV had smashed to smithereens. Whatever I said would have been peppered with "errs" and doused in sweat, but would I apologise? I suppose the TV was hers at this point. But she was still one TV up. Of course I would apologise, I was pretty close to apologising even though I hadn't fallen over. She would have apologised too. She seemed like a nice person.)

We got to the taxi and I bundled the TV into it with considerable relief. She bundled in after it with the smaller TV, thanking me with the sort of profusion my sweat glands could relate to. At the last moment I remembered that the remotes were still in my pocket; I handed them over and that was it.

Not the best first date I've ever had. But not the worst either.

I realised a second after slamming the taxi door shut that the remotes were trying to give me a second date and I had ignored them.

I turned tail, went to buy some milk and apples, went to the quiz, coming a creditable 2nd, went home and Googled Dionne+BBC, using her real name. I really should have listened to the remotes.

2009-12-18T16:29:00.002Z

If I do give up drinking, the first Friday should be an easy one as I'll be babysitting Maya. I brought my concealer in to work in order to try and hide the grazes so as not to scare her. I didn't put it on this morning as the grazes corroborated my falling-off-bike-on-way-to-work story.

I have just tried the concealer and it doesn't work particularly well. Two of the three are pretty much concelable but the worst one, beneath the eye, is only made worse.

I'm sure Maya will be ok with it. It's not that bad.

It's my put upon mother I'm more worried about.

2009-12-18T16:26:00.001Z

After another day's reflection I feel worse about Wednesday night's escapades. It could quite easily have been deadly.

A large part of my unease is the mystery surrounding it. The bag provides most of that mystery. Not so much that it turned up, though that was weird enough, but where it turned up, a good 300m metres from where I initially locked the bike and from Lucky Voice. It would have been understandable had it turned up near either of those places as then the sequence of events probably would have been that I'd gone to unlock the bike, left the bag on the pavement and cycled off. Totally reasonable behaviour.

Another scenario that Al suggested (and that had occurred to me) was that someone lamped me in the face and cycled off with the bike, chucking the bag. Not inconcievable, except that the grazes are more fall than fist. They are in a fist-shaped arrangement but have the striations of a wall or pavement.

I have now rung Direct Line to ask about making a claim, using the story that I had left it locked up on Upper Street. It sounded like they might pay out but they did ask for proof of ownership, which I'm not sure I have and a crime reference number, which I'm not sure I want to get.

I'm just a bit worried that when I tell the police about how I locked up the bike but got home on public transport they will say something like...

"That's not what I've got written down on our report sir. Says here that you were weaving you way down Upper Street on said bike, before you skidded and fell to the ground where most of your body was protected by a litter of kittens, except for the area round your left eye. You got some cuts round your left eye sir?

"Upon getting to your feet you flew into a rage, threatening the old lady who had taken her kittens--all now expired--out for a walk. You ran after her swinging a yellow pannier bag around your head. You let go of the bag and it struck her between the shoulder blades before being deflected and becoming wedged in the frame of another bike. After all this you ran further down Upper Street shouting racial abuse at some football fans, and then disappeared down a side street.

"A kindly witness noticed your abandoned bicycle and brought it down to the station. We found your name by looking up its registration number. Strangely no one picked up the bag, despite its whereabouts being clearly outlined in the report.

"Perhaps you would like to come down to the station to collect the bike, and we can have a little chat."

Something like that.

Back in reality, I think this might be the final straw. I've given up drinking about five times in the last month and none of them have stuck. This however was a close call. I can't quite believe I got away with some grazes and a lost bike. Not even a broken tooth (which would have made the expense of the bike shrivel).

2009-12-17T23:55:00.004Z

I was back on Upper Street last night for Al and Chris's engagement party. But this time I was on the wrong side of the drunken divide. I had planned to not drink until their wedding next summer, but failed emphatically. The night ended up in Lucky Voice, where I hopefully didn't do any singing on my own.

I don't remember leaving or getting home but woke up without my pannier bag or bike in the flat which was a bad and good. Hopefully I had left the bag in Lucky Voice, but it was I suppose good that I hadn't tried to cycle home.

Problem is that it turned out that I probably had. Al emailed me to say that I strode off with my pannier bag, intending to cycle. I have only once or twice cycled home this drunk; so drunk I cannot even remember doing it. Can't even remember if it was once or twice. That's bad.

Before I found all this out, I discovered minor grazes on my nose and above and below my left eye. This was also bad, but did at least give me an excuse to bunk off work--I rang up to say that I had fallen off my bike (possibly true) on my way to work (not true). I'll be able to show up tomorrow with the bruises to prove it.

After a very tedious meeting with my neighbours I set off back to Upper Street for the third day in a row, having seen Daniel Kitson play the Union Chapel on Tuesday. It was probably about 8pm when I got to Highbury and Islington station, and began trudging down the street to Angel, in the snow. I wasn't very surprised to not find the bike where I'd locked it initially. But perhaps I'd locked it up somewhere along the route, upon aborting the foolish mission of cycling home.

As I walked along, looking at all the locked up bikes, I was wondering about insurance. Could I reasonably make a claim for this? I don't like insurance fraud and I wasn't sure whether claiming for the bike and bag would count as that. If it turned out that I no longer had either of them, is that enough? Or does one have to have an accurate account of events. It would be easy enough to come up with an explanation for the bike that wouldn't be too far from the truth... Locked it up, went out, got drunk, got bus home, returned to find it had been stolen. The bag would be a bit trickier.

None of the Upper Street bikes (of which there were a few) were mine. But about two thirds of the way down to Angel I saw a yellow pannier wedged into the front triangle of a bike locked up to railings on the partition in the middle of the road. I went up to it and self-consciously grabbed to check and see that it was indeed mine and had all my stuff in it. I couldn't believe it had been there for about 20 hours.

I also couldn't believe that the bike wasn't mine, and stared at it for a good ten seconds in order to make sure.

Cheered up I continued to search for the bike, thinking it must be on the route somewhere.

I decided the bus might be a more pleasant way to do the rest of the journey, so took one down Pentonville Road and on to Euston. Still nothing doing. After Euston I reverted to walking as that made it easier to stick to the route I would've taken. I only deviated upon reaching the underpass at Tottenham Court Road.

Regent's Park and Avenue Road don't have public transport so I ended up walking all the way home, to West Hampstead. There were lots of taxis out, offering themselves to the snowed on. But I didn't take that option. Partly as penance for getting myself into this situation.

One good thing about the walk was that I came up with a couple of good bits for Al's speech. Reckon I have a couple of minutes already. Just an intro but it's good I think.

I wonder if it might seem a little stale in six months' time.

I will go on more walks to come up with the rest of it.

Giving up drinking is part of the opening line. Perhaps that will force me to stick to it this time. (The speech won't be all about me.)

2009-12-10T09:28:00.001Z

Never mind effusion... effluent.

2009-12-10T02:09:00.008Z

I'm still freaking out about the best man's speech. I think I will be for the next six months.

Whilst I'm writing this I'm listening to the only song I've bought on iTunes. It's Purple Rain. I was duped by Prince's preciousness over rights. The tiny twat.

Brilliant business brain.

We just had another pub quiz. It was inauspicious. AA and I were the only regulars. We were joined by Daniel H and his dancing friend Carter. Carter provided perhaps 3 points and DH, err, who cares? We lost by 20 clean points. The league is fucked. The can is certainly carried by AA and me. LVPs. Fucking useless.

The music round was an embarrassment. Half the spaces were left blank. And of the half filled, a fifth included Beautiful South with "Perfect 10". For that I only have myself to blame.

I'm away next week for Al's engagement party and frankly I'm pleased to hide my face.

I spoke to Zina tonight. I told her about the best man shenanigans. She was chuffed for me, though she knew that if there was no gender barrier she would've taken me down. We tried to fix up the gap in my memory from last night... Al said that 5 years or so ago he'd texted Zina to ask if he should chase after Christina, who'd just left on a train. Apparently I'd been there and had said "yes" and he'd acted on that. I do remember this thing well but I just don't know where from. From talking to Zina, it must've been in Cricklewood. She thinks it was a phone call not a text and I think she might be right,

I'm on to the 3rd play of Purple Rain.

I don't think I should be in charge of the music at this wedding.

When talking to Zina, whilst she was in the dark in her sitting room she mentioned that badges such as that of godfather or best man might have been bestowed on me as a signal for me to sort myself out. Given that she gave out one of these badges, she might know more than she's letting on. Perhaps I could do and should.

But I'm going to ignore her haranguing for now. I am delighted to be Maya's godfather and to get on so well with her. She's wicked, and as one of Chris's bridesmaids, I'll be tapping her up for cute help in my best man role. Simples.

There is no way that I would ever want Ed Start to become an effusion of effusiveness, but being asked by Dholod to be her daughter's godfather and being asked by Al to be his best man are pretty much the best I have ever got. It neatly overarches thundercunting issues of Charlie and boss-man Mike.

2009-12-09T16:52:00.006Z

That previous post was rather self-indulgent, in the style of certain people on Twitter or Facebook. "WhatsHisName is wondering why..." or "This shouldn't happen to anyone...".

The type of thing that desperately solicits an enquiry from people nearby. My Dad does that sort of thing in conversation, usually under the auspices of a chuckle to himself, which clearly isn't to himself. "What's so funny father?"

"What's so ‘oh fuck’?" I don't hear you ask..

Al has asked me to be his best man and I said yes. There was some hesitation in providing my answer; about 45 minutes' worth. I know that sounds rather churlish but Al had been sweet enough to couch it in gentle terms, letting me know that he understood that doing a speech in front of 200 people would be nightmarish for me. And that he knew that I struggled (and failed) to accept my sister's request to do a simple 2 minutes reading at her wedding earlier this year. He put no pressure on me at all. But I was so pleased to be asked that I made myself forget all the terror and go for it.

The next six months minus four days are going to be an exquisite hell.

The purpose of the night had been to find a venue for Al and Christina's engagement party. I had booked five places which we were going to check out and choose one from. As usual I was a couple of minutes late and by the time I found Al he had already checked out the first of them. Except he had taken a wrong turning and had checked out the wrong place. He liked it and so did I. As they were free on the relevant date, he booked it and we didn't move on. Simples.

I do regret turning down Harriet's request to do a reading at her wedding. I regretted it the night before the wedding in fact, but was too gutless to tell her.

A best man's speech is a whole different kettle of piranhas.

There are apparently 80 of Chris's family amongst the 200. I don't think I could—let alone would—muster more than about 12 family members.

How does one play to such a disparate crowd? I used to think that the wedding crowd is the easiest to please, but now I can't imagine anything more difficult. At Cousin Chris's wedding, many of the immediate family were offended about a story about him taking only one pair of pants on holiday. That doesn't leave much wriggle room.

Everyone takes only one pair of pants on holiday don't they?

At least this fear has supplanted the fear over my job that I have been labouring under for the last week. That is now small potatoes.

It wasn't small potatoes last Wednesday though. I had been out with Cousin Antony on Tuesday night, trying to glean some good venues for the engagement party. I somehow managed to stay up till 3am. I didn't get any venues but it was fun hanging out with him and his hot assistant. It was less fun turning up to work at 12:30 on Wednesday to immediately receive a massive bollocking from Charlie, saying that he's already arranged a meeting with boss-man Mike to discuss my time-keeping. And how he never knows where I am. He said that I would lose my job about five times in three minutes. Not what you want to hear when you are drunk, but haven't had a drink for 9 hours.

Things have been getting progressively worse at work and I was already expecting another bad appraisal in a week or so, off the back of the shit feedback Charlie had given me. Shit feedback that—for once—I didn't really deserve.

The Wednesday bollocking must have tipped me over the edge and I proceeded to have a mini-meltdown, crying down the phone to my mum later that afternoon, just about stopping doing the same with my dad when he came to see me at lunch the next day and failing to stop myself when I met Harriet after work the next day.

In amongst that I did the pub quiz.

When in a fragile state of mind it is a friendly face or voice that sets one off. (No offence Team C—I’d spent that day's tears already.)

I suppose it is no more complicated than the fact that when you are in the company of someone close, you no longer need to worry about cool. The same thing happened in the other direction with Laura on Saturday when I met her to help her move house. She has a trauma of her own going on and when we met outside Sainsbury's in Angel she had a similar reaction to the various ones I'd had in the days before.

Moving Laura and her new flatmate Juliet into their new gaff was fun. They have a lot of stuff. Most of it books.

We ended the night by going for a Thai meal on Upper Street. It was a bit of a jolt to see the crapulence of 10pm there on a Saturday night, through the prism of sobriety and worthiness of a day spent doing useful stuff.

After the meal we said our goodbyes and I wandered down Upper Street toward Angel tube. I passed a drunkish girl asking a much drunker guy for directions. The guy and his friend then overtook me in their stumble along the pavement. I think they had been to a football match earlier that day. They had comically old-school red and white scarves which suggested this.

About 30 seconds later I caught up with them again. Now one of them was talking to a third guy, apparently unacquainted. "Your friend's really pissed" said the new guy. This sounded ever so slightly aggressive.

Next thing I heard—over my shoulder—was "don't fucking barge me". Not much doubt of the aggression there.

5 seconds later there were 10 people trying to pull the 3 or 4 of them apart. 10 seconds later and there were 20 of them. People careering into shop windows and all sorts. Racial epithets abounding. I'll let you guess who was responsible for them. You prejudiced so-and-so.

At this point I thought it might be wise to ring 999. But does this sort of thing happen all the time? 30 of them now, and surely someone else would have rung the cops.

It seemed as though the fighters had been split up anyway. The victim of the racism was now 15 or 20 metres from the football fans. (Prejudiced yes, but also correct.)

Next thing: he’s broken free of the people holding him back and is sprinting towards the football fans’ posse. I half expected him to hesitate as he realised what he was about to do, suddenly isolated from the gaggle that had been protecting him.

Instead he seemed to accelerate. On arrival he rained down punches, not even connecting with the main protagonists.

At this point I very belatedly got my phone out, just as a police car pulled up on the other side of the road. The side of the road I was now on—I'm not stupid. They had apparently been patrolling Upper Street incidentally and two of the four cops sauntered over towards the melee, which had reached its climax community of 40 members.

I was surprised by the bravery and arrogance of the old bill. Was this bellicose mass going to calm down simply at the sight of a couple of stupidly shaped helmets approaching? Surprisingly it did a bit. Surprising to me; I suppose the coppers had done this before.

A minute later and there were sirens wailing from both directions. 4 police vans and 3 more cars turned up. This seemed like overkill. The crowd was segmented and particulars were taken down.

I wandered off to the tube, my entertainment now finished. It had been gruesomely riveting. Obviously I felt like a shit for just gawping at the mess and not even dialling the freefone number. But I comforted myself with the fact that it was fairly comical. With so many people involved it seemed less serious, as if no one would really get hurt. Not like some beating down an alley with 3 or 4 people. But of course someone might have been on the ground in the midst of the throng, getting a kicking. I certainly didn't come close to finding out.

Tube journey over and I was walking towards my flat with its sitting room all lit up. I was very slightly concerned, but assumed I must've left the light on when I left in the morning.

I had had a survey of the flat that morning, so as to start the tedious process of purchasing the freehold. I must have thought the extra light would help the surveyor, doing his survey in broad daylight.

I walked along the road a bit further and saw the silhouette of someone's head in the window.. I was fucking well being burgled! My stuff?! This was a police matter.

With considerably less hesitation than half an hour prior, I rang 999. I got through to the police and jumpily told them what was going on. The guy asked me if I lived with anyone. Like the Upper Street po-po, he was all too familiar with what Saturday night does to people's judgement.

I answered his question and various others, including that of my address. As I was doing this I gingerly approached the front gate. The head hadn't moved and wasn't about to, being, as it was, a lamp. The angle-poise lamp I'd put there when having dinner with Laura the week before.

I don't usually spot the resemblance between angle-poise lamps and human beings. In my defence, the lower sections of my windows are blurred, so I could only see the 'head' of the lamp.

It is a flimsy defence, and not one that I offered to the 999 man who was still on the line. In fact I didn't make mention of the lamp at all. I blustered something about thinking I might be mistaken about actually seeing the burglars. That rare breed of burglars who do their work with all the lights on.

I pathetically asked Mr 999 if he would mind staying on the line while I went in. He was fine with this and reassured me that he had all my details just in case. I don't think he was being sarcastic, but I cannot be sure.

A few seconds later I thanked him and apologised for wasting his time. He didn't seem to mind.

2009-12-09T01:33:00.001Z

oh fuck

2009-11-12T14:54:00.002Z

Win or lose, I must never be allowed to take the quiz wine home.

I went back to vainly edit the drunken post from last night, taking out some nonsense about a made up country in the tv series Spooks. In my stupor I was delighted that my slight misspelling of this already fictional place provided just one Google search result: me!

Upon hungover reflection I have realised that this is simply a crap mutation of Googlewhack with one word instead of two. But that one word doesn't need to be a real word. And the player is allowed to type said 'word' into their blog. It's hardly hard, is it?

onecheesesteakcomingupdyouwantspokeswiththat?

2009-11-12T01:19:00.018Z

Suicidal thoughts rarely embrace me. Sometimes, but it isn't something to write about here I shouldn't've thought. I'm already too glib but I'll carry on to say that a moment tonight might have ranked amongst my top 10 worst ever moments. Perhaps top 10 is too strong. But top 100 doesn't sound strong enough. Does one count all those moments where one suddenly remembers mortality? That thing that happens frequently? But is quite quickly surmounted by that default reaction that has been refined since the age of 10, or 11 or 6 or whenever one first worked it out?

Never mind all that shit—we lost the pub quiz. That's the problem.

We have lost the quiz before, quite often. Modus operandi is to fuck up the first couple of rounds, do ok on the picture round, keep par on the fourth and kick ass on the final round of music. I should add at this point that I add very little to the scores of any of the five rounds. But it's fun to turn up.

Tonight was different as we were amongst the front runners in the early rounds. There were 15 teams which is more than there has ever been. The first prize was the pot, which was £2 for every player.. ~£150. Something like that. Second prize was a bottle of wine. The bottle I am now drinking.

Back to the action. Round 1 was the "head" round. It was varied. Stuff like "which GB tennis player is sponsored by Head?" Or "what is the medical term for the Head of the penis?" In a rare moment of usefulness I suggested "the glans". After that I went back under.

The second round was a bit of a disaster. We mucked up the termini of the Grand Union Canal and got the nationality of Sabena Airlines wrong. Anthony (resident pessimist) got a good point on Liechtenstein but we should've done better. Still, we were in the top two or three.

The picture round of celebrities-deformed-into-geeks was quite fun. There were only a few tricky ones. Three or four. One team managed to mix up Andi Peters with Jay-Z which is some feat, but not many points were traded.

The running totals after three rounds were close but we were in the lead on 41. Van de Bleuth were in third or forth on 40ish. Or 39ish.

Van de Bleuth are cunts.

I just don't know how to begin to describe them. To understand you have to endure the creeping drip drip niggle of spending many Wednesday evenings in ear and eyeshot of their charmlessness. With their charmless winning and charmless losing. Shit—you just have to understand that they are absolute thundercunts.

They spend their fag breaks checking their PDAs.

How more many times do I have to type it?

(They are similar to us, but hopefully unrecognisable.)

Fourth round. The actors who play epomemous film titles, Does that make sense? We dropped two marks on that round but were probably still in the lead, or nearly there. And the final round was music. Our banker. (I say "our" even though it is Adrian who is the mvp there, with Jon and DM joint 2nd, Anthony 4th and me 6th.)

The music mash-up round went all right. We thought we'd won. Well, Jon did. I sort of did. Adrian was doubtful. But I've already given away the denouement. Beaten by one and a half pissing points.

Jon says it is good. It is exquisite agony or summink (correct me if I'm wrong). I say we kill the bastards.

In this murderous nadir I had an epiphany that I might become the best quiz brain in the world. Better even than CJ from Eggheads. But since then I've realised that that would be really boring. Instead I'm just going to learn every capital of the world (for the third time).

2009-11-11T18:49:00.001Z

Of course I'm doing the time-lapse semi-naked photos.

It is a hideous ordeal though. Perhaps there is too much information in this post. Probably worth skipping.

I did the requisite hair clipping using the clippers I normally use for my head. If I don't clean shave then maybe it won’t grow back thicker. Never understood why this would happen anyway. Maybe it doesn't. I don't want to look it up.

Then I tried taking photos using the timer, with the camera balanced precariously on the edge of the mantelpiece. My camera is a good few months old but only has photos of two other people aside from me. Zina and Antony came back to mine after my joint party with Antony in March, so there are a couple of photos of them smashed. All the others were self-portraits for GSM, most of which are now deleted.

I haven't got anyone else in the camera because I have sensibly decided that socialising with it would quickly lead to its demise. Instead it will now die a cold stony death sometime in the next 8 weeks on the hearth of the fireplace.

After a couple of attempts, I found the appropriate place to stand and remembered it so as to get an effective time-lapse. I ended up going for the horribly unforgiving lights out plus flash technique. Flashing the flash. Do not try this at home.

I did a side on and a front on.

The worst thing wasn't over-weightness cos I'm not really very over-weight. But instead it was the asymmetry. I knew that I didn't stand (or sit) up straight, in either front/back or left/right. But this evidence was pretty damning as to the extent. The left shoulder was quite a lot higher than the right. And my ribcage is definitely out of whack. Over the years one gets used to seeing a reflection and it is quite a jolt to see its mirror image in grotesque over-lit nakedness. (I decided against both smile and pants in the end. But made sure the X on the floor was close enough to the lens.)

I tried correcting the shoulder with some success, but then the left nipple was lower than the right. (I did say to skip this post.) And the neck wasn't straight.

I should clarify that these discrepancies were all minor. It was just the stark nature of evidence. And the fact that I am the type of person vain enough to take a naked photo of himself every day for 56 days.

I wonder if these problems will be exacerbated if I manage to get down to racing weight. (The challenge of cycling up l'Alpe d'Huez in under an hour next summer is the pathetically thin veil to all this self-obsession.) Maybe if I get a bit stronger at the same time, the body will sort itself out. Seems unlikely.

2009-11-10T15:46:00.008Z

Met up with new colleagues from the company that I now work for (my department was sold recently). We're still in a temporary office in the West End and their office, which we'll move into soon, is near Old Street.

First of all we took a look round the floor we'll be working on. As Kieran adroitly pointed out, "it's an office". Then we went downstairs to meet the Swindon lot. Our MD gave a little intro to us all in a meeting room and then their boss did the same. The new people seem too chirpy for my liking, that is to say at all chirpy.

There seem to be lots of nationalities amongst them. None of the three people I talked to were British. A German guy (I pretended I knew where Leipzig is), an Australian girl (I didn't actually speak to her—I just made sure I found out as she was one of the two good looking girls) and an American girl (I didn't speak to her either—she was the other one).

Even if I'd wanted to, I would have struggled to get a word in with the American (Rosie) as our MD Mike was trying his luck, for about 4 hours. I don't think he stands much chance, because he is a tosspot and lacks any sort of physical attractiveness to make up for it.

The Australian (Bree.. urgh) left the bar early.

After the bar we went to a tapas place near Old Street called Pinchos. (Pinchos, or rather pintxos, is an idea from a few years back that got about as far as the trio in the previous post.) Unsurprisingly Mike sat himself next to Rosie and started looking at the menu. She said "order everything", so he did. Our party of 12 or so must have acted like dicks, pissing off the couple of couples also in the restaurant.

I almost went to Pinchos a while ago for the first ever date of GSM v1, and therefore my first ever date. But I dodged it because I wasn't sure I'd get a table. It still terrifies me to think about the minutes before that encounter, wondering what the hell I was doing and just how bad the next couple of hours would be. Very, as it turned out. She was a terribly worthy girl who worked for one of Bono's charities.

I've set a release date of 1 January 2010 for GSM v3. Perhaps it seems ridiculous to set a date so far in the future, and probably after a lot of parties. However it is more likely that it doesn't seem at all ridiculous.

It also leaves me 8 weeks to lose 8kg. That may sound preposterous, but I have made it a lot easier recently, by piling it on. Does that make it easier? I suppose so. It would after all be rather difficult to lose a further 8kg should I manage to lose the first lot.

I was thinking of doing my vainest thing yet and taking a semi-naked self portrait every day. Even I baulk slightly at that idea. But only slightly. Perhaps it will provide incentive.

It does throw up a couple of conundrums such as what to wear. I would also need to depilate my torso at regular intervals to make it worthwhile. If Seinfeld is to be believed—or more accurately if Kramer is to be believed—this is tuning into a bad idea. "Turning into"?

And what to wear? A smile? No. Pants? Yes.

1 January should be a good day for new talent on GSM. Well, perhaps the 1st is too soon but the following days might be more interesting that the usual.

I wonder if I'll be on the way to owning a bike shop by 1 January. I hope so. I'll ring the uncle this evening to sound him out. Bikes are popular on GSM.

Also work continues to get worse. I am writing this in a Notepad window that I've tried to hide in the Immediate window of Visual Studio. It works quite well I think…

2009-11-06T18:24:00.003Z

One of the employment options that I alluded to before has fallen through ingloriously. I applied for the Civil Service Graduate Fast Stream and failed their online tests--the first of quite a few ways they whittle down the many thousands to 250.

There was a verbal reasoning test where you are given a paragraph and then a statement relating to the paragraph which who have to say is true, false or indeterminable. Throughout my practising I found this test pretty tricky mainly because I don't read fast enough to survive the quite severe time pressure. I also tended to err on the side of caution with my answers.

In the real thing I thought I was doing quite well till about halfway through when I got a string of 4 or 5 indeterminables. That seemed a little unlikely given the psuedo-random (i.e. not random) way these tests are constructed. This run of answers threw me out of kilter and I probably fucked up the rest of the test. Of the 40, I only left 3 unanswered so a fair chunk of the other 37 must have been wrong.

Or perhaps the pass mark was high. I certainly didn't drop many--if any--marks on the numerical reasoning test, which is a series of questions based on sets of data. All you need to be able understand are primary school concepts like pie charts and how to calculate a percentage. As I did numbers at university, I was always likely to do better at this test (although percentages didn't feature very highly in my finals) so it was frustrating that it was piss easy. I finished it with 6 or 7 of the 25 minutes remaining and had time to go back to one of the questions that I thought was wrong. The actual answer to it was not one of the multiple choices. (I chose the one that I assumed they were looking for.)

Soon after I completed the tests and just before I was emailed my ignominious results, I sent them a hilariously pompous email telling them that they (might have) got one of the questions wrong. Unsurprisingly their response what that they couldn't comment.

The pass mark may well have been high as I have since found out the usual 10,000 applications rose to 35,000 this year. An increase of 350%.

Regardless, it was still annoying and a bit embarrassing to have failed. as their tests are the type of thing I'm usually good at. I was fully expecting to fuck up my application at the assessment day role playing fiasco stage, had I got there.

The ill feelings are tempered somewhat by the fact that I wasn't head over heels with the idea of working for the Civil Service. I was more keen on the application process than the job itself. It certainly would be better than my current job but I'm at the stage where I'm quite keen to do something that is more than just "better than my current job".

The other ideas I've had fit this remit rather better. (In fact none of these were my ideas. And I only did the Fast Stream application because Zina suggested it.) Here they are in order or preference, though all of them are a million percent better than my current job, thus fulfilling the remit a thousand fold.

Idea 1 (my uncle's): buy and run a bike shop
Specifically, buy and run the quaint independent bike shop near where I grew up. I've been a loyal customer there for about half of my life and still went there till about six months ago, despite having moved to a different part of London about a 30 minutes bike ride away. I only stopped going there because the father/son management seemed to have departed, replaced by a couple of jerkoes.

My uncle's been going there for about half his life, and he came up with the idea a couple of weeks ago when I went round to dinner at theirs.

The shop has been going for about 100 years and is quite well know by cycling nerds but it is run just so badly. Although I got on with the father/son management they were total cocks. Well, the son was nice but the father was a grumpy git. The shop is long and narrow and he would just sit on his fat arse behind the counter at the end. I think that bike shops are quite intimidating for most people, with myriad arcane phrases and equipment; this guy certainly did nothing to assuage that.

(Why couldn't the verbal reasoning test have just asked for the definitions of lesser used words? I suppose that would leave it exposed to the dictionary--the only book I ever read.)

The bike shop itself is fusty. With an overhaul of the fittings, replacing them with monochrome and an overhaul of the staff, replacing them with me the place could be a massive success, feeding off its good brand.

In the last two weeks I've thought about it a great deal and have come up with quite a few ideas. None of them will set the world alight but I think the sum of them will be impressive enough. I'm hopefully going to chat to the uncle soon to see if he is genuinely interested. The venture won't work without him. For one thing, I don't have the cash. But also he has loads of good contacts who know a lot about good design and marketing. Truth is I'm not bringing much to this venture.

Throughout all my thinking on the project I have been mainly ignoring all the cons, such as the administration and dealing with the general public. I don't have a great track record on the second of these points. Whilst working in the local stationery shop my friend and I ran a competition to see who could say the fewest words to a customer when selling them something. I won with zero. In separate incident I tried to sell an expensive leather Filofax to someone, telling her that it "smells nice... beefy".

I might have already told that story.

With a shop that I partly own and one that sells stuff that I like I think my attitude would be different. I hope so. My main motivation will no longer be to try and make my friend laugh.

Idea 2 (Anthony's): set up and run a cheesesteak shack
I've never eaten a cheesesteak. I'm not even particularly interested in doing so. But perhaps that's because I live in London, where they don't exist. I'm told they are quite the thing in America, and Philadelphia in particular. Anthony has eaten some. So have a few of the other people I know. Some even send emails containing links to blogs with discussion about them.

I would need at least one of these people on board to make this work. Presumably Anthony as he has shown interest in setting up a sandwich shop in the past and would I expect be a good person to run it. Once again, I'm not bringing much to the grill.

The problems of dealing with the general public are less serious with this venture I think. There would I suppose be a lot more of them, but the interaction would be mininal. After all there would only be one thing on the menu. I could feasibly revive the word competition.

(Why couldn't the verbal reasoning test have...)

The margins might be a little tight with The Shack, but it does have potential to boom with lots of outlets. The City or Canary Wharf with all their associated twats would probably be a good place to start, and the West End would like it too.

Idea 3 (DM's): run a nationwide crossword competition with an audience for the latter stages and do a Spellbound style film alongside it
The Brits love the cryptic crossword. Well I don't. I think they are tedious and I can't do them. (The first bit of that sentence is a corollary of the second bit.) English is the best language to do it, with its myriad words which mean that well written passages need not repeat the interesting ones.

According to Heuers something like this has been done in America already but the crosswords over there are of the non-cryptic kind. I can do those ones pretty well.

(Why couldn't the verbal... too many callbacks.)

The system would be to run a banner on the front page of The Guardian or The Times advertising it, and have a tough Christmas sized crossword to set things off. The thousands of correct entries would have to be whittled down to a couple of hundred or so, perhaps by inviting them all to regional exam hall style tests where only the fastest few progress.

Then the finals would be in London where there are 6 or 7 rounds of increasing difficulty. DM tells me that the newspapers run this system every week, with Monday the easiest and Friday the hardest, and that different setters are used accordingly. These setters are probably lauded by the crossword nuts and they could turn up at the latter stages to add excitement. (I struggled to write that word.)

The Guardian's Araucaria is the only name I know, because my dad goes on about how good he is and how much more inventive the puzzles are. I think crosswords are rubbish whoever sets them.

So if it turns out that Araucaria is the don of the setters then he'd compose the final.

The associated Spellbound film would be key, as I don't really see how the rest of it would make much money. It would obviously be compared to Spellbound and accused of being what it is--a rip-off.

As I've got no experience of making films I'd have to find someone to do that.

The only thing I'm doing with any of these ideas is writing them down.

2009-10-28T23:20:00.006Z

I do have quite a lot to blog about but have been quite busy. These are unusual happenings.

Most of the potential witterings are about new ways to make a living. One is the well worn and fast streamed path to the Civil Service and the other is becoming a shopkeeper with all its associated middle class angst.

Can't be bothered to go into all that now. I will do in due course I suppose, but now I'm a little drunk so will just stick to an email story. (I just took a tin of Kronenbourg out of the fridge. It was one of two in the plastic holding of a four. I thought about it for three seconds and left the one with the plastic holding in the fridge. I made use of the tin I chose to drink from to spell Kronenbourg correctly.)

Back to the email story.

Anjali who I've mentioned before is a colleague of mine. I've got a bit of a crush on her but know that she's whimsical enough to not bother checking into this blog to read that. I have even more of a crush on her sister who I've met a couple of times as she works near where Anjali and I do. Most of Anjali's colleagues fancy Sohini. As I get on well with Anjali and seem to have done similarly with her sister, I might have had a chance if there weren't stupid religious barriers. And loads of other barriers.

Anyway - that is all tedious backstory.

Yesterday I left my computer unlocked at work and Annie - who sits behind me - took full advantage and sent the following...

From: edward.xx@xx.com
[mailto:edward.xx@xx.com]
Sent: 27 October 2009 15:46
To: Sohini
Subject: Hi from Ed

Hi how are things?

Would you like to go for a drink sometime this week? J

By the way I thought you looked really pretty on your birthday!

Ed x

Naturally the thing I objected to most was the "x". I don't know what the "J" was. A typo presumably. I could write a ream on "x" but Mr Kronenbourg is preventing me from doing a good job.

"I" got a reply from the kindly Sohini. But it was about as brushy off as you might ever imagine:

From: Sohini [mailto:xx@xx.co.uk]
Sent: Tue 27/10/2009 16:50
To: Edward
Subject: RE: Hi from Ed

Hi Ed, how are you? I didn't know you had my email address so this was a nice surprise.

We have a tight deadline at work, we are changing our brand identity so I am working on converting everything by end of the week!

How are things going at xx?

Btw, thank you for the compliment :)

Gutted. Knocked back from an advance I hadn't even made.

I poured opprobrium on Annie today and probably took it too far as she thought I was never going to speak to her again. I'm not much good at faking hatred so gave up around lunchtime. I sent a reply to Sohini explaining things. It wasn't very funny nor flirtatious. It had occurred to me to say that I agreed with Annie on the last line but I ran the draft past Rab and it was canned.

It was a pointless missive and hasn't received a response.

(The tin with the plastic is now out of the fridge. I've removed the plastic.)

2009-10-17T17:54:00.001+01:00

Finally got round to cleaning the flat. Well I've done everything apart from the sitting room. The sitting room looks awful. Will try and do it in the next couple of hours, before Falice's.

The nadir of dirtiness arrived on Wednesday evening when I realised my socks were getting dirty from shuffling around in the kitchen. I tidied and washed up and did the surfaces before tackling the floor in bare feet. I am of the mind that detergent is detergent - there isn't specific ones for specific jobs. I'm not one of those Neurofen purchasing idiots.

The exception is that Ecover products are crap.

I had some Mister Muscle spray of some sort, so I used that. I listened to INXS a few times on loop. The intro on strings is quite a good spraying tempo. But you'll notice that that reproduction manages to get it all out of sync.

I found a mop of sorts. Rather annoyingly it wasn't at all good at sucking up the water that I had lavished on top of the Mister Muscle. It was a Vileda mop but didn't live up to my expectations of a Vileda. (Apparently their advertising has succeeded in the face of Neurofen's failure. Though their website has a very irritating woman on the front. With a smile I'd sure like to mop off.)

I almost slipped over a couple of times, but survived. I did the bathroom floor as well. Whereas the kitchen has dark grey tiles, the bathroom's are cream coloured and seemed to take a lot longer to clean.

Whilst doing all this cleaning, I shifted various bits of stuff and junk around to parts of the flat I wasn't cleaning. The passage running down to the kitchen and bathroom had my laptop (now playing The Crystal Ship) and bathroom scales which is (are?) made of glass. So it was a little tricky to walk through that bit of the flat. I was sensible enough to not tread on the laptop but as my foot was about to land on the scales, I though "am I going to break these (this?) by standing on them (it?)?" And I had the exact same thought when walking back two minutes later.

2009-10-12T18:27:00.013+01:00

I have a laptop and I have the internet. It is 2009 and I'm ready.

So no more Chicken Cottaging for me. I'd say that I was sad if that was what I was, but I wasn't. And isn't. I won't get to do that real-time Cottage blog, but that would've been rubs I expect.

The hubristic wagon ride I described before lasted not even as long as the lower bound I set myself. The two people who share the blame are my decrepit 93 year old grandfather and Josh. The grandfather invited me round to his for dinner, and even though I'd explained over the phone that I wasn't drinking, he offered me a beer when I arrived. He doesn't exactly rail against the old person stereotype of selective hearing/understanding/seeing/remembering.

Just as my first drink for a year on new year's day 2006 had been a disappointingly crap White Russian in a shot glass, my first drink for - ooo - seven or eight days was a warm can of Foster's that exploded upon opening. Fortunately my grandfather's sitting room sports a fetching weak-beer coloured carpet so it hardly mattered.

I didn't get pissed that night but the dam was broken, so when Josh texted the following evening to see if local drinks were a possibility I was too weak to refuse. Josh hits nights out quite hard, so this was going to be a full on fall from sobriety. As it turned out, by the time I was free to meet him, he wasn't around. But I was already drunk.

The grandfather and Josh. I can't believe those two.

Since then I've tried being healthy and have done a fair bit of cycling but once again missed a cyclosportive yesterday due to going out on Saturday. I must try and keep up the laps of the park after work during the week.

Friday night really should have been enough. I met up with cousin Antony and Anthony near High Street Kensington after having done my 10 laps and had something to eat. Cousin Antony's friend Falice was there and already a bit fruity. It's her birthday this week and she's having a party on Saturday which was Facebooked. I wanted to go to it cos I've been stalking her attractive friends online. (She's called Alice by the way; Falice is APR's moniker. That's Antony. Cousin Antony.) But APR had said no to the invite, leaving only Helena as a mutual friend in attendance. Turns out that APR did this by mistake because Falice had called herself Dirty Girty in the title, and APR didn't think he knew of any Girties.

It was only cos it rhymed with thirty.

So. APR is going in the end and I will too I expect. That will mean missing another cyclo next Sunday.

One of Falice's hot friends called Anna turned up later on on Friday, with another friend in tow. I think this posse all work in the shop that Falice manages, where they sell porn amongst other things. She calls them the PYTs as they're all 21 or 22 and fresh out of university. Rather appropriately Anna didn't understand the reference when she first heard it. Mimi is probably the best looking of the PYTs but wasn't there on Friday. Anna passed on her present to Falice of The Private Collection.

After closing we went back to APR's flat. We played the name game but it was a bit shit cos we didn't form teams and there weren't enough us. And there was some duplication, e.g. "Anna's posh/fit friend who was in the pub earlier". Such wit.

With scraps of paper scattered, Anna passed me a note. But unfortunately it said "Alice's mob.. 079…" Not really what I was after. I already had it if I needed it, which I haven't done thus far. She later passed me another one saying that Alice would definitely go on a date. I replied saying "I don't think she fancies me. You?"

Ser-mooth.

Perhaps this is how I should conduct myself on nights out in future. I will remember to pack Post-Its on Saturday.

My proposition didn't get a response. At least I don't think it did. I had sort of forgotten all this happening until I was back round at APR's on Saturday night watching the X-Factor with Dan and Sarah. He found them on the floor to much glee from everyone else.

It's not like I need competition, but on Saturday APR will be all over the newly single Mimi like an Armani suit. "I've been waiting all year for her to dump that wank flannel." (Not his words. Peep Show's I think.) And in every photo I've seen of Mimi, she has Anna draped over her like a velvet suit.

That didn't really work. But it did lead to the funniest phrase I've seen in a while. (The context bit is best.)

I don't know who else will be there on Saturday, but I had better make sure I have plenty of lead in my pencil.

I don't know why I'm apparently unbothered by these girls being 22. That's probably how old Laura 2 is now. As if to remind me of that fact, I got an email today from Nan who attempted the role of facilitator that night. He was pitching his architecture company around his vast circle of contacts, but was deft enough to put in some personal details so it didn't sound too circular. His company looks impressive. He's obviously a bit of an over-achiever, with a first and plenty of awards to his name. And according to his Facebook photos, he has quite a vibrant social life as well. One of the photos below was in his company's brochure and one of them wasn't.

2009-08-24T19:36:00.002+01:00

Spent a very relaxing weekend at the parents' house in Leafy East Sheen. Relaxing cos the parents were in Italy. It was a pleasure to spend a little time living in a proper house. I know I'm really lucky to have my own place, and for a one bedroom flat it is large, but it's still a one bedroom flat. Having a garden and stairs and everything is quite a luxury.

On Saturday I went round to Zina's to help with their gardening. I didn't actually do any gardening but just kept little Maya company, leaving Zina and Stu free to the tedium of de-stoning the earth that they will soon turf. That suited me fine.

Maya is such a lovely little girl and I'm very happy to know her. She is so aware of others, so kind and quiet. Much not like her mother. Nah - not really. In naturing and nurturing such a delightful person, Zina has proven herself to be pretty special herself. If proof were needed. That's a small 'if'.

This time last year Maya and Zina came round to Antony's for the children's day of the Notting Hill carnival. We wandered around the bustling streets with Ben H as well, but hung out at Antony's Ladbroke Grove flat mostly. Harriet and Ben and Lizzie were there as well at various points. After a while in the flat Zina rightly felt like going out on her own with Ben H for a little bit to get some food. It was best that Maya didn't see her go, but once she clocked it she was inconsolable. Well inconsolable by those of us there. It was upsetting to not know what the hell to do to stop her crying and make her feel better. We couldn't think of anything and hadn't improved the state of her little mind by the time Zina returned. About 30 seconds later everything was all right.

In the year since Maya has become more comfortable hanging out with the likes of me. But she is apparently still more of an observer when at nursery and isn't as bolshy as her mum would like. I expect she'll turn out quite bolshy enough if they hang out together much longer.

Hmm… It's tricky writing about Maya and I'm not really doing her justice. I had fun reading her stories and cutting up leaves in the garden is all.

Later in the evening when Maya was asleep, Zina and I went for a smoke in the front garden. She had the spliff and a glass of wine. I was fine without the wine but felt like sharing the spliff. Perhaps it was just a good alternative to the contraband. Anyway - I had neither. I waited till the second spliff.

At about 11:30 I set off to Sheen getting two buses back, via Richmond. I must have gone through about 25 or 30 stops and stopped at 3 of them. They were like big red taxis, taking not very direct routes.

As well as the Birmingham Sustrans job, I also saw a more junior position they were advertising for in Farringdon. I cursed myself for not being on top of things these past couple of weeks, as the deadline for it was today. I managed to get the application pack emailed to me and returned it completed by 6pm. It might be in time. The woman on the phone seemed to think it'd be ok. If I get offered the job it would mean a £20k pay cut but I'd definitely take it. We'll see.

I want to enter this competition . But on reflection, none of my dating escapades were particularly hilarious. Perhaps I could Frankingstein them together, but it might start to seem a little preposterous. I'll enter something, just not sure what yet. It had better be better than today's post.

2009-08-21T22:22:00.000+01:00

I'm enjoying the first few days off the booze and feel excited by the prospect of a clear head for however long it lasts. I know this is the zeal of the converted, or re-converted, but I don't mind enjoying it all the same.

The best aspect of this dry patch is that I haven't decided how long it'll last. I might step off the wagon next week (I won't) or I might stay on it forever (I won't). But unlike when I gave up in 2005, I genuinely haven't set any deadlines. Back then I started off with a month in mind. When I made it past that and had wavered soberly through my birthday in mid-February, I decided I'd do a year. It was mainly just for the sake of it - so I could tell people I had been able to. And I've done that enough since.

2005 is useful reference and I feel quite relaxed about doing this indeterminate stint, able to just enjoy the benefits. Ok so giving up for good is still a bit of a mind bender but I'm treating that as unlikely and probably unnecessary.

Apart from avoiding the despair of three day hangovers the like of which I had this week, my main priority is getting that new job. I think I already mentioned this necessity before, at least once, but have done fuck all towards it. Mainly because I've spent all my free time recently either drunk, hungover or watching tv or any combination of the three. Now it's Friday night and I'm at the parents' house looking up jobs on their internets. Progress of sorts. DM forwarded me another Sustrans job to go for earlier today. It looks good but isn't worth applying for as I really don't have the experience and, more importantly, it's in Birmingham. But it has cajoled me into looking for others. I am going to apply to volunteer for Sustrans if nothing else, and hope to get a paid job that way.

After the job there is getting fit again, having totally lost it in the last two months. In 2005 I never took getting fit that seriously, but I reckon it must be quite a lot easier to do when dry. I should be able to get one 100 miler in in at the weekends now. Will do one tomorrow probably.

I've also been cooking this week in an effort to eat less crap. As cooking is an anathema to me I go for extreme bulk cooking and freezing in portions. I admit that my horizons are currently narrow: Bolognese on Tuesday, chili on Wednesday (essentially the same thing) and lamb curry yesterday.

The curry was moderately adventurous but it's just a recipe. The hardest part was getting the diced meat off the leg of lamb. Anthony had given me the recipe and suggested the leg rather than the more tricky shoulder (both being better tasting than ready diced lamb). Having cack-handedly sharpened my knife I set about it in front of The Shawshank Redemption. This was my second bloated excuse for a film of the week, as I'd suffered through The Matrix Revolutions on Tuesday whilst waiting for Bolognese to cook. Shawshank's mortal dreariness must have affected my knifing as I was still not finished an hour later. I was imprisoned by lamby walls and had only my bluntish Sabatier rock hammer.

The rest of the preparation only took a few minutes but I'd run out of two of the spices and only realised this when I needed them at the end, at 12:15am. Off I trotted to the 24 hour Sainsbury's, wearing a light grey t-shirt, white tracksuit trousers and Dunlop Green Flash.

Who says you need alcohol for stupid late night escapades?

Fair enough - this one passed off without much incident, although I did get a bit scared when walking passed the rowdy chuck-out throng outside the Walkabout bar. On my way back it occurred to me to whip the seal off the paprika - my only weapon. Cumin was doing nothing for me.

I got home safely and finished making the curry.

At about 1:45am it still wasn't cooked enough so I put it in the oven on low. Don't know why I didn't do that straight away. In the morning it was done and seemed to be tasty. As tasty as Lamb Rogan Josh can be at 9am. So I packed up the portions and was rather disappointed to only get 10. It seemed a little light for 5 hours of cooking/waiting and £25 of ingredients. But I've got 12 Bols and 12 chilis so I'm doing all right. I'll try 3 or 4 different recipes next week and then not cook again for another couple of months.

Here at the parents' there are very slim pickings as they are away on holiday. There's some bacon so I made a bacon sandwich earlier. Three sandwiches in fact, but they were made using water biscuits. As there was no ketchup I used porcini mushroom and white truffle paste. I only used it on the first one though.

2009-08-17T16:06:00.002+01:00

It's time to give up drinking again. Not sure for how long. Maybe only for a month, maybe more. Just cannot keep up with two or three heavy nights a week on the sauce, and in a drinking career of about 16 years I have never mastered moderation.

Clare's wedding has proven to be the clincher, although there has been a string of big nights over the last month or so which have ravaged the quite fit post-Etape me into the depressed and not at all fit post-wedding me.

In the previous post I mentioned Tom S's party at which I managed to forget my phone, leaving it at his parents' house. I also misplaced about 3 or so hours of the end of the night. When I woke up I vaguely remembered a brightly lit bar after the garden party at Mr and Mrs S's which was I thought on the first floor in a block of flats. On reflection it was probably another house party.

The rememberable parts of the Tom S's party were fun. I tried mingling, with moderate success but reverted to hanging out with Zina towards the end of the night. I was hitting the fridge quite hard and getting the crook eye from Mr S as I added to his tidying up by a can every ten minutes.

So when I rang up to track down my phone a couple of days later I hoped I'd get to speak to Mrs rather than Mr. I got lucky. She didn't really remember me and asked if I was the one with the baby, not seeming to understand that I am ill-qualified to even look after small bits of plastic.

It turned out that only Tom's sister would be in that evening, so I should speak to her to arrange picking it up. I cycled from my flat in West Hampstead to their Highgate house after getting back from work that evening. To lighten the load I left my pannier at the flat, not thinking about the consequences of getting a puncture, which I duly did, about a ten minute walk from their house. With no lock and a batteryless phone and no useful numbers in my head to use in a phone box, I had little choice but to get a taxi home. This cost £16, including a fairly generous bike-in-back tip.

The phone handset had cost me £20 about 8 months ago. I suppose it was the SIM and its numbers that I was more interested in, but still.

And so to this weekend. I got back from Cousin Antony's very late on Friday night and was woken at about 9:30am on Saturday by Zina phoning me. This was fortunate since I hadn't thought to set an alarm. I didn't have much time as she, Stu and little Maya were on their way over to pick me up for the drive up North. I just about got myself ready in time, and fortunately had time to print out Al's emailed 'telegram' from Madagascar, with a photo of him to go with it. This ended up getting read out at the beginning of the best man's speech as the only (genuine) message for Clare and Khaleel.

Printing out his email was about the only thing I managed to do adequately the whole day.

We got to the wedding venue with about six minutes to spare. Clare was already there having photos taken by her car outside. She is all too familiar with my (and Zina's) tardiness from ten years of experience, but was perhaps hoping for a bit better on her wedding day. Still, we weren't the last to arrive as pretty girl called Lynn came and sat next to me in one of the few empty seats left. Bad name I know, but I let her off.

A few months ago I'd asked Clare what the single girl situation would be like at her wedding and she'd said 'slim'. Unfortunately what she meant by this was 'not many'. Actually she didn’t say ‘slim’ at all; I just made that up. She did say that there was only one possibility and she was already a bit over-subscribed.

Lynn seemed single enough, but perhaps her other half hadn't been invited or couldn’t make it. We struck up conversation about how we could smell burnt toast. It was her choice of topic. After the ceremony everyone did the usual thing and hung out with their friends. I then realised that I'd left Al's 'telegram' in my hotel room a mile away. Stu and I drove back for it and we saw Lynn getting something out of the car as we left. I made some hopeless quip about her car being last in line. 'Quip' is a massive overstatement.

That was the last I'd say to her till a good few hours and a good few glasses of wine had elapsed.

It has been well documented (by me) that I'm hardly deft at chatting girls up at the best of times. After dinner and all its associated wine it was certainly not the best of times. But before I got to make a fool of myself in front of Lynn, I walked with Clare out to the front of her grand venue to see it lit up in the darkness. I think I might have spent the whole time talking about me. Unbelievable. It would have been a far more enjoyable walk had I been sober and I remember thinking that at the time, not just in retrospect. Still I suppose I looked cool enough, escorting the beautiful bride back to the party.

I don't actually remember what I said to Lynn later. I know it started weirdly as I was outside talking to Stu and she came out with her two friends who were a couple. I introduced Lynn, showing off that I could remember her name, not mentioning that the remembering was in part due to it not being a very nice name and me wondering if marrying a Lynn would be a workable situation. Like some sort of mind reader she seemed to be the opposite of impressed at my recollection. There was a fair amount of the pinching and hair-pulling style of flirting that Khaleel mentioned in his speech about Clare. But I think in Lynn's case it was probably just an attempt to shut up a drunken buffoon.

I ended up talking to her accounted-for friend whilst she spoke to Stu. Facebook tells me that her friend was called Louise. And is a friend of Naser. Louise was a medic just like Lynn, Clare, Khaleel and everyone else there. (It would have been an excellent place to pull a whitey and I tried my hardest.) More specifically she was a GP so I started whinging about having to pay for a medical certificate for cycling events! Jesus - I was toasted but that was inexcusably bad conversation. Anything would have been better - toast itself.

Actually - that's it. Can't recall much else. There were shots at the end. And some difficulty getting back into the hotel, with Zina threatening to repeat her drainpipe-shinning antics of a few years ago.

And then it was the next day and a garden party round at Mr and Mrs Clare's house. I felt pretty bad but not as bad as I might've been. Managed to drink a couple of glasses of dog hair and helped Maya with some drawing.

Lynn turned up a bit later and came over to the bench Stu, Maya and I were on. I think she was more interested in Stu. Or Maya perhaps. Anyway I fully failed to make a good impression for the second (or maybe third, fourth or fifth) time in 24 hours.

2009-08-13T18:36:00.007+01:00

In the last half hour I've chewed through a whole pack of 10 Wrigley's Extra. I don't have much patience for chewing gum. Don't even like the stuff. I only bought the pack to make my corner shop order up to £5 last night; the remainder was made up of four tins of Stella. I didn't really want four. Two would have been enough. I shouldn't have even gone for two.

It was already 11:30pm on a Wednesday. We'd just won the local pub quiz and I'd cycled home to a fridge empty of beer. That should've been a good thing.

If you can believe it, the quiz had been pretty exciting. At the beginning of proceedings the likeable quiz-master announced that there had been complaints of too much trivia in recent weeks. Eh? So the first of the five rounds was on Useful Knowledge. I think we got the lowest score of all ten teams, some 6 or 7 points off the lead. One particularly special moment was when we tried to work out at what percentage of alcohol in the blood it became illegal to drive. It has some name or other, but I've already forgotten that piece of Useful Knowledge. Our reasoning was that a pint of Kronenbourg was about the limit. That has 5% alcohol. As a human has about ten pints of blood, the level must be a tenth of 5%... 0.5%.

We were not nearly right as the answer was 0.08%. I later realised that we'd rather assumed that the throat was part of a human's circulatory system.

We didn't fare much better on the next tedious round about the Royals. 12 or 13 points down after two rounds.

Then the picture round came to save our bacon. It was 12 album covers of sufficient obscurity to stick it to the oldies who had dined out on the previous rounds. No Monteverdi here. We got 19 out of the 24 titles/artists and were suddenly back in it. One team got 2 out 24.

We held steady on the fourth round of cheeses from around the world, and kicked more musical ass in the last round to finish everyone off. Quiz Lazaruses, and £90 to show for it.

Perhaps I can blame the giddy high of victory on my desire to further up my blood alcohol percentages. I got back to the flat, put my keys into the lock on the inside of my door - my usual idiot-proofing to ensure I wouldn't forget them on my way out. A trick I learnt off cousin Antony. Not that he's an idiot. I parked my bike in its room and checked the fridge.

Empty. Well, there was the usual tomato ketchup, but that wasn't going to help my percentages. At this point I started writing a text to Harriet and left the flat to go to the local late shop.

Harriet's husband Ben is planning a 7 quizzes in 7 days short film. I texted her our victory and pitched Adrian as the go-to guy for music in Ben's super 7.

After the shop I returned with four cans, one pack of gum and no keys. I put the cans down on a ledge by the communal front door and headed back to the shop with my fingers crossed. Nothing. I even checked the pavement on the way back in case my hole ridden left pocket had tried to stitch me up. Still nothing.

Surely I hadn't been an idiot, had I?

Not to worry, Anthony lived round the corner and had a spare set for me. I'd cycled back from the pub with him so could just call and get them off him. It had already occured to me that it might seem a little strange that it had taken me 15 minutes to cycle the 500m to my house and work out I'd lost my keys. And how would I explain my lack of bike when I went to get the keys off him? I decided to use a blog for that, if it was necessary, which it no doubt wasn't.

Sure enough he had a spare set, but when he checked this I realised that the communal door lock has changed since I gave him the keys. The situation was deteriating.

Patricia lives in the flat above me. I have a rather stilted relationship with her. Ostensibly we get on well and I've been round to her flat to chat about flat stuff before. There was even wine. And she kissed me goodbye at the end of it. On the cheek of course. She is about 45. And not heterosexual. Bi perhaps.

She is extremely efficient with all things flat related. Always arranging for work to be done, renewals of this and checks of that. I have a more hands-off approach, so I try my hardest to avoid her. In fact on Tuesday evening when I cycled up to the flat with a lamb curry from Bombay Bicycle Club hooked over my handlebars (too salty) and saw her fussing around the bins, I simply cycled straight past and waited 50m up the road. So the lamb was cold and salty.

Back to last night and here I was at 11:45pm facing the prospect of buzzing Patricia to let me through the communal door so I might get to my front door to use the key that I hadn't yet got off Anthony.

Her bedroom light was on and I know from her elephantine footsteps that she doesn't usually go to bed till quite late, so I took the plunge hoping she wouldn't be cross or, worse still, delighted. I made the daft error of not pushing the buzzer firmly, so I couldn't be sure if it had buzzed or not. The backlighting had flickered, but was that enough? I couldn't double buzz. That would seem desperate.

I then realised I had her number (for purely administrative reasons). Having recovered my phone from Tom's parents' house (I'll post about that later) the day before, I was mobile again and should have texted her. I know that our flats' buzzers make a fearful noise.

So I sent her a grovelling text, hid the cans in the garden and waited. A few seconds later the communal light was on and she opened the door to let me in. After a half-cut explanation she gave me her spare key. That doesn't even sound like a euphemism and it certainly isn't one.

Now I was free to set off to Anthony's on foot to collect my inner door key. Now I am sounding euphemistic.

I could even drink a beer on the way, and I did. But I hadn't quite finished it by the time I got round there, so hid it behind a lamppost on his road. I picked up the key off him and set off home, picking up the lamppost lager, regretting having left the other three in the garden. (I am exaggerating, slightly.)

As I bounded round the corner on to my road I dropped the nearly empty can. It was if I was over the limit or something. I sheepishly picked it up and carried on walking, trying to avoid eye contact with the attractive girl walking towards me. As she passed me (me nearly in the hedge such was the avoidance I was attempting) she said "can I buy that can off you?"

I don't know what percentage she was rocking, but this request certainly flummoxed me. I took a moment to laugh and then told her that unfortunately it was empty. We carried on our separate ways, me wondering if she had been taking the piss. But my thoughts were interrupted when she hailed me again. She'd seen the phonebox on the corner of Anthony's road and wondered if I had two 50ps for a pound coin. As I walked back to her I checked my good pocket but only had one 50 and two 20s. She offered me a 10p profit but I refused. I even had three 1s and a 2, making 95p. I was giddy with the £90 quiz success. And she was very good looking. Mind you I had seen Patricia with bed hair only minutes before, so maybe the plague would have seemed pretty right then.

That's pretty much the end of the mission. Full of abject idiocy. How did I leave the flat, opening the inner door with my hand touching the keys but not extracting them. Why was I going to buy more beer anyway? Why did I buzz Patricia? Why didn't I take at least one extra can for the journey to Anthony's, if only to sell to a beautiful girl? Why didn't I lend her my mobile when she said she needed the phonebox? Why didn't I then ask her to put her number into it?

2009-07-16T18:56:00.011+01:00

Uh-oh. I just found a recording of Esmé on the internet. I found it because I looked for it. I was reminded that she sometimes presented a weekly show on Resonance FM when Jon sent an email bigging up Paul Foot's Resonance show on Thursday. The internet is a scary place.

I'm listening to it now. I was fully expecting it to be a withering experience. I remember unexpectedly hearing this years ago on headphones in Tower Records and being engulfed by a wave of reminiscence as I'd first heard Buena Vista Social Club in Alex The Greek's room at university who had flicked me a few months previously. This was before people like my Dad had their album and played it at Christmas cos it was the only album he owned that wasn't by Monteverdi (nice lyre buddy). I can't remember how I got to hear the track by accident on headphones - not sure how that works. But I do remember the gut wrenching pangs of regret and how my lungs emptied and wouldn't fill up for a good few seconds.

I had a similar feeling hearing this around the same time. On the back of this selection it would appear that Alex was some sort of Nostradamus of naff. But she did have more leftfield taste than that, including the likes of Jimi Tenor who I thought was crap.

This was a lung-emptier from the Laura days. I first re-heard that one in Fordwych Road when I was living with Zina and Ian, years after we split up. Strange how it doesn't matter how much time and emotion has passed. It only really works on the first replay though.

All obvious and clichéd. For good reason, fortunately the Esmé show isn't having the same effect (although part of me was hoping it would as it's quite an exciting trip). It is weird to hear her voice though. It's a bit less Northern than her real brogue, although she does say wunderful a lot. I remember her saying how she cringed at her radio over-enthusiasm. She's really good - sounds dead professional. The producer is a bit shit though. The guests are never miked up when Esmé asks them a question, so the answer gradually increases in volume from zero to about three.

It's funny to hear some of her verbal tics. I haven't heard "that said" yet - her favourite qualifying statement which managed to piss me off, despite the brevity of our liaison. I'm such a tolerant person. Hearing her voice reminds me that she did also have a tendency to be a little po-faced. I told Laura about Esmé's seriousness before, and she asked if I thought she was serious. I said yes, which I don't think was an answer she liked. It isn't true either. Too difficult to explain the difference. Suffice to say I don't think Esmé's says "motherfucker" very often. Or "mutherfucker".

That said, it would certainly be some achievement to sound anything but po-faced on such a terribly worthy show about world music. This week's guests (actually from September 2008) include goons from the Uyghur heartlands of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in Western China and Kyrgyzstan, performing on sundry unspellable instruments. I'll stick my neck out and say that they won't be Ry Cooder's next big promotion.

In other news I've done my first job application in four years. It was to become the North London Area Manager in Sustrans. As I have not any experience in the sustainable transport sector, I doubt they'll even offer me an interview. I didn't even know what Sustrans was short for till a couple of weeks ago, despite having sold their (rubbish) maps in Stanfords for over a year.

Still, I'm pleased to have sent the application. I think it was quite a good one given my apparent shortcomings. If for some reason they do throw me a bone then I reckon I could ace the interview as it's a sector I am really interested in working for and I've got a few people I could tap up for insider knowledge.

I'm also pleased to have a clear idea of what job I want to go for.

The shit at my present job has finally hit the fan, or the air con vent. As it had been airborne for about two years I'm surprised it's taken until now to happen. I had my mid-year appraisal a few weeks ago and got a rating of 2 out of 5. Most people get 3s and 4s and about 5% get 2s. My last score was 3, the one before that 3 and the one before that a 4. How I ever managed a 4 I'll never know. So that's the unyielding trajectory of the shit.

When you get a 2 they put you redemption program. I say "redemption" but really it is just a highway straight to the exit, with a couple of small slip roads. Three in fact: they come at 8 weeks, 16 weeks and 24 weeks but you've got to perform pretty darned well to be allowed on to them.

Yesterday I spent all but 30 minutes of my working day writing a job application. It's safe to say that my steering wheel is locked on "tout droite".

The reason I spent all that time writing the application yesterday (as opposed to watching the internet) was that the deadline was today. So even though I knew about the job three weeks ago I still managed to leave it till the last minute. I had planned to take the application pack to France for the Marmotte weekend but forgot to pick it up off the floor where I had previously chucked it.

(There was - and is - a lot of stuff on the floor. Two weeks ago I went to my dry cleaner to remonstrate with her that she must still have a pair of my trousers, and a jumper too. She spent 5 or 10 minutes looking at every one of the labelled items in the shop with no luck. I left the shop saying something gruff like "well I'll look again in my flat, but they definitely aren't there". I looked for them a couple of days later, having forgotten to in the 3 minute walk home from the shop. After searching high and low I thought may as well look in my cupboard to see if they were hanging up. A last resort. Well they're always in the last place you look aren't they?)

Back to my tardy application. It is for a job that I am desperate to get. One that I reckon I'll really enjoy in an area I'm genuinely passionate about. Perhaps "passionate" is a little strong but you get the idea. My propensity to do fuck all still astounds me after 31 years.

I've never not done fuck all. At school and the first two years of university this wasn't a problem. Even the third year wasn't as disastrous as it should have been. My despairing Director of Studies said I achieved the absolute minimum for a 2:2. Nearly ten years later I still have dreams about failing my finals and not even managing to get a third. (If that had happened I'd have got the euphemistically titled Special Degree.) When I wake up I'm delighted to have got a 2:2. It's a strange feeling.

I've never been found out in the world of work either. The fecal parabolas have been long indeed.

Perhaps if I get the Sustrans job or a similar one then I will change. Perhaps my genuine enthusiasm will prevail. I'd be surprised though.

2009-07-13T18:00:00.003+01:00

10:00am
Hangover deluxe. A three night accumulator. I might be sick before too long. The guy who I sit opposite at work is very much annoying me with his loud yawning. He is someone who has his flexed left bicep as a profile picture on Facebook.

My left bicep is hurting somewhat. I think the reason for this is that I've slept on it drunkenly three nights in a row. I am a long way from the Alpine heights of fitness last weekend. Actually the whole of my left arm hurts, in the way that it tends to after big nights out. I am remarkably sanguine about this, given my usual proclivity for medical mania. It would be a bit annoying to have a stroke but I convince myself that I'm fit enough for this to not happen.

Perhaps I should drink a bit less on nights out. Perhaps I should do a lot of things.

11:00am
I just had to dash to the loo to avoid laughing at the carpet (false alarm) and caught my reflection in the mirror. I had the pallor of the comedian Paul Foot, who I saw on the tube this morning.

Having not eaten today, I probably should eat. But that is currently a horrible prospect.

12:30pm
I watched some Foot video logs and feel a whole lot better. Laughter is a quite good medicine. And seeing how revolting his trout sa-lad was perversely made me more inclined to eat, just something a bit nicer.

Filled with ill-gotten gusto, I went to get a ham and cheese baguette and even entertained the idea of a pistachio macaroon. Seconds later I came to my senses and realised that that way madness (and vomit) lay.

The sandwich went as well as could have been expected. It has dented progress in the short term, but will hopefully accelerate it in the medium term.

2:00pm
Once again thinking of a macaroon. Perhaps a Twix would be wiser.

3:00pm
I got a mini lemon cheesecake in the end. It was a bad idea. I've been sweating a lot since, though I'm not sure of the correlation.

4:00pm
I haven't tied my shoelaces yet. It seems unlikely now that I will.

5:00pm
Think I've made it. I still have to sweat the journey home.

2009-07-06T15:24:00.004+01:00

La Marmotte was a success. It was my third attempt and finally I got my pacing right and posted a good time. In 2007 I was pretty fit but crashed on the descent after the first climb (about 100m down the road from where a cyclist fell off and died the year before, taking a marshal with him). This ended up costing me about 30 minutes as I had to walk back up to the col to get mechanical assistance, and no doubt cost me more time in wasted adrenaline). I think I finished with a time of about 9 hours 15 minutes. Last year I was just unfit, and got 9 hours and 3 minutes.

I'd hoped this year to comfortably beat 9 hours, and maybe get under 8 and a half. I am prone to massively over-estimating how well I will perform at these things but despite this I didn't think I'd break 8 hours, which I did with a time of 7 hours 48 minutes and 50 seconds. The gold medal time for my age category was 8 hours 49 minutes. La Marmotte has very generous medals times, but I was pleased to beat gold by over an hour. In fact that was what was keeping me going up the final few kilometres as I felt close to fainting.

In my previous two Marmottes and two Etapes I had gone off way too hard and stuffed up my chances later on. But this time I got it right. Hopefully I'll repeat the feat in the Etape in two weeks and get a gold there, where the timings are far harsher. (I didn't actually bother to pick up the medal on Saturday as they were charging €10 for them… A bit like how I didn't bother to pay the £10 for my MA from university, which - if they had been assigned metallic value - would have been a bronze.)

For my future reference, the split times were..
1'51'' Col du Glandon
4'01'' Col du Telegraphe
5'23'' Col du Galibier
6'32'' base of Alpe d'Huez
7'49'' top of Alpe d'Huez (finish)

1'17'' is better than I thought I'd manage up the Alpe at the end, especially as I felt close to fainting for the last 25 minutes. I'd taken off my heart rate monitor by this point to make breathing as easy as possible. More of a psychological thing for the final climb. But I know I was in the 160s which is quite good after that long in the saddle. I later found out my average heart rate for the ride was 151, which is again quite high for a near 8 hour ride. The problem in the last half and hour was my lungs weren't working well enough. I think I had mild asthma, which I get through hard exercise. I almost got off to recover but managed to keep it together going as slow as I could manage whilst sitting in the saddle (getting off the saddle was always tempting but I knew this would make my heart rate leap).

My time ended up giving me 497th place, which doesn't sound very impressive. Because it isn't I suppose. But there were 8000 competitors and some of the guys at the front are semi-pro I think.

As I just scraped into the top 500 I think I'm entitled to apply for a low start number for next year, which would put me in the first pen of riders. It would be fun to see what it's like amongst the fast guys, for the minute or so that I would be able to keep up.

Although I feel fit and light now, I know that I could be so much better, and off the back of this relative success I am very tempted to train properly for next year's event, making sure I keep going through the winter. If I could be in the shape I'm in now next Spring then I reckon I could go on to break 7 hours and get a top 100 finish. Every summer I have similar sentiments but this is easily my best cyclosportive result and such an aim seems tangible as well as impressive.

Mind you, the main reason for exercise is the desire to look good naked. I could try and get a girlfriend instead.

2009-06-26T12:11:00.002+01:00

With nothing going on on the dating front I have slipped into an existence consumed by exercise and dieting. This isn't entirely due to my vanity as I have La Marmotte to do next weekend and want to be in as good a shape as possible. But it is mostly vanity.

The diet is broadly to make sure I make my lunch and dinner every day, and don't eat crisps. It seems to be working. Combined with exercise, I've got down to 73kg as of this morning which is pretty good since I was probably more like 78kg before going to France. Would like to be sub-70kg in time for l'Etape.

Dating is certainly more interesting though.

I'm not sure if my cycling road rage has become more intense recently or whether I've just been paying closer attention to it. Yesterday on the way to work I had three potential incidents although words were exchanged on only one of them. Then after the third one I saw a rather sobering crash near King's Cross...

The guy in front of me at some lights sped off and was going about 18mph as he approached a pedestrian crossing 20m around from a corner. It was a red man but a fucking stupid couple were wheeling their baby across the crossing. (This annoys me beyond belief - it is one thing to put your own life in danger, but to put an oblivious baby's in danger is quite another, and with a pram you are far less nimble.) The cyclist rang his bell for them to get out the way and they jogged across. He cycled past just behind them but then another kid of about 9 or 10 stepped out. He belonged to parents who hadn't yet crossed, but he was obviously following the lead of the jogging couple.

The cyclist crashed into the boy and went from 18mph to 0mph in about 3m. The boy got up holding his head, crying and the cyclist lay on the ground with blood pouring from his face and clutching his collarbone.

It was 80% the fault of the jogging fuckwits, 10% the fault of the boy and his parents and 10% the fault of the cyclist who was going too fast and too close to the joggers, despite his right of way.

It is surprising how much pedestrians rely on their ears to tell them if they should blindly walk out into the road or not. Eventually a cyclist will knock these chumps down. Or an electric car.

As part of my exercise regime I've been doing laps around Regent's Park after work. Ten laps equals 45km and is a pretty good work-out which also provides its fair share of incident.

As I do this on my way home from work, I am on my crappy commuter bike with its rack and pannier bag. This is much to the chagrin of the other lappers who are all on road bikes. A fair amount of group riding goes on and I am always an unwelcome guest. Whenever I've slipstreamed someone else and gone ahead of them to do a turn (usually a polite gesture) they respond by sitting on my wheel for half a lap or so and then smoking me, overtaking me at speed so as to drop me.

Every evening there will be one or two who are properly fast and I can't keep on their wheels. Usually I think I would probably be able to if I was on my road bike, but yesterday there was a guy in a totally different league. I could tell from his frankly astonishing legs: muscle-bound beyond belief, hairless and fatless. He also had the puny tricep-only arms of a proper cyclist. As he was doing intervals he would go at my speed sometimes and on one of these occassions he started chatting to a less impressive specimen. I caught the following snippet of conversation as they overtook me:

Pretender: "So do you think Cav will win the green jersey?"
Slick Rick: "I asked him that a couple of weeks ago..."

I never caught the end of his sentence. Too slow.

Later on in the ride I had my forth and fifth road rages of the day. The first was a runner bent on repeating the prang I saw in the morning.

I was trying to catch a couple of cyclists 20m or so in front of me, going >20mph. They were approaching a crossing island when a female runner ran out in front of them, leaving them about 10m. She stopped at the island jogging on the spot and turned around grinning at someone behind her. I didn't see her male companion until he was about to do exactly the same to me but even closer. I shouted "Oi!" at the top of my voice - once again robbed of eloquence by shock - and he stopped just in time.

Two laps later I was behind a different fastish cyclist, once again doing about 20mph in a part of the park where there is a 20mph limit due to road works which caused a narrowing. Some twat in a BMW with the number plate "M8 SEX" overtook us, passing the guy in front just as the road narrowed yet more at some temporary lights.

We all had to stop at the next set of lights and I pulled up next to the bonnet of his car and stared (through my sunnies) at the driver. He gesticulated "what the fuck are you looking at?" After about five seconds I turned to stared ahead. He then drove up two or three metres and opened the passenger window. Amusingly this now meant he was in the cycle lane.

"You seemed to be looking at me strangely. What's your problem?" he said aggressively.

I just stared ahead in about five seconds of silence.

"There was another car coming the other way so I had to pull in. Don't know if you saw that." he said rather more impotently, and nonsensically.

Five more seconds of silence and the light turned green and I cycled off, him turning right.

It was a perfect road rage incident to round off another fine day of cycling.

2009-06-12T12:04:00.003+01:00

As part of my research for the photo casebook I've been checking out The Sun and today saw this excellent quote from an onlooker of a night out Ronaldo had recently with Paris Hilton...

"They looked adorable together. It was as though they'd been dating for ages. He was reclined all the way back in a chair with his legs spread wide open. It looked almost pornographic."

2009-06-10T23:08:00.003+01:00

Oh dear. Still at work.

I haven't been able to concentrate these last fews days and haven't done any work. Therefore will have stay late I suppose.

Mostly I've been feeling sorry for myself, but I have got quite excited by how easy it would be to mock up this photo casebook. As I don't have any photoshop style software I haven't managed to make it look very good. But it's ok for 5 minutes work. And I didn't even need to get Zina's permission...

2009-06-10T19:47:00.039+01:00

Ok. I've come up with a storyboard for my photo casebook. I am yet to ask Zina, Laura and Cousin Antony if they are willing to accept the roles. It's set in a pub.

Photo 1 Zina sits at a the bar in the background. I'm at the bar as well, nearer the camera, finishing a pint whilst reading The Sun. There is a half full glass of wine in the foreground belonging to someone out of shot; a Lego man sits on the bar near to it.

Zina [thinks]: He's so dreamy. If only I wasn't married. Hell, maybe I should just go for it!

Me [thinks]: Why can't I find someone who really understands me? I'm so tired of mindless flings.

Photo 2 Zina approaches me. The Lego man stands up.

Zina: "Hey there, fancy a drink?"
Zina [thinks]: And maybe more...

Me: "Umm.. that's very kind but I'm waiting for my friend."
Me [thinks]: Sure she's good-looking but does she ever attempt to truly understand the world's problems.

Photo 3 Laura arrives and sits next to me, Zina retreats and scowls in the background. The Lego man starts climbing the stem of the wine glass.

Laura: "How was your day?"

Me: "Fairly quiet. I helped a kitten across the road and rescued an old lady from up a tree."

Laura [thinks]: I don't care that I'm a lesbian, I definitely would. Us lesbians are all secretly bi anyway. I wish we were only wearing underwear; I thought that was the whole point of these casebooks.

Photo 4 Antony comes into shot as the barman, Zina's still scowling. The Lego man is now reaching the top of the wine glass.

Antony [thinks]: As a gay man in a Dear Deirdre skit, I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to fancy any man with a pulse. But I honestly don't see what all the fuss is about.

Me [thinks]: Has it really come to this?! I've got way too much time on my hands.

Photo 5 Close up of the wine glass, with the Lego man clinging to its rim.

Lego man: "I can't take any more of this self-loving, self-loathing horseshit. Someone please shut him up, or I swear I'll jump. Don't let my cheeky grin fool you - I'm deadly serious!"

Strapline: "Do something amazing today - save a Lego astronaut."

2009-06-10T16:00:00.020+01:00

Still feeling blue about the end of the affair, such that it wasn't. But have had some good ideas for GSM v3. Still can't be bothered to re-launch for a while mind.

First one is to do my photos in the style of a Dear Deirdre Photo Casebook from The Sun. I'd rope in the services of attractive girls I know to pose in photos with me and they'd have speech bubbles saying "he's so dreamy" and "if only we were both in our underwear; I thought that's was the whole point of these photo casebook things" and I'd be thinking "I'm so tired of meaningless clinches, I just want someone who understands me" and "why do so few people have any empathy for the world's problems".

Just need to find girls willing to help me out.

Or I might stage a photo of me helping a kitten cross the road and one of me helping an old lady out of a tree. "At least his heart's in the right place."

Once again, casting might prove a problem.

Also these ideas do rather smack of trying a bit hard.

I've got a new set of blurbs to use as well. They contain a couple of in-jokes like the proclivity of female GSMers to stay in and watch DVDs with a bottle of red wine. Basically it is a piss-take of GSM but maybe it hits some good notes. I'm a little unsure about the French loo stuff. That might get cut.

As before it uses the conceit of conversation.

Blurb about me...
<<That'll be £52.50 please.>>

"Umm, ok. Are you sure I won't get lucky with a month's subscription?"

<<Entirely sure, sir, yes. You might even like to consider the six month option.>>

"I don't think it'll take me that long."

<<Well, you may be surprised. Bear in mind that you'll need a couple of weeks to grow that beard we discussed earlier.>>

"Yes, about that... Are you sure it's necessary?"

<<Take a look around you sir. The beard is first rule of popularity for the gentleman. It's a ginger-flecked jungle of whiskers out there.>>

"It's just that mine grows all patchily and looks rubs."

<<Them's the rules sir. If you don't like it, feel free to jog on to the Daily Telegraph.>>

"Oh yes?"

<<Yes. Like us they have a wafer thin demographic, it's just that it's 20 years older, 20 grand a year richer and 20 degrees more right wing.>>

"Oh."

<<And 20 per cent more Caucasian.>>

"Is that even possible?"

<<There's a bit of a queue forming sir. Would you like the subscription or not?>>

"Go on then. Is there anything else I might need?"

<<Well you might consider upgrading your wardrobe somewhat. You do realise that you are wearing Lycra, don't you?>>

"Yes, sorry about that. I've just got back from a cycling holiday in the Alps."

<<But this is Farringdon sir; surely you would have got changed for the train ride back to the UK.>>

"..."

<<Anyway. The clothes... there is a rail of contemporary stuff over there.>>

"Err... which rail do you mean?"

<<That one; the one without the label.>>

"Oh right. I hope you have my size - I have an athletic build."

<<Yes sir, so you said. We also have a selection of books you might enjoy... Nietzsche For Dummies, Eclectic Music From Around The World (That Isn't World Music), How To Be A Creative Type,...>>

"Interesting. And I notice you have some DVDs over there, next to the shelf of bottles of red wine."

<<All you could ever need sir.>>

"Are you French?"

<<No. Why does everyone ask me that?>>

"It's just the quote marks. Reminds me of Tricolore textbooks."

<<It's just a lazy device so that you know that I'm talking.>>

"Ok. Well thanks, and bye! Hopefully won't see you in three months' time! Haha.. aha, ha..."

Blurb about her...
"Who was that guy?"

<<Him? Oh he'll be back in three months, mark my words.>>

"Nice arse."

<<What?>>

"Oh, nothing."

<<So, What can I do for you? You seem like an erudite and demurely attractive young lady. And yet I can't seem to put you into a category. Or a type if you will. How fascinating!>>

"Yeah. Umm... I actually only came in to ask if I could use your loo."

<<Sure - go ahead. Just through that door there.>>

"It's not one of those dodgy French campsite style holes in the ground, is it?"

<<When was the last time you went camping in France?>>

"Well... it was the late 80s admittedly. Sorry."

<<I'm not French.>>

2009-06-10T11:00:00.003+01:00

I got a reply from Esmé so feel a bit more at ease. I hadn't realised how unpleasant it would be to have my message just hanging there unanswered in the ether.

I was a nice enough message full of compliment and kind words. She mentioned how aware she was that she might be closing the door on something good but how it felt like right thing to do at this point. After reading it for the tenth time I deleted it, realising that there was nothing more to be deciphered.

The best course of action is to sort out the job. The are many many reasons to sort it out but I may as well use this dating fiasco as an impetus. I'm pretty sure I would stand a better chance of engaging with people if I did something that I was interested and enthused by. As facile an impetus as that sounds, I'm going to run with it.

2009-06-09T16:15:00.001+01:00

Probably ought to scrap that Emailman idea seeing as I misspelt elicit in the first post today. Is 'misspelt' even a word?

2009-06-09T14:56:00.001+01:00

Sending that email was a mistake. Well, durr.

Now waiting for a reply which will probably never be written. Even if it is it won't say anything salving. I'm an idiot.

I've gone to a different floor at work so as to avoid the bosses.

Everything is going swimmingly.

I've started drawing a map of new career paths. Here are some of the salient routes…
Tree surgeon
Surfer
Flower surgeon
Parisian
An unemployed
Emailman - creates well crafted but ultimately worthless missives, 1p a syllable
Purveyor of fine ice cream on the streets of London (the nice bits)

Any other suggestions welcome. Only serious ones mind.

2009-06-09T12:55:00.001+01:00

The predicted brush off duly happened. It was all so crashingly obvious when looked at objectively. But objectivity is hard to achieve whilst stuck in the maelstrom. Right from the start, with the week of silence after the first date, the signs were bad. The fact that she was so hard to get hold of and reluctant to meet up certainly suggested her head wasn't over her heels.

The phone call itself was a bit strange. We talked for about half an hour before she plucked up the courage to say she was seeing someone else. And only then because I'd plucked up the courage to ask if she wanted to meet up. I already knew the answer but wasn't bold enough to just ask her if she was seeing someone else. It was an easier method.

Although I was fairly well prepared for the news I was still flummoxed and didn't really know how to end the conversation. She said she'd still like to meet up but would understand if I didn't and that she'd leave it up to me. I already knew I wasn't going there but couldn't come up with a good way of saying "have a nice life". I ended up saying I'd be in touch, which was an unwanted call-back to my hopeless parting words of our first date.

I just sent her an email which was a bit more eloquent. It ended saying that meeting as friends wouldn't be a good idea. Don't know if it will get a response. It didn't really illicit one.

I did mention regret over my lack of demonstrativeness, which I do feel acutely. I suppose I'll know in future to not be so meek in those second and third date situations, should they arise. Or maybe I'll just forget and do the same thing over again.

For now, first dates are not looking likely. I deleted the profile this morning as I was rather sick with the whole thing. It's hardly much of a effort to revive it as I have a copy of it all. And with no subs, I may as well start afresh and get the attention that affords.

Really don't have the heart for it at the moment though.

As with previous GSM setbacks, it is hardly heartache but just depressing. More of a headache. In fact I've had a headache ever since her phone call, which is rare for me. My state of mind is not helped by still feeling low from the party on Saturday.

That's combined with returning to work after two weeks off. The job search is in fact my main priority. I must sort it out as I fucking loathe everything about the job at the moment.

No fun. No funny.

2009-06-08T12:18:00.002+01:00

Back from two weeks cycling in the Alps. I had fun and got pretty fit I think. Anthony and DM were out for the second week which was an enjoyable change. I think the process of lugging their bikes across France provided rather annoying bookends to their holiday but it was otherwise good.

DM wondered what people thought about whilst cycling for hours on end. This has occurred to me before and for me it is usually very little of worth. Often I will be thinking of tedious minutiae of the cycling itself: speed, heart rate, the next section of road, why the fuck Esmé doesn't ever answer her phone. The usual stuff.

A few texts were exchanged between us in the first week. Then on the middle Sunday I checked her profile and saw she'd hidden it. Obviously I've come to the conclusion that she's met someone else and that is why she's hidden herself. I tried ringing her but she didn't answer. There was no contact in the second week. I tried phoning her when I got back on Saturday but again no answer. I left a voicemail wondering if she was around this week. No response until this morning when she sent a text asking if I was around this evening for a phone call. I'm predicting a brush off.

I logged in to GSM yesterday for the first time in about a month. I favourited a few people and a got some attention back. Three of those are interesting. "The thinking man's slut" is certainly an arresting tagline.

But without subs I don't have any chance of furthering those options. I might ask DM if he will buy me a gift subscription for £7. He might say "no".

After the slightly drunken phone call on Saturday I proceeded to get thoroughly intoxicated first in town with Antony and then in Balham for a friend of Zina's house party. It was a proper house party visible and audible from way down the street. After the wholesome living of the last couple of weeks it has hit me pretty hard though. The fug.

2009-05-22T12:05:00.006+01:00

Guess what? I'm going to take the map back to get it fixed. I don't know how I managed to convince myself I'd be able to live with the 2mm problem. Besides, I discovered yesterday that it was 3mm!

I think it will be easily remediable. I will take it back to him after my two weeks in France. It had occurred to me to ring him up, but I realised that I would sound like a doughnut.

In the meantime I will hang them up, as the fixtures need to go up at some point. Hopefully I'll manage to arrange a date with Esmé for the Saturday I get back so I want to make the flat as serviceable as possible, in order that she will be as serviceable as possible.

I wonder if she will ever get to read this blog. She won't get to read this post, that's for sure.

I also wonder why I think maps are likely to woo a girl. I genuinely do.

This morning I wrote a new profile for GSM for no good reason other than boredom. I quite like it and would be curious to use it. A small part of me does hanker after that realm again, although a larger part of me realises it's a big fat time waste. If I am back on in the next few weeks then I'll use the following (perhaps leaving out the "bear in mind" line, which is a bit rubs)...

uroplatus
My fridge pretends it's a cupboard; I disapprove.

Why should you get to know uroplatus?
If I were to describe myself as an animal, then I would definitely be an idiot. Or a human.

That's not to say I don't enjoy metaphor; I do. It kicks simile's ass all over the playground. Have I just personified simile?

Back to animals. I'm not a bear, and I recommend that you be suspicious of anyone who claims to be. Bears are vicious animals. Sure they would sweep you off your feet but they'd probably take your face off in the process.

I do like bears.

So that's me - I like bears but I'm not a bear.

Bear in mind... yes.

Moving on. What - you haven't already?

I hope you'll agree that a blurb written for a mass of people you don't know is no way to describe yourself. Writing one to one is where it's at. Meeting up is even better.

So let's try that shall we?

Hold on, I don't know you.

2009-05-21T13:20:00.003+01:00

The maps are amazing. Thank God. (Not "thanks, God" - it's only a phrase, I don't believe in you really.)

I pored over them for about 10 minutes and found no flaws. There is one utterly trivial glitch that the left one of the three is mounted about 2mm higher than the other two but even I will struggle to notice that once they are up on the wall, with gaps between them.

And as those Persian rug makers know, there must always be one error since only Allah is perfect. Perfectly non-existent.

Now I just have the task of hanging them on the wall so that they are straight and secure. Being as they are pretty fucking heavy, this may prove tricky. And God will be waiting in the wings to wreak his revenge. Git.

2009-05-20T16:15:00.016+01:00

The sonnet went down well. I am a Renaissance man apparently.

The context was that she said she had to phone her cousin the other evening to give her last minute coaching for poetry GCSE. I wasn't just trying out antiquated lyrical forms for no reason.

My maps are being delivered after work today. I'm crapping myself that they will've once again been cocked up. The guy is dropping them off on his way home as a favour. On reflection this isn't altogether good, as it will be harder to complain to him if indeed he has cocked them up. Please God - I don't ask for much... this is the most important thing in my life right now. If it helps, I'll write you a poem. Urmm..

Map ≠ Crap
(The polymaths poet)

2009-05-19T13:50:00.002+01:00

I just spent the last three quarters of an hour writing Esmé a sonnet.

Not sure, but I don't think that counts as playing hard to get.

2009-05-18T16:55:00.002+01:00

My weekend in the Lake District was fun. It was Helena, Eddie, Julia and me. Julia finished her marathon round the edge of Windermere in just over four hours, which was very impressive especially considering the course. It wasn't actually very near the edge of the 'lake' and was very hilly. I reckon that those hills would have cost 15-20 minutes on a flat course. I'm basing that guess on no knowledge and no experience.

That was on the Sunday. On the Saturday we went on a walk into the hills and towards a remote pub. In truth it wasn't very remote, and we could've driven up to its door but decided instead to strike across the wilderness for about - ooo - two miles. And most of that was drivable. We had some fun lording it up as Southern jesses wearing wholly unsuitable garments. I had a near-knee length normal coat, Adidas and my work trousers. Helena was wearing her Kurt Geiger gold trainers and carrying her handbag.

Unfortunately all the proper ramblers and locals were unfailingly nice. "Hello"s all over the valley. I didn't even get a wrong look when I obstinately ordered a pint of Budvar from the pub. It was the only tap (of ten) which wasn't hand pulled. And it tasted a bit off.

2009-05-14T15:56:00.004+01:00

One last thing. The phone call sequence last night was she called me when I was cycling between pint four in Mayfair and pint five in West Hampstead, and I missed it. She left a voicemail and I called her back.

The voicemail started "Hi, it's Esmé…" so I got to find out how she pronounces her name. This had been bugging me. I think I prefer ez-mee but apparently she prefers ez-may. That should really be a double 'apparently' because the sober me cannot clearly remember. Fortunately the drunk me told Anthony in the pub after he'd (I'd) listened to it, and I just got an email from him (Anthony) confirming. I thought I'd log the pronunciation here, where levels of inebriation are not a factor.

Of course I could just get drunk again to bring it all back, and record a note to self on my Dictaphone... "esh-may". Or rather "e-e-e-e-e… esh-may".

(I don't own a Dictaphone. I Did Just Find Out It Is A trademark Though.)

2009-05-14T14:19:00.004+01:00

I just read back that bit on drunken memory loss and realised that my summary dismissal of the theory has a logical flaw: I am not currently drunk, so what do I know?

I need to write a post whilst drunk and see what it reveals. A whole lot of horror no doubt. I could combine this concept post with the Chicken Cottage concept post. Or maybe I should just buy that computer.

2009-05-14T13:58:00.005+01:00

Finally got to talk to Esmé last night, a couple of weeks after we last met. We have been emailing and texting in the interim. She is proving to be hard to pin down, metaphorically. Unfortunately I was four and a half pints drunk when I spoke to her so can't clearly remember what we talked about. Fortunately she said most of the words. There was something about an interview she has next Monday, and something about her having to sack someone yesterday, something about planning to meet up next week and something about her parents coming to visit her this weekend. I already knew that last one. I'm beginning to get jealous of her parents as they have seen more of her than me recently and they live in Buxton. The blog provides a log, by definition, and it tells me that Esmé and I first met on 15 March. It is now 14 May (the blog will have told you that) and we have seen eachother a grand total of four times in that time. We're definitely not in danger of rushing things.

As I'm off cycling in the Alps next weekend for a fortnight, the frequency doesn't run much risk of booming in the near future. I need to make sure that next week's meeting does indeed happen. It will be on a school night though, so my continued lack of a wallet probably won't cause any problems. We won't be foggin' windows up (I just listened to R Kelly).

The four and a half drunkenness progressed to eight, or was it nine? Esmé texted me at about six so I can't have made too much of a fool of myself on the phone. I remember trying to type a reply at about seven. But I read it back and realised it made no sense and didn't relate to her one at all. In a moment of clarity I decided I wouldn't send it, and according to my sent items I didn't go on to change my mind. Unless I the eight or nine me deleted it from the sent items in order to trick hungover me. That is giving him too much credit surely.

I met up with Laura on Tuesday and she was talking about a lecture she'd been to on memory. Apparently drunken memory loss is not complete and we are able to recover those lost moments when we next get drunk. This is news to me.

I shouldn't have agreed to the meeting with Antony straight from work which laid the ground work. We started in The Punchbowl in Mayfair. It is owned by Guy Richie so I shouldn't have been surprised by the twattery of its clientele. But I was. The place was bulged full of total fuckheads. For example…

Mark "Webbo" Webster (I made up the "Webbo" bit)

When I went upstairs to the loo I held various doors open and got zero thanks. As I wasn't a very slightly famous sports presenter, nor was I wearing black tie or even a suit, perhaps they all thought I was staff.

Off to the Lake District tomorrow I think. Julia's running a marathon there and has hired a cottage for a few people. It's not like I'm going to spend all my time being jealous of Mr. and Mrs. Esmé - it's the freaking weekend baby, I'm about to have me some fun.

I think I might have quoted R Kelly on the blog before. I can't be bothered to check that out. But I really do need to sort out my music collection; Mattafix was something of a nadir. Buying a computer and some internets would be a step in the right direction. I've heard they are all the rage. I just can't be dealing with all the tedious research into what to get. If anyone reads this and has a good idea then please say so. I might go to The Carphone Warehouse for the connections as I think they don't insist on a landline. But I'm not sure.

God. I'm bored already.

I used to have shares in The Carphone Warehouse. My grandfather gave all his grandchildren a pile of shares about 15 years ago, and these were some of those. It has been my only foray into rampant capitalism (y'know apart my job) and it wasn't wholly successful. I think they went down to about 30% of their initial value at one point. They recovered a bit before I sold them, but my mattress would have been a better place to keep the cash. Under it, not on it… although that does seem like a good step in direction of R Kelly. The world's greatest.

2009-05-08T16:56:00.004+01:00

Dinner with the old duffer was a success I think. He's called Charles Prince and is in his 70s I think. The cousins, Harriet and I would routinely and hilariously parody his name by calling him Prince Charles. You can imagine the laughter. Or can you?

So yeah–it was fun and I think he had a nice time too. Perhaps it is rather presumtuous of me but I don't think he gets out much. When we last spoke a couple of years ago his wife had recently died and it seemed to have hit him very hard. From the number of mentions she got last night, it's a fair bet that he is still feeling the pain acutely.

He does like talking and was round for about four hours, regaling me with numerous tales from his chequered life. The tales were invariably tall and peppered with the clanging of names hitting my floorboards. Royals featured, ambassador this, cabinet minister that, and presidents of long since renamed African states.

By the end of the evening we'd got through a bottle of wine each and I started to trip out. It was the odd sensation certain voices give me. Kind of erogenous but nothing to with attraction towards the person. Similar to a head massage feeling. As cast iron proof of the dissociation of voice and owner, Billy Patel's used to have the same effect.

Coupled with this sensation, I sometimes get the feeling that the person stays the same whilst the rest of the room zooms out and generally messes with my mind. A dolly zoom.

I recovered quite quickly.

When I'd got back to the flat earlier in the evening, there were eight cans of lager on the steps outside my flat. I assumed someone upstairs must've had too much shopping and would be down for them later. But when Prince C arrived they were still there. And they were still there when he left. It occurred to me that I might have bought them the night before on my way back from work drinks. I hadn't noticed them in the morning but I wasn't really in a noticing sort of mood. Half an hour after Prince C left I went out and claimed them. It was either that or some drunk would have taken them. Some other drunk.

2009-05-07T17:11:00.003+01:00

I had a fun weekend hanging out with Zin and Maya and Al. We did some gardening and I accidentally dug up a lizard. Al said he must have been hibernating and would probably now be dead because of me. He did seem rather sleepy. I've never seen a lizard in the UK. I excitedly texted Esmé saying it was a gecko, which it wasn't. She likes newts so I thought she'd be impressed. But my shonky taxonomy probably backfired.

Things on that front continue, if not apace. Very slowly in fact. I asked her back after our last date; she said she'd like to but couldn't cos it was a school night. So we left eachother at the Farringdon ticket barriers. I was desperately hoping a train would arrive as I got to the platform so we didn't have to endure the awful cross-platform smiling. One duly did so I got on. And then seconds later she did too. I thought for a second that this was some boisterous change of heart befitting a Richard Curtis dénouement. But it wasn't–she'd realised that King's Cross was a better route home for her.

So we had an awkward one-stop-chat. A converstation. That doesn't even work. I told her I liked her blue shoes. She said that they get dusty cos she stands on one foot with the other. I'm not sure whose chat was worse; the competition was fierce.

Going to ring her tonight to see if she's around in the next couple of (non school) nights.

Yesterday there was a user group meeting all afternoon at work. There were 200 or so big cheeses there and the control I've been coding for the last few weeks was demoed by Albert the partner in the opening speech. I was crapping myself that it would fall over but it survived ok. Then there were work drinks afterwards. I behaved like a plonker, telling Charlie that he looked crap in his suit. But it's machine washable, he retorted. Then he went round various females–including a director–asking them who looked better. I was drinking in Corney and Barrow comparing suits. What have I become? A dickhead, that's what.

Work is not really happening today with the hangover I'm feeling. And Charlie works from home on Thursdays. I've turned my mobile off just in case.

I'm well bored by today. I might see if I can just slope off home.

Feeling tired. I woke up too early, and started cooking a lasagne. I was fun doing something so out of kilter. I've got an old duffer coming round for dinner. He helped me sort out my mortgage a couple of years ago. He lives on the street parallel to mine and it's a bit embarrassing that after all this time I haven't invited him round. Embarrassing also that the place looks unfurnished and the decorating's not finished. I have I think almost got this map sorted. It has been quite a saga–this will be the forth attempt. The first one was the misguided idea of wallpapering it straight on to the wall. The second was a bubbly spraymount affair. The third was a framer friend of my mum's who included unwanted waves in the oceans. I would have taken it back but he lives in fucking Somerset and the friend of a friend thing also made things awkward.

This new guy seems to be as much of a perfectionist as I am and guaranteed I'd be happy, else he'll keep buying and framing maps till I am. Hopefully he'll be getting the last of the cash I spend on it, £800 thus far.

2009-04-24T21:34:00.003+01:00

A good week at work I think. Charlie was pleased at any rate. He took me out for drinks on Tuesday he was so impressed. I went on to tell him how his wife's Christianity meant she was a fucking idiot. He bought drinks all night for Rob and me, and Charlie is the tightest person I know. Well he isn't really tight in a selfish way, but doesn't spend money freely on himself. Every lunchtime he buys a baguette and a packet of German salami. His weekly lunch shop comes in at £3.30. He's only in the office three days a week but still. He's a really nice guy who just happens to know where all his pennies are.

But on Tuesday all the drinks were on Charlie. (It was a Sam Smith's.)

I think he'll give me some good feedback. It will go something like… "very shit for five and a half months but surprisingly good for the last two weeks". Before my recent halcyon days he'd told the big boss partner dude Albert just how shit I was. Albert had asked; I'd left Charlie with few other options.

So on Wednesday I had a similar conversation with Albert that I'd had with Charlie two weeks ago. This one was rather more scary. Charlie put me up to it; said it was far better to preempt the shit hitting the fan. Albert was really good about it as well. I'll still get made redundant soon, but it will be rather more amicable.

So often it is the case that the other person in a frightening or tricky situation already knows what's going on. It has been the case a few times for me recently... Charlie, Albert, Mum and Esmé. Always better to grasp the nettle.

More to say on Esmé but gotta nip home for drinks. We've been in good email contact and are going to meet again for the first time in a while on Wednesday.

We'd been writing about ellipses in the last couple of emails and Esmé made quite a full on analogy. Might expound in the next post but need to rush. She also signed off with "Ciao amico". I assumed that amico was the same as amigo, but having looked them up I've gone on to read too much into. She is quite a linguist. Same old same old.

2009-04-20T03:13:00.009+01:00

It's gone 3am on Monday morning and I'm at work, working.

Well, I'm taking a short blog break in order to commit my imbecility to the ether.

In the wake of my confession to Charlie, work did go quite well for a bit. But on Thursday he works from home and on Friday he doesn't work at all. With the pressure off I did doss a bit. But not too much. It's just I am still struggling, so everything takes ages. And I need to get this piece of work done by tomorrow. I mean today.

I wish I could apply myself better to work. I seem to be incapable of doing it. Always have been. At school it didn't matter too much and I managed to get through GSCEs and A-levels. I even got through the first couple of years at university ok but I got sorely found out in the third year. I arrogantly chose to do the harder of the two options available for finals. Those who took the easier stream pretty much guaranteed that a 2:1 was the best they could score, foregoing a first. I got neither. In one of the four 3 hour finals papers I wrote precisely nothing.

The world of work has been nowhere near that hard and once again I have managed to get away with it, up until now.

This all-nighter reminds me a lot of those I did before supervisions at university. With those I'd start the evening full of good intentions, working on the problems myself. Then at about midnight I would start looking at Richard's answers, working through them. By 3am I'd just be copying verbatim.

In fact the analogy is pretty weak; I don't have anyone to copy now. But - again - it really isn't that hard.

Richard was something of an over-achiever as he was also the university boat club captain. Sadly his top-10 first in maths was probably out-weighed in his mind by him being on the losing side in The Boat Race. Even more sadly I found out through a mutual acquaintance recently that he came out aged late 20-something and his dad promptly disowned him. Hopefully details of that have been skewed in transmission.

I saw Richard in the college bar only two times in all our three years there. (That wasn't because I was there only two times.)

No word from Esmé today despite her saying she'd call me today. I mean yesterday. I'm almost certain that's what she said because I nearly blurted out something stupid like "or I'll call you" but drew back just in time, leaving the ball in her court. I know this paragraph demonstrates that this blog is scratched, but it is annoying. Once again it occurs to me that she's lost interest. She might have hooked up with someone at the Trailer Trash party on Saturday. Her cousin or something.

Better get back to work. It's actually going ok. I'm pretty sure I'll get enough done. Or have a nervous breakdown.

2009-04-17T12:44:00.011+01:00

I might need to buy a wallet. I don't like the idea as I'm not a fan of the usual personal accoutrements. As well as the wallet, I lack a man bag, a diary, a watch, glasses (needed), any jewellery or tattoos. Out of that lot the tattoos are the most appealing.

The mobile phone is my main concession and I was one of the last people I know to get one.

My aversion is related to that of clutter. Though I suppose a wallet can serve to reduce clutter. They also serve to reduce the possibility of condoms falling out of your pocket as you fumble around trying to pay for a meal at the end of a date. It's possible I got away with it. But even if I did, pocket fumbling is never a good look; protected or otherwise.

If Esmé needed telling - and she now didn't - I told her that I didn't have a wallet. Her response was "but it's an excuse to own another piece of leather". I should have worn Antony's £3k jacket after all. I had told him I didn’t want it cos it looks a bit naff. It's very slightly too big and I think leather jackets should be close fitting. It's also quite chunky with a chunky inner lining of stretchy material. I told him to go ahead and put it on eBay.

Not having a wallet also means that my trouser pockets get holes in them quite quickly. Though I reckon that keys are more to blame for that, and there is no way I'm buying a key pouch. The left pocket has gone in my jeans and one of my pairs of work trousers. I sometimes forget and put coins in the left pocket, which end up falling around my feet as I walk. Better than jonnies I suppose: Hansel and Gretel and the Responsible Paeodo.

I'll probably go for a wallet for cards, notes, and condoms only. No coins. Thing is I don't really like the idea of a leather wallet, but prefer material ones. I shouldn't let Esmé govern my choice of wallet. But if we meet up again and she sees it, she'll probably ask to take a look. I should really be more worried about what's on the inside of it than what's on the outside. Maybe I'll just get a wallet made of rubber. Fuck it.

2009-04-15T20:10:00.003+01:00

She did call back but we didn't manage to arrange a date. It was a good conversation though and I'm happy again. We spoke for about 15 minutes. 14 actually - I'm now obssessed with call logs. That's quite a long time for me. 13 longer than the mean.

I'm happy because although there was no reference to anything in particular, her tone of voice soothed my doubts.

I suggested this weekend but she's busy on both Friday and Saturday night with friends. Saturday night is a fancy dress trailer trash party. Frankly I'm glad we aren't an item right now.

She said she'd ring on Sunday so we may arrange something. Maybe she'll be free on Sunday. Though that's me saying that - not her.

Anyway. Content for now. The lesson for today is that the spoken word is more enriching than the written one. Neatly proven by this post.

(Cheers Anjali.)

2009-04-15T19:26:00.003+01:00

Tentatively navigating the catharsis and think I might survive it.

I was in the midst of doing something else and realised it was 7:17pm!! I jumped up and phoned Esmé, skipping into a partner's office. (The partner had gone home.) (I didn't skip.)

This was probably the best approach as it gave me no time to worry. Though I was of course worried.

And... she didn't pick up! Great. By the time the answerphone kicked in and I'd hung up it was 7:18pm. Had I blown it? Which one does the phone listen for: the missed start of call or the missed end? It was becoming crucial. I thought of Googling my second idiocy of the day.

But then I thought it best to revert to the dreaded SMS and drop her a line asking her out before too long after the call. Just as I'd finished my tome of a message the phone beeped to tell me she'd sent one, saying sorry she'd missed my call. She had been leaving the radio station and would call once she was back home and the reception was reliable.

We'll see...

2009-04-15T18:39:00.004+01:00

The long weekend was fun if uneventful. I spent most of Saturday painting my flat with the help of my dad. It's pretty much done in terms of wall area but probably not in terms of time since I've still got to do all the woodwork. But it looks better. Well it doesn't really look much different as - in the main - white covered white. (There's a green wall in my bedroom that I like.)

It has however been a good opportunity to sort out the flat and drag it out of stasis. I'm going to get quotes for framing my map of the world. And with a few more books (say 400) it should look good.

All of which has nothing to do with a potential visit from Esmé.

Unsurprisingly I'm worried that it may never happen. Once again my doubts are rooted in the fools' pastime of analysing levels of communications. This time the SMS. I thought that SMS would be the best way to keep in touch whilst she was on holiday these last few days. Phone calls would have been too much. I still don't have her real email address; no way I would use the GSM mail.

I've not really got anything to complain about. Just that I always had to instigate SMS contact. And the last one I sent on Monday which mentioned the Big Conversation I'd had with my mum didn't get a reply for 24 hours. In it I referred to Esmé as my muse. I phrased it amusingly, but it was probably ill-advised. That said, her reply was nice enough when it finally arrived.

Ok.. She may not like SMS. It's just that her alacrity on dates is in no way matched by other communication. The answer's there. Face to face interaction is more important.

To that end (away) I'm going to ring her this evening and ask if she wants to meet up at the weekend. I'm pretty nervous as I am rubs on the phone, but it's time to ditch SMS.

Hopefully it will go well. Not sure when to call. I'll probably be in the office (more than big enough for privacy). Could do it in the same stairwell I called India from, but I won't.

I asked Anjali on instant messenger what time I should call her. She said 7:17pm. I took this to be code for "ask someone who cares" but she insisted that this was the perfect time, saying that 7:17pm was statistically the busiest time of the evening so Esmé would be flattered. It took a while, but I eventually fell for it and Googled "7:17pm busiest".

I'm tired. That's my excuse.

Got to the office yesterday at 6:30am and left at 8:30pm. I've never done anywhere near as long a day as that before, and hopefully never will again.

The reason for it was that I was crapping myself that my boss Charlie was about to give me another bollocking, having received one from a different boss last week. The work shit is beginning to hit the fan. Having spent two years doing pretty much fuck all, I'm now being found out.

The number of swears in that last paragraph accurately reflects my nervousness of the situation.

By 9:30am yesterday I'd struggled through a bit more work but hadn't done enough, so bit the bullet and asked to have a chat with Charlie. The chat was me saying I didn't understand coding and was shit at it. I phrased it slightly differently, since coding is all I'm supposed to have been doing these last two years but the message was clear.

He was surprisingly good about it all, and said that a lot of people were bumbling along in the department not really knowing what they were doing. He took a couple of hours out to run through - on a high level - the project we'd been working on. It has worked surprisingly well. I've managed to get a lot done in the last couple of days and it's almost been enjoyable.

Not quite though. I still need a new job away from computing and computers. Hopefully my recent aberrations will flag me up for the next round of redundancies and a six month pay-off.

Charlie's conversation was the second big one in two days after the one with my mother. That one went well as well. It wasn't the sobbing emotipocalypse I'd been fearing. I got to say all the things I'd wanted to and it meant a lot to her I think.

Another big conversation coming up with Esmé, in 28 minutes. Three out of three?

Enough catharsis for one week. Though maybe not all, given its medical definition and my current state of abject nervousness...

2009-04-09T12:58:00.002+01:00

When I started writing about GSM on here I said how I wouldn't be reporting on kisses, sex or weddings. In the excitable wake of my second date with Esmé I broke this rule but I won't do so again. That shouldn't be taken to mean that I biffed her after Tuesday's date, as Al would say. I didn't. Or rather we didn't biff eachother, as I would say. Or rather, wouldn't say.

Wait a minute - this is all much more tawdry than just breaking the rule. Blame Al.

It's just that I like Esmé a lot and hope that something good happens. It feels wrong to write about intimate details here. Although we are by no means an item, the relationship seems to have removed itself from the realm of blogging.

That's bollocks really - I'm still going to write about her. Just not all of it.

Now I'm worried I've built it all up too much. It could after all easily crumble.

Anyway - I know all the readers of this by name and have probably met up with all of them at some point in the last couple of weeks. So if anyone's interested they can just ask.

Esmé's away in Devon for a week at her parents' house there, not two weeks as I had previously thought. I saw that she'd logged in today and when I logged in I saw she'd looked at me. Or rather they had.

Hmm...

Now I have to think of other things to blog about.

Running perhaps.

2009-04-06T10:49:00.003+01:00

I rang Esmé yesterday at around 7pm. I had thought about sending a text, but that is a bit pathetic. She didn't pick up. I bottled out of leaving a voice message. Those can sound dreadful. But then I was left with either having to ring again or revert to texting. As I knew she'd see I'd tried to call, I thought a text would be ok. Just asked her if she wanted to meet up before her holiday.

She took a while to reply and I was back to those worries I said I'd leave behind. But she replied eventually saying she'd been out with friends and had only just checked her phone. I remember her mentioning a friend from Hong Kong was in town this weekend. She said she would like to meet but it would have to be Tuesday. I think she has her street dancing class tonight.

I'd seen that she logged in on Saturday and Sunday. I won't read too much into that. It's not like we're married or anything. When I logged in today I saw that she'd looked at my profile on Saturday, like she did the day after our first date. Again I'm confused by this. Maybe she was showing my profile to someone else. Maybe I've already met the parents.

So Tuesday it is. Need to come up with a good place for dinner. Not too flashy.

I need to sort out my wardrobe. Esmé is really stylish. I am not. As Antony pointed out on Saturday, I looked like a C&A mannequin from the late 80s. He offered to give me a designer leather jacket he'd picked up in a sample sale for £50. It's a bit too small for him. Well, actually he's not going to give it to me but offered it for £2,500. Apparently it's worth £3,000. Not sure leather jackets are quite my thing.

Hopefully it will go well on Tuesday and end similarly to Friday. Not sure I want it to go any further even if she does, which she probably won't. She's on holiday for two weeks the next day. That might be quite weird. Even if things go well, it's not as if we'll be at the level of phoning eachother. A few texts maybe.

I also need to sort my flat out; try and make it look less of a shit pit. The parents have offered to help me paint so I'll probably take them up on that over the long weekend. Mind you they will be doing quite a lot of God bothering so may not have too much time. Going to take my mum out for lunch on Thursday and talk to her.

Tonight I have the fearful prospect of fessing up to Harriet. I spoke to her on the phone and she was all excited by Esmé. Hopefully that will overshadow talk of marriage certificates. But I will have to mention it.

2009-04-05T14:13:00.007+01:00

Feeling a bit special today after a fairly long drinking session with Antony yesterday. 8 hours or so. At some point during that my phone battery ran dry and I've had to come into work to charge it as I didn't have a charger at home. I'm also out of money and have no credit on my Oyster card so may have to walk home.

My phone battery now only lasts about a day since I submersed it in water for the second time in as many months. I recovered the phone both times by leaving it in a bowl of rice on a radiator. But the battery seems to have been irreparably wounded by the second dunking.

Friday night was a rather more successful one than last night. My date with Esmé was I realised only my 3rd 2nd date with romantic intent. The other two had been in GSM v1. In the first of these I found out the girl was a crazy Christian, and the second had been a lunchtime one which didn't lend itself to kissing. Neither resulted in a 3rd date.

I had the misfortune of a bad skin day on Friday, which happens quite rarely. I asked a pretty girl in the office if she had any concealer I might borrow. She laughed in my face; the correct reaction. I wasn't burning bridges with her as she is already engaged and my attempts at flirting with her a year or so ago had ended in farce. It was on a work away day at the races and we had been drinking since lunchtime when we were on the bus home sitting together necking red wine from the bottle. A couple of the other girls had started a type of Karaoke, sans backing track and tried to get me to join in. I refused but instead agreed to tell a joke. It was a truly shit one. "How much does shampoo cost in the East End? Pan ten." I wish I had gone for Tim Vine's exquisite "you invented Tipp-Ex... correct me if I'm wrong".

I think Eleanor - the pretty girl - was standing next to me at this point, at the front of the bus. And we then turned round to face the front and my hand was round her waist. I must have realised this looked a little off but instead of moving it away I moved it down. I don't actually remember any of this - my boss might have just been winding me up when he recounted it to me with glee.

That night continued for me in a similar hopeless vein. I fell off the bus in Earl's Court and headed to Harriet's for her house party and then on to Waterloo to meet Al, very late. We then went to Clare's for her house party where I think I tried to impress her sister, as well as Rupal (from work)'s friend who was there coincidentally. I then disappeared without telling Al. It was a bad one.

Anyway - Eleanor didn't have any concealer. So I went to Boots for one of the more embarrassing episodes of my life. I tried couching it in a question, asking the make-up girl "how many times has a guy asked you for concealer?" But it didn't garner the laugh I was hoping for. Instead just "none".

The £15 price tag dented my limited supplies of cash rather severely. I worried that I might have to end up borrowing money from Esmé later on, which wouldn't have been a very good look. In the end I survived. Until now.

The concealer worked pretty well.

Sentences like that last one lead me to think I should never mention this blog to anyone, let alone potential girlfriends.

I was due to meet Esmé at the bar Concrete connected to the Hayward Gallery at 7. I was running a little late but it turned out she was running later. It was crowded in there so we ended up sitting outside. More good conversation flowed. I mentioned the context thing that Teri had talked about on Wednesday. I am fairly shameless in ripping things off other conversations. I mentioned the GSMthropology in my recovery email to Esmé and it was Katherine who had brought that up. This time I did make it clear I was quoting Teri. I had also hoped that by mentioning another girl I might get some details of other dates Esmé had had, but it didn't work.

After one drink at Concrete we moved on to the bar in the Royal Festival Hall which is similar to an airport lounge. (I ripped that line off Jon.) The lighting started off as too bright, then got darker and then went even brighter than before. I worried for my concealer somewhat.

The conversation at the RFH was good as well. We talked about weddings as I had mentioned Harriet's and my uselessness associated with it. Esmé's parents got married in a 20 minute civil ceremony with two witnesses, one of whom was her dad's ex-wife. She has a very close relationship with her parents and defers to them about everything. She is apparently cutting apron strings gradually, but still speaks to them almost every day. And has never once been embarrassed by them. These are not things I can empathise with. Though it is perhaps true that my mum has never done anything to embarrass me. I talked to Esmé about my slightly dysfunctional relationship with my mum, whereby I think she is the best person and is the personification of altruism, but that I never tell her this. Or anything hardly. I've resolved to fix this.

I also found out that Esmé does street dancing and is probably really good at it. Her list of things that she finds attractive is assertiveness, dancing, flirting and intelligence. During the evening I set about quashing the first three, whilst using as much of the fourth as I could muster.

After the second drink in the RFH (less than one drink per hour must be some sort of record; one that I didn't go on to break with Antony last night) she went to the loo and came back to say "let's go for a wander" which even I recognised as code for "I want to kiss you". She was also much more flirtatious on her return to from the loo. Zin's reaction to this story was "so she did a line?" I don't think she did.

Outside on the South Bank she started talking about trains home. I really should have just gone to kiss her then but instead blathered on about how much I liked her. I think she moved in to stem my pain.

We parted ways at Waterloo. Columns 5 and 6 remain untroubled. For some reason my tongue was tingling for the rest of the night. Maybe Zin was on to something after all.

It is fair to say that I'm smitten. I should be confident that she is as well. But I wonder who else she has met. She was top of the pops a while ago and must have other good options. It's probably not a good idea to quiz her too much about all that.

I'll ring her later tonight to see if she wants to meet again, before she goes off on holiday on Wednesday with her parents.

2009-04-03T12:24:00.000+01:00

I think I have lost my sister's marriage certificate. I'm scared. At the end of the ceremony the registrar ceremoniously gave it to the bride to much whooping and hollering. But Harriet mislaid it at some point between then and the meal. This is fairly reasonable as she didn't have many pockets to put it in.

Some fool decided it would be a good idea to give it to me. At this point I was straight edging on water through the meal but knew then that this was a bad development. I remember putting it in my jacket inside pocket. Later on in the evening some of Harriet's friends gave me cards for her. I soon lost those. They turned up in Antony's bag a few days later. The marriage certificate wasn't with them. Nor was it in the suit.

I'm clinging to the hope that I gave it someone sensible at some point. I find it hard to believe that I would take it out of the pocket and just put it down somewhere. Mind you I have exhausted quite a few of those sensible people options. There is a good chance it has made it back to Harriet, but I'm dreading asking her.

I'm not inspired by my track record with things like this, especially recently. I lost my back card last Thursday and have not been able to find my passport since then, which would allow me to take money out of the bank. After I'd cancelled it the card turned up in the inside pocket of my coat.

So I now owe money all over town. I may as well use this as a IOU record. It stands at £10 Rab, £60 DM, £50 Anthony, £10 Anjali, £20 Chi and £80 Adrian. Don't need to pay that last one back though.

That is quite a lot for one week. There is some change which will hopefully last me tonight.

2009-04-02T17:41:00.015+01:00

I have to confess that I did indulge Darwin Dating a little after I got accepted. I sent some emails. They went something along the lines of "Is this really real? Oh, and you are hot."

I could have easily sent the same message to all 250 London girls as there is nothing on these profiles to tailor to anyway. But my soul was sufficiently sullied by the fifth one.

Since then - a week ago - I had received nothing in reply until today. I did get one message from a different girl which was the fantastically dim "hey, your hot. oxox"

Bear in mind that when you go to send a message, the DD team fills it with the default "Wow, you're hot!".

Back to today and the reply I got from one of the five I messaged. Normally I wouldn't re-print such a thing but as this was so obviously from a fake person, I will overlook such niceties.

hello, i got your message and it's realy nice to read from you.
You have been the only one who has send me email since i have registered and am so much happy for this...
Here is my email address below and i guess we can continue by sending mails....
my email address is...
{?.?@yahoo.com}
xxxxxx

As I obviously copied and pasted that, I decided not to include the numerous (sic)s. They would have reduced its already low level of readability.

I reads like English is not her first language. Fair enough, and yet her surname is quintessentially English and she lives in London.

(Those xs are kisses rather than me blanking out her name.)

There is also no way I am the first person to message her...

I Googled her name and came up with nothing. She has a Facebook account with a different photo which is probably her. She has precisely two Facebook friends.

What the hell is going on? This is surely a rather laborious method of harvesting email addresses for spam. I am being groomed for something, that's for sure.

I am curious to know what that something is and will probably reply for that reason. I should first set up a special DD email account. Something like truman@yahoo.com or i_suck_419s@hotmail.com.

2009-04-02T14:39:00.004+01:00

As blog hiatuses go, ten days isn't massive for me. There are various reasons for it. Well two.

Firstly not much has happened on the dating front. Nothing in fact. I didn't go on to the site for most of last week, and haven't been in contact with anyone new. But dating is a bit boring and I should move on to other topics.

The other is that I gave Teri the URL and felt a bit weird continuing blogging when she would probably get mentions and would probably be reading it.

Hi!

I am less worried about the second reason since I met up with Teri yesterday for lunch. She has met a new guy called Dan who she is really into. After a week of seeing eachother lots it seems like a good one. I am happy for her. My thoughts on the Esmé/Teri thing have been mixed over the past week or so. I was becoming more and more keen on Esmé in that time, but that was no doubt in part due to her silence. At the same time I began to think that Teri and I might not have been compatible romantically. But I do want to keep seeing her as friends.

Ok, so it is still weird.

One last mention to say that yesterday Teri neatly voiced my doubts over the GSM approach to finding a boy/girlfriend. It is the complete lack of context of any meeting. It doesn't matter how many emails are exchanged or how well a conversation goes, dates from such a basis will always be two dimensional.

It is what a person surrounds themselves with that is important. Where they live and how they get about, who they see and how often and where. These are all the things that one may easily glean from a person if you meet them in some part of their real world. For example at work or school/university or through a mutual friend. GSM plucks its characters out of their environment and the conversations of their meeting cannot hope to re-create such tapestries.

Teri and Dan's approach has been to invade each other's worlds at haste. She has already met people he plays music with and his brother. She was taking her friend John to meet him yesterday and he's been round to her house (a lot).

I admire this approach. Said friend John turned up half way through our lunch yesterday and it immediately provided a new aspect to Teri. It is definitely a good tactic to apply to dating, though one which would probably alarm many early on.

Back to Esmé and she isn't off the scene. In fact we are due to meet for the second time tomorrow. However this has only come about through attrition on my part. Last Sunday at the end of the week we had vaguely agreed to meet in, she still hadn't replied. So I bit the bullet and wrote again. As Laura had advised - I had nothing to lose. She added that I almost certainly had nothing to gain.

In the message I decided not to attempt breeziness with a "just wondering if you still wanted to meet up" but instead made fairly heavy reference to me writing twice in a row, ten days apart. I did this to deprecate me not her.

She replied saying sorry and that she had been really busy at work. Did I want to meet this week? Thursday, Friday or Saturday?

I was slightly surprised by her offering these three days in spite of her previous apparent lack of interest. I replied on Monday saying Friday (tomorrow). And then more silence until a text message this morning saying sorry again and that she would text later with a venue.

I've decided to stop reading anything into speed of replying. I was off whack with Teri. Her approach was to reply as soon as she read it, unless she had to rush out. There was no agonising of how cool she looked or any of that crap. She had sometimes wondered about when Dan replied but once they'd met up this anxiety was proven to be misplaced.

So I choose to believe Esmé when she says that work is busy and her home internet is on the fritz.

I realise that that second bit sounds made up. I mean who lives without home internet? Apart from me.

I mentioned this to Teri. When she asked how that was possible, I said that I use an internet café round the corner from my flat. I was being disingenuous and should have replaced "café" with "Chicken Cottage".

It is quite a place. Not a date venue.

Before I used it I admit I thought such a concept was hopelessly flawed. Now I have I can confirm that it certainly is. I am one of the least germaphobic people I know so it isn't the woeful hygiene but just the horrible stench. And the creaking metal stools. And the people sitting on them. And their facial tics. And that I am there.

It's worth its own blog post. I will do a real-time one from there as that is more likely to do it justice.

2009-03-24T12:13:00.005Z

I'm on a low ebb at the moment. It's true that Esmé hasn't got back to me and appears to be history, but it isn't really GSM related.

More of an emotional hangover from the wedding. It is an odd feeling to see your only sibling waltz off into marriage. I am so happy for her and it was a genuinely wonderful thing to see her so delighted with it all. All their friends created such a vital atmosphere which combined with the plush surroundings to make for the best wedding I've been to.

The gloom isn't because I've lost a sister cos I don't think of it like that. She's been living with Ben for a while now and I don't feel such possession makes any sense anyway.

It is just plain ugly jealousy. It's all about me of course. Well it is here so there's no point avoiding the issue. The perfection of the wedding and the fact that they are both clicked in for life. These give me the pangs. She does have nearly two years on me but I am floundering in so many aspects of my life that I stand little chance of being as sorted as her at her age.

Plus there were the hoards of friends who seemed so sorted as well with their pregnancies, babies and good jobs.

I should snap out of it. After all, all the guys there on Saturday probably wished they were me and all their girlfriends/wives probably wished the same.

I certainly don't let these self-indulgent thoughts overshadow how proud and pleased I am for her.

And aside from the emotional hangover, I am probably still not physically recovered. That fug is certainly propping up my melancholy.

2009-03-23T12:25:00.005Z

I'm suffering a little today, in day two of the wedding hangover. I behaved well though and didn't make a fool of myself. I made sure of this by drinking little but water during the meal.

The wedding was at The Lanesborough on Hyde Park Corner and coincidently one of Antony's colleagues had a room there that night, so we stayed up till about 7am. As I had none of my possessions on me I had to go and sleep at Antony's for a while. Then met up with the newly marrieds plus some of their friends in the Dog House in Kennington for a few. So yeah - fortunately I was only there physically, not figuratively.

I had no possessions on me at the wedding - such as keys and phone - because I didn't want to ruin the line of my new suit. I'm not usually this precious about clothes, not ever in fact. But it really is a nice one. And with the silver shoes I think I looked all right. The shoes got a lot of attention at any rate.

There were couple of Harriet's friends who I'd had major crushes on in the past. One from secondary school and one from university. Unfortunately they were both pregnant. And the university one is married. In fact I think her surname is now Marriage, just in case I had any lingering doubts over her availability.

In other news, I got the following email from Darwin Dating...

Darwin Dating ... Did You Make It?

Dear Ed,

WOW, you're hot! Congratulations on being selected by the oh-so-hot members of Darwin Dating as someone they want to mate with! You are now a fully fledged member of Darwin Dating.

Lots of people who have applied for membership have been rejected, so you're definitely in the hottest proportion of the human race.

The next step is to complete your profile online and upload it for other members to view. Once you have done this any member will be able to initiate contact with you and you will be able to contact any other member for free!

As a member you now have a much bigger say in who else will be accepted as members to the site! Once you have logged in you can browse and rate the latest group of applicants.

We've only recently launched the site, so there aren't a huge number of people to search through yet. However traffic is increasing and while we still receive many ugly applicants, hot people are signing up all the time.

Please forward details of the site to your hot friends and hopefully we'll be able to build a nice repository of hot people for you to contact!

Yours in attractive people,

The Darwin Dating team

So that's exciting. It really isn't. As I've mentioned before, the site is a lot worse than it thinks it is. Its funtionality still bemuses me. I just put in a tagline of "1 2 3" as the blurb field seemed to be missing and I thought adding a tagline would reveal it. It duly did, but now I'm unable to edit the tagline.

Also the line in their email about uploading my profile seems a little odd. There doesn't seem to be a way of doing this, and anyway my profile is already there under the searches. And as for rating other potential members, this seems to be absent as well.

I predict that I will probably be able to change my profile picture whilst keeping my full membership. It's so poorly thought through that this probably hasn't occurred to them. So I might let out the profile for a small fee. Get in touch.

2009-03-20T17:33:00.001Z

That GSM distance didn't last long, did it? Logged on just now to read my first unsolicited hetro male email. It was a guy complementing my blurbs. I wrote back to him saying he might want to loosen his age bracket as Teri had told me how much of a turn off it is to see a guy only looking for girls younger than him. But I phrased it nicer than that.

I also garnered a homo male fan.

With this change of tone I checked out some other male profiles. Just looking like. The FuckingIdiot I mentioned before has removed his profile, but I was depressed to learn that the current male #1 is equally stupid. I am really tempted to send him a message to let him know this.

So I drafted the message below. I'll sleep on it.

Hi there Brett.

I am sorry for this bile filled rant, but how the hell are you top of the popularity charts?

Your illiterate profile has me wondering. Is it because it sounds like the musings of some sort of horrible female stereotype? I love chocolate?!

Or the thinly veiled oral sex reference?

I realise that by writing to you I am exposing myself as the self-obsessed twat that I surely am. And also realise that I am contributing to your popularity. Perhaps that’s how you got there.

I don't mean to be mean. It's just that you are a fascinating anomaly.

Maybe it's cos you aren't pouting ridiculously on your front photo, as I am.

Just please tell me you didn't get there by whoring yourself out; tagging hundreds and hundreds of women.

Take it easy (on your use of apostrophes).

2009-03-20T15:32:00.002Z

Wow-wee I'm hungover today. Don't really remember the end of last night. Really there is no 'really' about it. Started in the insalubrious John Snow and then went to the rather opposite Bungalow 8. Then I don't know. Woke up on my sofa at about 9am. Then decided to go to bed. Got to work about 12:30 and went to a pub lunch with Anjali. To take the edge off.

The edge is currently off. Got a familial meal to celebrate Harriet's last night of freedom tonight. Then it's the wedding. I'm looking forward to it.

Harriet asked me to do a reading at the ceremony. She knows that I would rather stick pins in my japs eye so said that I was welcome to refuse. I'm ashamed to say that I did just that. It was only a short reading but it would've ruined me. It's all about me.

I haven't been on GSM for two days now. Straight edging is sobering. I feel quite removed from it now. Teri and Esmé are still in my mind but the rest of the whirlwind isn't and that is a good thing. I am worrying that Esmé is going to cancel on me. She hasn't replied to my last message and I think that when she does it'll be a brush off.

It occurred to me yesterday how analogous all this is to a job application. It is a banal occurrence. But apt. One's profile is the CV. The messaging is the covering letter. Then one gets offered an interview and a second one perhaps. But there are other candidates and the better the prospect, the more numerous the candidates. One could be perfectly well qualified, but if there is someone else who is even more so then it will never happen. Maybe that person doesn't use 'one' to refer to oneself.

It's 3:30 and I'm really quite drunk.

2009-03-19T17:31:00.002Z

It's my sister's wedding on Saturday, so I thought it was probably about time I went and bought something to wear.

The last wedding I went to was in December and I wore silver shoes, charcoal trousers, black shirt and black/silver tie. I looked good I think. Until I got horrendously drunk, taxied home, fell over at some point grazing my chin and breaking an already false tooth.

The shoes had slippery soles you see.

I had thought of rehearsing the outfit for Harriet's as they have a similar sort of dress-code. But I decided to smarten up a bit and suit it. The shoes stay though.

I only have one suit which is a little big on the shoulders and looks too work-like for a wedding, even with silver shoes. So last night I tried Banana Republic and Armani Exchange. Banana didn't have the slimline look I was after as they are American. Armani had a quite good one, but it was a bit too casual. The Italian assistant was helpful and pretty. She took the piss out of my choice of shirt saying I was such a typical English guy. She was being quite flirtatious. I practised flirting back. It's quite easy really. As I said thanks and goodbye I touched her arm to show that I was in fact a red blooded latin lover. Ok so it was only an arm squeeze, and I even managed to mess it up by not being forceful enough; more like a arm tap. She tapped back though.

I still didn't have a suit.

Today I went up a level to Emporio Armani. I tried a few different ones on and settled on a couple, but waited till my uncle turned up to help me make sure I didn't get a bad one. He is much better at these things than I am. Much better than completely shit.

The assistant had been helpful but was this time male. This didn't stop me flirting. While he was arranging the suits for me he moved a fancy pair of pants out the way so I asked him if he wanted me to try them on. I think the flirting worked again.

When Nicholas arrived I tried on one new one which was a nice light grey wide pin-stripe but was too showy to wear normally. So I settled on the darker grey one I'd picked out earlier.

I'll look good I think. Until I get horrendously.. etc.

I'm a little scared about them having it ready on time as they need to take out the trousers a bit (they were a 30'' after all). They promise it'll be ready by Saturday morning, but if it isn't I might go for the pants. They are a bit showy.

2009-03-18T12:30:00.005Z

Having got the news of a potential second date with Esmé I set about ending all other possibilities with gusto. I don't listen to people (who shall remain nameless).

Camille was sweet in her reply, saying that that was the way of the internet.

I rang up Teri to say that we should postpone meeting up till after I'd met Esmé next week. I wanted to try and make it clear that she wasn't my backup, the phrase she'd jokingly used when we met on Monday. It's true that she isn't. I just don't have the mental fortitude to deal with more than one real prospect. It was more a matter of timing. When Esmé came on the scene, Teri was off it.

Over the phone it seemed like Teri and I understood eachother. So it was rather bemusing that by the time I'd hung up we'd agreed to meet for a drink in half an hour.

I then panicked because I was wearing the same shirt that I was wearing when I met her the night before. This isn't something I regularly do, but it really wasn't dirty and my hungover self had not been capable of ironing that morning. Perhaps this wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't drawn attention to the shirt when we met on Monday night, saying it was the same one I wore when we met in The Gallery two weeks prior.

Just to be clear - I do own more than one shirt.

So I rushed to the horrible shop T M Lewin to try and buy a new one. I hate cufflinks and 90% of their stock is double-cuffed. I hastily chose one from their small selection of others. When I got back to the office and put it on I realised that I had bought the worst shirt the world has ever sewn. It was black with thin close white pin-stripes. And it had the opposite monochrome as lining on the cuffs and collar. Quite revolting.

We met outside the British Library and walked to a bar on York Way whose name I can't recall. We were supposed to stay for one drink only, but I counted five pass my lips. If Teri was trying to get me drunk and take advantage of me then it wasn't working as I remained remarkably sober. She was less so by the end. Maybe I was on my guard more. There was no snogging.

She texted today say that we probably shouldn't meet up amongst alcohol again until I know what will happen with Esmé. I agreed.

2009-03-17T17:40:00.001Z

Portents be gone; it was a yes.

(Teri took the piss out of me last night for using a semicolon in a text message to her after our first date. It was the first time she'd seen such a daft thing. First for me as well. Having read about semicolons in the Guardian style guide a few months ago I've become rather fond of them.)

Esmé can't make it this week but next week is good. That may mean she's got others this week. But it may not. Maybe I should stop fucking over-analysing things and be pleased she said yes.

I cancelled tomorrow's second date with Camille. Perhaps I should have gone along but I wasn't massively keen on the idea even before the saga of the last few days. I said that I felt uncomfortable seeing her as I had fallen for someone else. I left it at one person.

I made reference to the glossy magazine advice she quoted last week by saying that it probably won't work out for me due to my terrible Cosmo Karma. Don't know if she's Seinfeld fan though.

2009-03-17T14:23:00.002Z

Two posts in one day. This time I'm petrified.

It wasn't silence from Esmé. There is now a message waiting for me but I cannot look at it straight away. Esmé doesn't treat GSM in the same way as me, but she may notice the prompt reading.

Usually I wouldn't expect a reply if the answer was going to be "no". But I suspect that she wouldn't be averse to sending a "no" just through politeness. She seems like a polite and proper girl. I tried throwing a few swears into our conversation on Sunday to see if she swore back. She didn't.

So the portents have gone from bad to medium, at best.

2009-03-17T14:18:00.004Z

It was an error to see Teri last night at The Sun in Bethnal Green (£3 a pint of Beck's!). My mind was still racing from Esmé the night before. I had agreed with Teri that it would be a non-date. This was initially settled when she was still Go with Matt. But that subsequently ended she had asked on the phone on Sunday whether we were still on for non-date or if it was real.

At the time I thought "Fuck it - you wanted it to be non before and now I've got a date with Esmé I want it to be non now." Looking back that was a stupid point of view. I hadn't even met Esmé so why was I predicting things and pretending our situation was analogous to Teri and Matt, who had rather a lot more going?

The non-date with Teri was once again fun. I found out that the conversation that made her feel bad at the end of the first date was not my perceived botched kiss goodbye but instead when I had asked her how many favourites she had.

This is doubly bad since I had reacted badly to Abi asking the same question of me. When I wrote that post I did have in the back of my mind the similar conversation with Teri but imagined it was a more natural one. I was wrong and it upsets me that I can have been so arrogant not to have noticed the effect on Teri.

I also now realise she didn't expect or even want to kiss me at the end of that night. I have a similar reaction to this that I do to the favourites story - embarrassment.

It is I think clear that most hubris I display on here or when talking to friends is tongue in cheek. But I've now realised that more of it is real than I am at all comfortable with. I've still got more than a month's worth of subs but now I feel like cutting GSM loose after the Esmé/Teri thing resolves itself. I expect I'll change my mind, but I haven't written to anyone else or tagged anyone in the last week or so.

I'm glad Teri gave me this wake-up call.

At the end of the date we both got on the Central Line going west. Teri accused me of biting my nails, but actually I'd just cut them to the quick. Why do I do this? It's a shit look and hurts as well, yet I do it every time. This time had been on Finchley Road platform on the way to see Esmé. Shameless? I was hidden on the Met Line side of the waiting room where no one was standing. It was fine.

Back on the tube and Teri showed me her freakishly short thumbs. Unfortunately she then compared them to my freakishly only slightly longer thumbs. I think my Richard Herring hands are probably my least satisfactory body parts. Certainly of the normally visible ones. They probably have something to do with my woeful flirting abilities as arms/hands are the crucial wooing appendages. In public at any rate.

In mid-conversation Teri jumped up and said it was her stop, bounding off the train. I had foolishly thought she'd stay on till Tottenham Court Road, but of course the Northern Line change at Bank was better for her. It was mid-word in fact and I was left mouth agape. The woman opposite tried valiantly to stifle a chuckle but failed.

I got home about 12:30 and checked to see if Esmé had checked my message. She had, of course. Had she replied? No, of course.

I've checked her online status a few times today and it's shown she hadn't logged in since last night. It is possible that she is considering her reply, as she admitted she did that. But the question was fairly straightforward so the portents are bad.

I just this minute checked her online status and she's online now for the first time today. I fear the worst. Silence.

2009-03-16T13:14:00.004Z

Had my date with Esmé last night at the Southwark Tavern near London Bridge. She totally bowled me over and I'm once again smitten. She managed to be more attractive than her pictures, which were perhaps the best I've seen on GSM, and just as brainy as her messages. She's out of my league.

Before all that I did a cyclosportive in Burgess Hill. This involved getting the train from my parents' at 7:13 and starting the ride soon after 9am. It was a tough route with a lot of climbing - more than 1500m over the 114km course. I was quite pleased with my form and went round in 4'39''. This included a 10'' wait as the guy I'd befriended and ridden most of the way with got a puncture. It was sort of my fault since I neglected to point out a pot-hole in time whilst riding in front. He was pretty inept at fixing the puncture but I didn't want to patronise him by offering advice. The way he was doing it made it pretty likely the inner tube would pinch and he'd have another puncture before long. Five minutes later he had to stop again. I didn't, so didn't.

The weather was fine and I managed to get a little sunburnt. I ruefully remembered the time when I'd turned down a definite column 5 with an American friend of a friend just because she overdid it on the sunbed that afternoon. She was hot.

My sunburn wasn't that bad but it wasn't going to do me any favours. Especially if I drew Esmé's attention to it by mentioning it, as I duly did. She said it didn't show and that it was dark.

We had a really good time I think. Well I did. Chatted about many of the usual things and agreed on most. It is a little worrying that she is so very similar to Laura. But who cares - it's a good thing to be similar to.

We had a selves-indulgent conversation about Oxbridge angst. That sounds awful. You had to be there. That sounds worse.

She is erudite and inquisitive. Out of all the people I've been in touch with, she's the only one to have commented on my username uroplatus. She'd obviously looked it up and asked me about geckos. I like this a lot since I would be interested to find out why someone I liked had used an unusual sounding name.

In fact it is no longer true that she is the only one as I got a new message this morning about the same thing. Alas hers was the less good enquiry "uroplatus - what's that all about?" I was tempted to give a one word reply in the form of a URL.

Once again I bottled out of the kiss at the end of the date. It was a different situation to Teri. Teri had been more flirtatious and we'd been more direct with our conversation. Esmé seemed shy at points, so I decided it might not go down too well.

We left and I said "I'll be in touch." I'm still cringing more than 12 hours later. Was it a job interview we'd just been at?

I did check to see if she'd gone online after the date and I don't think she did. She must've logged on at some point this morning but when I logged on I saw that she had done so in part to look at my profile. Not sure what to make of that. Surely it can only be a good thing, unless she did it by accident.

So I sent her a message and took the piss out of my hopeless departing line last night. Asked to meet again. We'll see.

2009-03-13T11:14:00.001Z

I'm glad I didn't cancel Antony - it was a good night.

We met in Bedford and Strand for a couple and then went on to the Ivy Club. There were 30 or so paparazzi outside. I hoped that there might be a good person inside. Moss or someone. Turned out it was James McAvoy, who I hadn't really heard of. He had a posse of attractive ladies with him.

We left fairly early, before him. The stairs on the way out are visible from the street as the building has a glass front. So on the way down Antony pulled up his suit jacket over his head, and as we exited half the waiting paps bustled around us. I don't think they took any photos, but I'll check London Lite this evening.

Not much movement on the dating. Teri called me in Bedford and Strand (I made sure its clamour was clearly audible) sounding a little off-hand. She said we will meet on Monday and I had to come up with a place there and then. I failed, saying I couldn't concentrate on that now. She also said that I should have zero expectations as she was seeing Matt (found out his name) the day after. I should've said "likewise - I'm seeing Esmé the day prior".

In fact I'm still waiting for her reply from yesterday. It's going to be especially devious if the Esmé date never occurs.

2009-03-12T18:36:00.011Z

Two posts in one day.. I must be excited.

The flurry of emails to and from Teri continued. I said I'd like to meet up to see what's what and she replied seconds later with "When?". I said it would have to be next week. I'm meeting Antony tonight and could cancel but there's was no way I was going to meet so soon. Plus I want to meet Esmé first. And I haven't seen Antony in a while. I genuinely am busy tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday.

She then replied that I had previously said I had a date tonight. That was a bit of a slip-up. When I wrote that I think I had tentatively agreed to meet Esmé tonight.

Now Teri thinks I'm fibbing. Is this a good thing? I think probably not. I explained that I'd re-scheduled Esmé, but I don't think she believes me.

So it is left with Teri saying she'll get back to me and that she is confused. I could send her a reply explaining further about my inconsistency but that would no doubt make things worse. So I'll leave it.

Better make damn sure Teri doesn't catch me on GSM through my phone this evening. And better hope to fuck she hasn't Googled her way here. But I think that would be just as devious. Besides there's plenty of more rubbish here than this post to put her off.

2009-03-12T18:07:00.004Z

The latest thing from Esmé to beguile me is her agonising over whether or not geography should have a capital g. She had used one in her previous message and I'd replied not using one. I thought it might seem a little obstinate but then thought she may not notice or care. But she did and brought it up.

This is what counts as courtship for me.

I'm riding high again on stupid expectation. On the crest of the sine wave, but it's all built on sand. I used up my writing skills for today on her.

Teri is fading, but I wonder if that will change when I meet her again on Monday. As I'm meeting Esmé on Sunday I will surely be in a state by the end of Monday night. I just got an email from Teri asking for more advice on her new guy (don't know his name). My petulance on this has faded as well and I don't really mind. I replied but asked her for her thoughts on Esmé in return. Her reply said she thought she was stunning and seemed clever and that she was vaguely jealous that we were meeting up.

It had occurred to me before I sent it that that reaction was a possibility. I am a pathetic human being. It's not a big deal though and I wanted a bit of parity in the exchange. Like I said - pathetic.

Oh.. I just this minute got another reply from Teri accusing me of doing the jealousy thing deliberately. Rumbled. This is fun. And still pathetic.

Jeez - got another reply from Teri. I replied to her accusation saying "Of course not!" in a sarcastic way. Now she's written to say she is no longer just vaguely jealous and thinks she's made a mistake and should've met me again before deciding. Also that my nervousness at the of the date left her with a bad feeling. That bus stop may haunt me for ever.

What was that I said about fading feelings? The curve is more tan that sine, and I'm fast approaching 90º (or π/2 for the real nerds).

2009-03-11T20:52:00.005Z

Playing it cool is not going very well.

Having waited all of three days to reply to Camille's request for a second date, I got a barrage of abuse. I exaggerate but she certainly let me know she wasn't happy; according to glossy magazines my indifference should be treated with a plain rebuttal. She was half joking.

After a couple of paragraphs she reneged and we are due to meet next Wednesday. I'm keeping a lid on my excitement. Sarcasm aside, it will be good to try a second date with the dynamics that provides. That's a lie - I'm hoping I might find someone better before then so I can cancel.

If that's going to happen then it'll have to be Esmé, who I am meeting on Sunday. As an former #1 she might be a little over-subscribed but it's worth a try. Our emails have been enjoyable so far. She uses even more pretentious language than me.

I think I might've given her a false impression by saying I'd done an MSc in cartography - not precisely true. She then launched into her love of maps. It's hardly the biggest deception ever - more down to semantics than anything. Besides, maps is something where I can hold my own.

I might meet Teri on Monday or Tuesday. I have been firmly cast as a rock and she's now asking me for advice on her other dates. Well - two so far. I partly brought this on myself since I was so willing to pass judgment Rob - the first of these. But I did say I probably wouldn't want to meet as friends for a couple of weeks, so she might've picked up on the fact that I also might not be keen to discuss her burgeoning relationships.

But it really is my fault. No one's forcing me to write to her. Truth is I do want to meet as friends as I enjoy emailing her and enjoyed talking to her. The acute desire has waned somewhat. This is in part because of the prospect of Esme. That's the tactic - keep replacing your unrequiteds. Better to have a sine wave of lust than for it to exponential fade.

(I've kept my maths degree under my hat whilst emailing Esmé.)

Back in the real world I had a date with Ami in The Oxford, Kentish Town. I played it cool by being almost 15 minutes late. But then played it really uncool by apologising too profusely. It is a really rude thing to do and there was no reason for it - just left the office too late. There's nothing quite like the feeling of maybe being stood up.

It was another good conversation but another non-starter. Fuck conversation. I don't give a shit about conversation.

We talked about GSM towards the end. Abi seemed more obsessed with popularity than me. She'd been at #3 apparently and wanted to know how many fans I'd got. Even I was slightly baulking at the baldness of this exchange, but I told her. I was surprised to hear we had the same number pretty much. So maybe the girls are as enthusiastic as the boys when playing tag.

She then asked me who had got in touch first out of the people I'd met. I hadn't thought about this and couldn't recall at first. I worked out that it was probably four me and four them. She seemed taken aback by this and said that I was the only one she had contacted first. And that I should be flattered by this. Increasingly I suspected that I shouldn't.

The worst email she'd received had apparently ended something like "I really like you and hope you get in touch; you look like Barbara Streisand." She was laughing when she told me this, saying how that was the worse insult she'd ever been given. "Don't you think that's the worst thing he could've said?! I mean Barbara Streisand!!"

All I could do was smile vacantly and nod cos all my brain was thinking was "Oh.. That's who I was thinking of.. "

2009-03-10T17:10:00.008Z

I love DD. It is so crap. The technical glitch which prevented me logging in yesterday has been resolved, so I've been snooping around as a non-member. My membership will be revoked or fully accepted in a few days. Frankly I don't want acceptance.*

I've looked through a few profiles and almost all of them - like mine - consist of one photo and no words. And the photos really aren't all that. The people I was looking at yesterday were in the top 10 and are undoubtedly lookers. But most of the rest really aren't. There is a lot of pouting, and poses that look so uncomfortable the wind must have changed at an awkward moment. Their own wind. There's shoulder here; a groin there. Nothing is natural.

All of the aspects of a portrait that are considered attractive by morons are included. And with the self-preserving selection policy, the generations of DD have exaggerated this. It's web-based eugenics. The result is mutants with lip-gloss.

I quite like my theory but perhaps intelligence is involved. It occurred to me that as a male member (how apt) it would be judicious to rate the girls as normal but the boys in reverse. And vice versa

I think I am flattering the readership of DD to imagine that this is what's going on.

DD also continues to be an arse to use. There are 260 girls who live in London. But on closer inspection this is a fallacy. Quite a few are from London(Essex), Cathryn is from London(Hailsham) and Anna is from London(Murmansk). Kiki is from London(Lomdon).

All of this crud makes me fond of GSM again. So far the Venn diagram of GSM girls and DD girls insects over one. Yes - she is in my favourites. No - I'm not in hers.

*This is not true.

2009-03-09T18:29:00.005Z

GSM v2.2 hasn't been a roaring success. I tried to take a fresh look at things and see who was out there, having not paid much attention in the last couple of weeks. But it all seemed a bit stale. There are some new people around. I think I'm just bored of the process.

For example there is Helen. She looks nice and is the most prolific punner I have come across, shoehorning ten into a two line email. After a few emails I suggested meeting up and she wrote back saying that she prefers emailing and doesn't intend to meet anyone for a while. What is she doing?

It's just so tedious. There is keenness but it's never mutual; I still haven't emailed the Pole. She hasn't been playing it cool.

I've been there.

Playing it cool is something I should learn. On Friday night I was discussing this with Anthony and Dan. The suggestion was that all dates should be limited to 90 minutes. At the time I thought this was a load of crap. But on reflection maybe it's a good rule. After 90 minutes I am bound to have found out if I'm interested. I know that in the dates I've done, my opinion hasn't changed after that point.

It is no doubt the same for the other person. So what harm can there be in stopping at that point? Surely it would just pique further interest. Thus the second date is more likely to happen and be good.

I really hate this sort of analysis. Dating rules seem so manipulative. All about adjusting to a position of power. This is a nasty way to go about finding someone to fall in love with.

Yikes - that got a bit flowery.

But really, concepts like The Game make my skin crawl. And I like to think that the type of person I would be interested in wouldn't fall for such skulduggery. But I suppose that very few people are immune to it. I know I'm not. The Pole's follow up email - simply phrased "???" - did absolutely nothing for me.

I will give the 90 minute rule a try, if only to cut down my alcohol intake.

Maybe my boredom with GSM has something to do with discovering Darwin Dating. This exquisitely vile website only grants you membership if the existing members think you are good looking enough.

I'm sure it isn't an original idea.

The website is horrible to use. It's badly designed and has all sorts of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. But I don't suppose many of its visitors are bothered by that. I saw some of the blurbs and they are bad.

GSM and Darwin Dating are succintly compared by two usernames I saw today - spiritandsoul and futuremilf.

I applied to join of course.

The process is that you upload the crucial photo then give your first name, where you live and your date of birth (making sure it is after 1974). You are given a limited account while the site's admin vet your photo and if it's good enough they put it up for examination. Something like the top 10% get through and become full members whereupon they engage in witless flirting for free with the other members.

Fingers crossed.

I have checked out some of the male competition and I am well aware that this is a bridge too far even with my most flattering photos. In fact I've been trying to log on and it no longer connects to my limited account. It's just a Windows error page so I can't be sure if it's my aesthetic or their shonky code which is at fault. I think it's the former.

2009-03-07T15:01:00.005Z

I thought right. A couple of hours after that last post Teri sent me a Yahoo email calling time. She said that there hadn't been a strong enough romantic connection for it to work. She also said that she was glad to have had time to think it through carefully as she usually rushes into affairs of the heart. Translation: you really should've taken that chance to kiss me at the bus stop.

She did not mention what was happening with her and Rob. It occured to my vain brain that actually she might still be into me but was just being cruel to be kind; she didn't want me pining whilst her and Rob gave it a go. But I read her eloquent email again and realised that this was probably not the case.

For the first time since I met her, Teri reminded me of one of the two girls who I had initially recognised in her profile - Alexandra the Greek from university. After a brief liaison Alex had ended things in a similar if more abrupt way. Her line - which is etched on my frontal lobe - was that she "didn't like me enough to go out with me". Ouch. I tried to convince myself that it would have sounded better in Greek, but she was pretty good at her second language.

Alex's is my most acute heartbreak. Her line put me in a situation which could be accurately described as godforsaken.

I'm pretty winded by Teri's rejection as well. She has since sent a message describing a terrible date last night with a third guy, so her and Rob don't seem to be going steady yet. Three dates in a week?! The harlot.

Obviously her rejection doesn't compare to Alex's. We'd only been on a date after all. The problem is that Teri is the only person who has got me going in GSM v2 so she represents all the time I've invested in it. And that is a lot. This damns my stupid approach to the process whereby I refuse to get involved unless I'm sure the person is absolutely amazing.

I read Camille's message last night and she is keen. This is a girl who is pretty, clever and has an amazing job helping destitutes and prostitutes. She is almost perfect, but I'm not interested. I suppose I should empathise with Teri. And enjoy being almost perfect.

In her inital message Teri said how much she would like to meet again platonically. I said I'd like to in a couple of weeks when things have calmed down in my head; I really would like to be friends with her. I'm in trouble with Anthony for that folly. He would rather I met up with the Polish girl with the low-cut top. I probably should. I need a new approach to the process. GSM v2.2.

2009-03-06T15:20:00.003Z

I think it's game over with Teri. I haven't logged on today but have checked her and Rob's online status occassionally. I use the word 'occassionally' rather misleadingly.

Neither have shown up as online all day which is certainly suss as they are usually both online a lot.

This makes their "online now" status late last night (early this morning) all the more curious. Perhaps they did go back to their respective homes but have spent today together, smothered in margarine.

I really need to snap out of this. If she wasn't on the scene then I expect I would be genuinely interested in Camille and K.

Her interest in Rob is disappointing in more than the obvious way. It makes me think she isn't quite as good a judge as I thought. K for example would have no truck with his stupid profile. But who knows - maybe someone's real life persona can be different to their online one. And it is arguably more important.

Well, if I think less of her and more of K then that is a good thing.

My manic state is exacerbated by my current tiredness and malnutrition. I've been living on ham and cheese sandwiches, Marmite sandwiches and beer sandwiches all week.

2009-03-05T23:59:00.003Z

Last date of the week. Katherine at The Duke Of York pub in Bloomsbury.

Again it was pretty amazing chat. I hate the use of the word 'chat' in that way. In fact she might have been the best of the lot.

The evening did not start well though. I'd been skiving most of the day. In part writing this shit, well yesterday's shit and the day before. And then got an email from my boss asking for a thing that I should've done in the morning but hadn't. It would've taken about an hour to do but I was due to meet K in about half that. (Apologies, but I cannot be bothered to write her name out in full, especially as she doesn't spell it proper.)

So at 6:33pm I texted K to ask if we could postpone date half an hour to 7:30pm. She didn't reply so I had to give up on finishing the thing and head off to the pub. I resolved to come back to the office and do it afterwards. It might even look better if I sent it at midnight. And that's where I am now. The last tube is long gone and I may as well write this shit before getting on the buses. (Camille told me last night that a lot of down-and-outs spend the night on the buses, and that's a phrase. "Exit strategy" is also used by prostitutes when they talk about leaving the game. I inadvertently used it to describe trying to find a better option than my cushy well paid job working for The Man. On reflection, I think there is analogy there, but she didn't see it that way.)

As I was running to the pub I got a reply from K saying that the postponement was fine. She'd sent it at 6:51pm. I was not best pleased and now had 40 odd minutes to kill. I decided to go back to the office for a half shave. (That sounds made up, but it really isn't.)

Got to the pub at 7:30pm on the nose and saw my sister's future brother-in-law. I went to say hello and explained the situation and how I wouldn't be sitting at the table next to him even though that was the only one free.

A few minutes later K arrived. Double kiss was achieved with the minimum of fuss and we got our drinks. Fortunately another table had become free so we sat there.

Of all the prospective dates I was least excited by K's photos. I thought that it was probably a waste of time as I wouldn't fancy her. But her emails were really good and her taste in comedy seemed impeccable.

She has a large nose. I think I might fancy her. She wasn't as pretty as Camille but was I think more attractive

I have been seduced by her intelligence. This week has been an impressive one for Clever. Emma was a bit of a doofus, but the other three were pretty hot. I don't think I can rate beyond that.

K has a very similar intellect to Laura. Very well read and willing to bring me up on my short comings. She told me off for using highfalutin language. Something I seem to do quite a lot here. For example, she saw no need for the word 'ostensible', given that context should explain all. One should apparently give the reader some respect. I winced at the fact that I'd used that very word in a message to Teri the day before.

At the beginning K spoke really quietly and I had to lean in just so as to catch enough words to make sense with.

As the evening wore one she relaxed and spoke more freely and loudly. I tried to tease out of her previous date experiences but she wasn't going to say. We did talk about the anthropological interest of GSM towards the end. I told her about Mattafix and how she should become a friend of his (as the tune goes). He looked at my profile again today; I wonder how he's doing. I expect male interest will dwindle now I've slipped out of the Pop20. I'd like to say it had been fun, but it really didn't live up to expectations. And as a final insult, the FuckingIdiot I mentioned a while back is now top of the pile. I despair.

We left the pub at chucking out time and walked towards Theobald's Road. Fortunately there were no tubes to endure. I think she might be keen to meet again; she said we should swap proper email addresses.

Camille has sent me a text and a GSM message today. I haven't read the email yet, but I think it's fair to say the ball is in my court on that one. Just don't know if I want to play any more.

Really I'm still thinking mostly about Teri. It was her date with Rob tonight. I've checked to see if she'd online a few times since returning to the office. She was online some point after midnight, as was Rob. Who knows, maybe they've given each other their logins and were checking them whilst preparing ketchup on toast.

I told Teri about the blog and she was hassling me for the URL. I said it was probably a bit too close to the bone but might give it out in a while. Maybe I'm writing this two para qualification cos I know she'll read it. I'm not.

2009-03-04T17:49:00.001Z

Camille date at The Angelic in Angel. This is getting tiring, and there's one more tomorrow. That will be four nights in a row of getting drunk. I now know to sleep with a bottle of water ready by the bed. Another problem I've had is not getting round to eating in the evenings. Going straight from work makes eating tricky. But that means I tend to get drunk much faster.

All this combined with the nervous energy involved in dating means that I'm pretty worn out. So far I have only one date arranged for next week, with another if I agree to it. Get me. Two is I think enough.

Once again I was running a bit late and got to the pub a minute or two after the agreed time of 7:30. It was rammed. Wednesday is obviously a bigger night than I'd banked upon. I should have known - it is the new Thursday after all.

The place was really noisy and I had no chance of picking out Camille. She only has one picture on her profile and anyway these tend to be a little misleading, in the direction of good. I know mine are. And Laura kindly told me so the other day just in case I wasn't aware. She thought it was a tactic that would only lead to a paucity of second dates. So far, so right LJ.

I went to the upstairs bar to continue my search. It was much quieter and the table right in front of me at the top of the stairs a girl with dark hair was sitting on her own. We looked at each other for a half second and I almost panicked into saying hello, but just before my foot hit my mouth she cast a look of recognition over my shoulder. A close shave. (I still hadn't done a proper one of those but had gone for another cheek job.. the stubble was mounting up).

It turned out that the person she'd recognised was a barmaid and the girl was just thanking her for finding the table she was sat at. So it still might have been Camille. I sidled past the her to the corner of the room and faked the looking-around-the-room-for-my-friend gaze. This was pretty conspicuous as the bar up there was not at all full and the gaze was surely only valid for about 4 seconds. I tried 10 or 15 and every 2 of which I would look at the girl to ID her. She seemed to be waiting a little agitatedly herself. But even if I decided it was her, I couldn't possibly just walk back up to her having locked eyes 2 minutes prior.

As I had Camille's number I decided to go back downstairs, text her to say it was really busy and that I was awkwardly sitting by the door in a black coat. Those were the words I used. If it turned out she was the girl upstairs then I'd have to laugh that off.

She wasn't, but was instead running late and walking up the road in a checked coat.

Greeting went well although there was a hesitation with the second kiss. We decided against it. Then there was slightly awkward conversation as there was nowhere to sit so we both had to stand at the bar chatting whilst I tried to order drinks. It isn't possible to do all these things at once so I suggested we go to the upstairs bar as it was easier to get served. Table Girl was happily chatting to her two female friends.

After getting the drinks and chatting up there for a bit, we gave up on that bar as it was dominated by a large group of singing posh people. Instead we returned to the hubbub downstairs. When we got there a table became free and Camille snaked another couple to get it for us. I was impressed by this. She hadn't been outright rude but just asked them who was first. They hesitated in a polite English way and she said "well we've been waiting longer". Probably true. Just not in the same place.

Again the conversation was really easy. Perhaps I genuinely am getting better at it all. We were really similar in our outlooks on all sorts of big topics. Strangely prostitution came up for the second time in six dates. She works with young people who are involved in abusive situations connected with prostitution. Her job is very impressive and the work sounded fascinating.

We also talked about class and elitism, which was brought up when she was talking about living in Cambridge for a couple of years and how the university interacts with the town.

What else?.. Football and the concept of belonging and how she is fiercely defensive of her home town of Middlesbrough even though she hates tribalism generally. It was more to do with sticking up for the down-trodden. She didn't like the way her hometown was so often derided.

With her one-photo profile I was half expecting her to look a lot worse than said photo. But she didn't. She was attractive.

I have to admit that The Angelic is the first return venue for my dating. I'd been there with the beautiful Ranjana in GSM v1. And that finished with us taking the tube to King's Cross before saying goodbye. The lighting in the tube system is certainly no place to be in the dying embers of a first date. It tends to not leave a flattering last impression. Ranjana survived that examination extremely well but I don't think I did.

I really should email Ranjana again. We messaged each other a bit after the date but it fizzled out. Part of the problem was surely that she lived in Leeds, or else I would have been more insistent. When I casually looked at GSM a couple of months later I saw that she'd moved to London. Now her profile no longer exists so maybe she's found someone. But I have her real email so I may as well ask.

Anyway, the date with Camille finished in exactly the same way. Although she didn't do quite as well as Ranjana, she was good. Again I expect I was not.

So all the ingredients are there with Camille. But it's still meh..

In the "ideal match" blurb on my profile I deliberately take the piss out of notions of chemistry and spark, but maybe there is that sort of indescribable factor involved. If there is then it was absent last night. Or maybe my mind was wandering too much.

Whatever is going on, it is very annoying that I don't feel like texting Camille but cannot explain why.

She is from Middlesbrough I suppose.

2009-03-03T13:33:00.001Z

Emma date at The Clifton in St John's Wood. We had had a refreshingly short email exchange - me asking her out on the second of those messages. This meant we knew next to nothing about each other.

The date was set for 8pm and I left work a bit late. Got on the tube heading for Maida Vale and realised I hadn't brushed my teeth for a while. Not saying how long but it was a bit of a problem. Nor had I shaved.

I needed to do at least a half-shave (cheeks) to look adequate and not put her off in the very first seconds with the double kiss, which I was determined not to mess up after the Terible effort on Monday. So I emerged at Maida Vale with a fair amount of personal grooming to attend to. At least the deodorant would probably hold up. I really should have a GSM washbag.

With only 9 minutes left to get to the pub (5 minutes away) I dismissed the idea of buying a toothbrush but concentrated on razors and relied on chewing gum for the breath. Maida Vale only had cornershops and the selection was pretty poor. I found a pack of four Gillette Fusion refills but baulked at the £12 price tag and the dust on the packet. So settled on five Bics for 99p.

I have a full bathroom's worth of stuff at work for these exact situations but had left in too much of a hurry.

And now I was going to get to the pub late, Emma was going to be there, I would stubbly kiss her hello and go to the loos straightaway, chat for two or three hours then stubblessly kiss her goodbye.

I needn't have worried. She ended up being 10 or 15 minutes late herself. As we hadn't swapped numbers I sat in The Clifton nervously, wondering if my freshly Bicced cheeks looked as raw as they felt.

The place was pretty empty but despite this the best arrangement I could find was two armchairs at a small table. It meant that our legs were in full view, thus providing twice the usual amount of awkward body language. In the wait for her to arrive I tried about ten different arrangements of leg ranging from camp to butch to indifferent to just plain double-jointed.

I'm definitely getting better at the dating game.

She arrived apologising profusely and we sat down. Unfortunately I sat down more than her and it dawned on me that her armchair - though apparently the same as mine - had a rather more robust approach to cushioning. I was about 6 inches lower than her. All of a sudden the arrangement of my legs seemed inconsequential.

The conversation went well though. In the previous entry I attributed the good conversation to Teri when of course it depends on both people. So instead I will blame the other person for all my stifled dates.

Emma's a photographer who works in fashion and beauty stuff. She runs her own outfit and it seemed quite interesting. I think she was suitably unimpressed with my job. But then I no doubt phrased it such. I also looked like a bit of a stiff having come in my work clothes. They aren't that smart, but I probably should've un-tucked the shirt. I had thought about it but it didn't have a very good bottom to it. All straight rather than the more aesthetically pleasing long at back and front. Also the clip-cloppy leather soled shoes were pretty whack.

We stayed till closing, so it was a full three hour conversation. Not bad. Teri leads on that score I think with about four.

My main reservation with Emma was that she thought she was cooler than she probably was. At one point we were talking about going out in London late at night an I recounted when Adrian and I had come back from Dorita's house party in Canada Water, got back to central London around 4am and decided we'd try to continue the night. We discovered that London is a rather different place at 4 or 5 than it is at 2 or 3. Definitely a lot more seedy and we were beckoned towards all sorts of dodgy dives. I think we ended up giving up and going home.

Emma said I "should've gone to Trisha's, but it's not very well known". I said that I "knew it well but we must've forgotten that night". She said "yeah, it's a shame that too many people know about it now". I said "fuck you very much". But not out loud. I wanted to point out that I had been there maybe ten years ago but thought that would be a little churlish so rose above her snobbery of tucked-in shirts and tap dancing shoes.

Despite this glitch we left in good spirits, into the rainy night. She had a medium sized umbrella and I did not, so we walked rather uncomfortably close for about two minutes before our paths parted.

2009-03-02T14:52:00.002Z

Date with Teri at The Gallery in West Hampstead. As I said before, I thought its friendly premise would reduce its scariness but the fact that it was Teri meant it was being reduced from quite a height. I had to double-back on myself when I saw her standing at the bar.

Eventually I plucked up the courage at went in. I must have looked scared stiff cos she ended up offering her hand. Bad start.

But then almost immediately we were both at ease. This must be because of her personality as this has never happened before. She was just really easy to talk to.

She brought up the whole internet thing straight away. Rather predictably the other person - Rob - that she'd met wasn't as firm a fixture as she'd thought a week ago. In fact she seemed to have quite a few reservations about him. But he was talked about a lot. We talked about the whole GSM thing in general a lot. It was a good change from the usual tacit ignoring of it.

She is very clever and easy to talk to. I accidentally said 'arcane' when I meant 'archaic' and she noticed but was kind enough to let me correct myself rather than do it herself. Not sure any of that would have happened with Alanis.

By the end of it we were both pretty pissed, neither of us having eaten much that day. When we'd established that the bar had stopped serving food she asked if I had any food at home. I was kind of floored by this. I'd become so aligned to dates going… meet in a bar, chat for a couple of hours, leave bar and say goodbye with assorted platitudes. Plus I really didn't have any food at home. None. Well, some margarine and ketchup so I suppose I could've rustled up something.

So I told her about the lack of food and put an end to that sequence of events. I was genuinely confused by how things were going. She did seem to be into me. But Rob kept getting mentions. I wasn't quashing talk of him cos I was interested in what the situation was with them. It seemed to be that he was more interested in playing the field. But she probably would be keen if he said he was.

It was time to go and I walked her to her bus stop round the corner. I'm pretty sure she wanted to pash but I wussed out. The word 'pash' just about matches the absurdity of my approach to the situation. My head was spinning from alcohol and her talk of Rob, and just regular fear.

So I trudged home half full of regret and half full of excitement. Ok - I should've tried to kiss her but I think that not doing so was not the worst thing. The confusion of the situation had genuinely got to me. And I think she was confused too.

Who the fuck am I kidding? It was the worst thing.

Since the walk home, I've sent her a text which was full of drunken errors. She replied saying she'd been drunker than she had been in years.

So now it's Tuesday and I deliberately didn't log in to GSM till about lunchtime. She had mentioned that Rob had logged on the day after their date and she thought that was a bit off. Mind you their date had been rather longer than our one. There had been food in her house. Note to self.

I could see that she had logged in without having to log in myself. She had given me Rob's username so I looked him up. His words are not very good. He goes on about how unnecessary swearing is. Of course it's fucking unnecessary. So what?

I eventually logged in as I had to write to Tuesday's date to arrange it properly. A few minutes later Teri sent me a message making a callback joke about being online. I'd had been writing her a message that I was going to send from Yahoo. But instead I put it in a GSM reply. It was a bit heavy, saying how much I liked her and was sorry if I didn't give that impression at the end of last night. And that that was because of the spectre of Rob. And if she'd like to meet again then I would.

She took a while to reply (I'm talking minutes though). The jist of it is that she's really flattered by my interest, saying she felt like she'd won some kind of prize.

But.

She is not sure about Rob. (I hi-lariously parodied his username and apparently made her laugh at the computer - not something she readily does. It also helps that I can gently take the piss out of him just by using my parody.) They are meeting again on Thursday when she will ask him what's what. And she'll be in touch soon.

I can't help feeling that I am the back-up here. I can't help it because that's what I am.

I'm going to Waitrose to buy some food.

2009-02-26T14:51:00.007Z

Fuck it. Teri has gone and done an India on me and suggested we meet up as potential friends, since she has already met someone she likes.

In the message she says how much I intrigue her (meeting up should see to that), how insightful I am and how well she thinks we'd get along. But she's never dates more than one person at a time and doesn't want to start. Fair enough I suppose; I am probably the same although really I have never dated more than none persons at a time.

She's only met this guy once and that was a couple of nights ago, probably when I was wasting my time with Amy. (She never replied to my follow up text - the first I've sent in GSM v2. So that barbed assessment isn't without ego.)

One date?! Does that really count?

I will no doubt agree to meet her in the vain hope that the situation changes. Just like I tried to curry favour in India. Actually that situation was more that she wasn't that into me cos she didn't end up going out with the guy she platonicked me for but a different guy she met after me.

In the end I had to ring India to tell her I couldn't do the friend thing. That was a pretty nerve-wracking phone call to make and I predict a similar one to Teri in a week or two.

At least meeting with these lowered stakes won't be so bone crunchingly terrifying. Save the pain till later.

2009-02-25T12:07:00.004Z

Turns out she's called Teri. A couple more emails have been exchanged. I'm falling back under the spell. She is doing very well on Clever. I asked her out but she hasn't replied. That was 21 hours ago.

I've been getting a few guys looking at my profile. Yesterday I thought I recognised one of them.

At lunchtime I'd been looking up songs on YouTube. This is a bit of a tedious pastime as I have to do a new look-up every 4 minutes. Someone should write some software whereby you can download a load of songs and then play them one after another, perhaps in a random order.

I had remembered the song Big City Life by Mattafix which had been moderately popular 4 or 5 years ago. A one hit wonder. One moderate hit.

A couple of hours later I was pretty sure that I was looking at the grinning face of the singer on GSM. I looked at all his photos and read his facts which explained his profession and musical taste. It seemed to match up. I spent the next 20 minutes Google-imaging him and trying to make sure.

I'd convinced myself and sent him a message to ask.

I was right. He wrote back saying he was new to it and looking for tips off popular profiles - did I have any tips? He was apparently bored of mindless groupies.

It was 4 years ago.

I wrote back saying that it's best to message people rather than just tag them. I was going to add that the Pop20 wasn't really that exciting and that anyway I was on the slide. But then I realised that he probably didn't need the vacuity and transience of popularity spelt out for him.

I apologised for listening to his music for free but wondered if he might send some mindless groupies my way. He hasn't replied either.

2009-02-24T10:55:00.001Z

I checked the reply from Obsession. Still don't know her name. It was nice. She said sorry for taking ages to reply. It really wasn't ages. She sounds like a clever fish, doing a PhD on the deinstitutionalisation of neurotics. Her phase. She's half Mauritian, half Canadian.

I wrote back, probably slightly too soon. I think it was an intelligent reply. I talked about stuff to do with the NHS that my mum had been telling me recently. I put in another crappy pun, this one about maps and jobs. Perhaps I should put the puns on the back-burner. Pun in the oven? No - back-burner.

And now I sit and wait for her reply. I think I'll suggest meeting up in my next reply, if I get the opportunity to write it. All this waiting is no fun.

She uploaded another photo last night in which she looks different. I think it might have dampened my enthusiasm. The first three pictures had all been from one side and I had suspected that that was a knowing tactic. The fourth one is head on. But it is also not a very clear shot so I don't know. All this shallowness appears to fly right in the face of my claims on my profile that people get more attractive the better you know them. Here am I scrutinising a handful of photos for the tiniest imperfections. But I think that is an inevitable effect when you have thousands of photos to look at. Well, inevitable if you are me.

Back to reality and last night's date was a success I think. We got on well. I think I'll send her a text. I'm not bowled over by her but I suppose it's worth asking for a second date to see if that changes. Neither of the last two dates got back in touch. I wonder if they would have done if I had done. I think "no" for the date of silences and "maybe" for the date of irony.

2009-02-23T15:14:00.004Z

I have been cast under the spell of a profile. I sent its owner a message last night with a crappy pun involving the fact that I'd spent the weekend buying a mirror. Fortunately she replied but only with a quick message as she was going out. I replied to that reply with the usual crap about jobs and how I'm going to soon have a better, more exotic job. Possibly involving Madagascar. If you're reading this Al, I'm afraid I have got vast mileage out of your idea whilst having done nothing in its furtherance. I will do soon. I want to.

I then waited for a reply. And waited. There are various tabs you can keep on other people on GSM. When they last logged on (to the nearest day) or whether they are online at the moment. When they last updated their profile etc. You may also see when your message has been read. This may seem intrusive but is I think necessary so people know where they are with a person.

I certainly knew where I was. Obsessed.

I checked up on her about 100 times in the 18 hours following my reply. She read it around midnight and seemed to be logged on a lot of the time after that. But didn't deign me a reply.

By about lunchtime I had started to give up and wondered whether I'd send her another message regardless of replies. Who cares about cool?

In the hundreds of profiles I've looked at I haven't been this keen before. In v1 there was thelastempress who was stunningly good looking. She was top of the pops for weeks on end. But I didn't obsess over her. It was more the novelty of emailing the most popular girl on there. And also the fact that Zina hated her cos she didn't like Fidel. We never met up in real life.

Profile obsession is a terrible thing. This one is based on just three photos and a few good facts. Her blurbs are spartan.

What's really happening is that I'm foisting a personality on to her because she looks like a couple of people I've known.

Healthy right? A solid start.

Anyway she replied about an hour ago, so the relationship is not quite dead. But I expect it's rather more vital in my head than in hers. I will wait a bit before reading the message. Coolness returned easily.

In the real world I've got a date tonight with Amy in another Kilburn pub.

2009-02-20T13:21:00.005Z

Date two. Hannah at Crazy Homies.

I went along straight from work and clean forgot to do my usual read-through of our email exchange. This freaked me out as it is obviously a bad thing if you forget what you've said, and even worse to forget what they said. But on the walk from the tube to the bar I managed to check most of the messages through my phone's internets. It turned out that we'd hardly said anything. We hadn't even asked what each of us did. This was a good thing. Writing all the same emails to people is so tedious and I liked the fact that we had not covered the usual ground.

She texted to say that she'd be 10 minutes late. So I sat down inside to wait and became increasingly nervous. The tables in there are bolted to the floor and are uncomfortably close together. I started to worry about the people on the neighbouring tables overhearing us and realising it was obviously a blind date. Not really sure why I cared about this. I'm not normally bothered about the stigma of internet dating.

The date was so much better than the first one. We were there for nearly three hours with no pauses. Talked about the usual stuff.. jobs, travelling, jobs again. But it wasn't boring. And she brought up religion. It's always brought up. Her beef mainly seemed to be with Scientology which is a fairly obvious bit of beef. Hardly rare.

We seemed to agree on pretty much everything.

Given all of that it is pretty annoying that I'm not desperate to see her again.

On my "About her" bit of blurb I ask for someone pretty and clever. The blurb in full goes…

He describes his ideal match thus:
My ideal match? Oh I don’t know. It’s all about chemistry and that spark. The ability to light my fire.

Any other characteristics? Roughly 4cm tall and smells of sulphur when excited.

(Attempted) joking aside.. Pretty and clever? That doesn't help much since those are in the eyes and ears of the beholder.

I think people become more attractive the better you know them. It's the almost hidden half-smile and the subtle gestures you hadn't noticed before which are a turn-on. Making a list here seems forlorn.

‘Forlorn’ is the wrong word to end with. So my last wish – a strong nose that crinkles.

Problem is that I think Hannah falls just short on both pretty and clever.

The cleverness thing is a hard one to describe. She was articulate talking about lots of things and I agreed with her on pretty much everything. There were just a couple of points where she didn't seem very imaginative. Like when she said she didn't want to work but then had no ideas as to what she'd do to fill her time. Perhaps the main thing playing against her was her frequent and inappropriate use of 'ironic'.

The prettiness issue will sound hopelessly fussy as well. Out of all the people I've been emailing she probably has the best photos. Maybe that raised my expectations to high. She is really pretty in real life but just a bit jowly. In a sort of Alanis Morissette way. Which is pretty ironic, don't you think?

One feature of pretty much all the dates I've been on - in v1 and v2 - is that GSM itself is the elephant in the room. This seems strange to me as it is one of the few things we definitely have in common. I think it would be revealing to chat about what each of us has thought of the experience. It's true that it would no doubt reveal me in a bad way.

This complaint really serves to show that I prefer the process of getting dates more than the dates themselves.

2009-02-19T13:30:00.001Z

Got first male fan today and he's hetro. (Practising tweets.)

2009-02-17T22:18:00.004Z

And so the horror begins.

Had my first date tonight with Jane in the NLT, a pub local to both of us. Ok so it wasn't horrific, but I doubt we'll be repeating the process.

I went there pretty much straight from work. Except that I went home first. Just so that I didn't have a bottle of aftersun in my pocket, which I'd been using as hair product. I also went home to wipe the excess aftersun from my hair.

As a result I was about two minutes late and Jane was already there. Apparently she had sent me a text to say she was early, but my phone was off because I didn't want cousin Antony to ring. He had phoned me 20 times so far asking how things were going with our party invitation on Facebook.

This blog has become too introspective.

So I arrived and was sitting down and sweating profusely. The heating was on full blast in the NLT and I had taken my coat off way too late. I thought about excusing myself and wiping down in the bogs. But then it occurred to me that I should probably keep the loo stop in reserve just in case. A prescient move.

It took about 10 minutes for the torrents of sweat to abate.

The conversation was initially all about jobs. I've realised I need better patter for this section of proceedings. It apparently isn't that cool to say how much you hate your job and how much you slack and how you spend all your working day on GSM. (I didn't mention this last point.)

But seriously - it isn't that fun to listen to someone whinge about their job. I need a new angle. A made up one perhaps.

The conversation moved on to religion - my favourite topic for first dates - and we had common ground there. Then we went via travel (a date staple) to prostitution (less so). Turns out she loves travel but hates prostitution. I couldn't help but agree.

A while later I mentioned that in Madagascar they seem to have a pimp-free situation. She shouted at me that this was complete crap. Once again, I couldn't help but agree... with her contradiction of what I'd just said.

There was fairly lively debate on stuff and it was pretty fun for about 30 minutes. Then the lulls descended. The grave problem with meeting someone for the first time is that you have no context. Nothing to fall back on conversationally. I made the mistake of dredging up factoids from emails she had sent over a week ago. This made me look like a weirdo. A weirdo who had printed out the entire email exchange between us and had read it over and over in the tube on the way to the date.

The lulls got worse. She had a bad cold and so ordered an orange juice for her third - and last - drink. At one point she was sucking at the straw with such alacrity that I felt it rude to distract her. So I didn't. Five second pauses reclined in front of us and we were reduced to "what have you got planned for the weekend". It was Tuesday at this point remember. Nothing.

I cashed in my loo stop.

All this was a far cry from our talk only minutes earlier of the benefits of legalising crack.

It was during this torture that I became aware of my stupid voice. I am aware that I slip between posh and faux-un-posh. Swapping THs with Fs and dropping Ts altogether. This odd amalgam bugs me. I think that nerves exacerbate the syndrome and I end up using words I really wouldn't, couldn't or shouldn't normally. I stopped just short of "nuff" at one point.

But I suppose all that is the danger of the first date. And another one is on the horizon of Thursday.

I left tonight's date with the requisite fluffed line. This one went "Get well better soon." She probably assumed that it was just the Edward vernacular.

2009-02-16T13:52:00.002Z

I'm feeling pretty worn out today. Didn't get much sleep last night as I was worrying about work. Got in today at 8am which is unheard of for me.

This lethargy is pervading my attitude to GSM. I've spent way way too much time on there in the last week or so and am now pretty much sick of it. And all this the day before I even go on the first date.

I just keep seeing the same faces and the emailing has gone from being exciting to being onerous. I've been in conversation with 30-odd people now and have sent over 100 emails in all. It's too much for too little.

And it turns out that tomorrow's date and the one on Thursday look like being by far the best of the bunch. I've got three more next week and I think two the week after but that will probably be it. If anyone wants to buy the remaining two and a bit months' worth of subs then they'll probably be going cheap then.

I just read that back and realise it's a load of whinging bilge. The main reason I'm annoyed is that I've allowed myself to be consumed in the process again, and all that really matters is meeting people. Also this has all been to the detriment of work and that will land me in trouble soon.

And.. the one person I really want to meet up with hasn't got a subscription so can only reply with one-liners that GSM prescribe, so there is no way of arranging a meeting. I could buy her a gift subscription for £6 but I think that might not be the coolest way forward.

Up to #11 in the charts. I made use of the new camera to take a pouting photo, and also nicked a Chris Morris line to replace "second-rate misanthrope" as my summary. If you want to see the calibre of the competition, check out the blurb on #9 (I altered his username to protect his identity.. well actually that won't work)...

FuckingIdiot

Essentially what he is offering is offspring and a nice house to live in. I suppose that that floats boats.

He also mentions his window seals, writes a nice tautological sentence on juxtaposition, uses "or" when he means "nor" and mentions his lofty persuit (sic) of becoming a script writer. Can't wait to read those.

2009-02-11T10:55:00.003Z

Yep - the Pop20 is doing nothing for me. Stuck at 15 and I expect that's as high as I'll go. I might try changing the pouting lip-stick photo that I've got up there in place of dog collar but that probably won't change much. Hopefully I'll get a camera for my birthday - if so I'll try a bit of narcissism with that.

Last night I emailed India from GSM v1. She was the best person I met back then but unfortunately nothing was ever going to happen. From the start of emailing she had said she'd already met someone through the site. But she wanted me to meet her friend, from the real world. I duly did, mainly so that I'd get to meet India at some point as well. The friend was nice but I didn't fancy her. I ended up telling India that I couldn't see her friend again (assuming she'd wanted to) cos I fancied her. At the time this was quite a big deal for me and a very nerve-wracking phone call to make. But I managed it and felt good. Alas India did not break down and profess that the burning desire was more than mutual.

She has a brother and at school everyone would ask her if he was called Pakistan. I found this story funny. She did not.

Six months on and she is still with her GSM beau. So it can work. And I don't think he ever darkened the Pop20.

Found out how small the world is today and how bad my recall for faces is. One of the people I've been emailing on GSM sent me the following today...

Hello Ed

Before I tell you anything more about myself here is something that I was made aware of yesterday. You should be aware of it too. It’s a conversation I had with a friend. Let’s call her Beryl (she doesn’t need a false name, but it’s more fun. And I know I’m borrowing your form, but, hey, I like it).

Beryl: So how’s the online dating going.

Me: Yeah, well … lots of odd beardy types … why the hell can’t people punctuate? … a cycling-loving man setting up an eco-tourism outfit in Madagascar said I had a good nose—

Beryl: What? What??!!

Me: There is NOTHING wrong with my nose!

Beryl: No, no, not your nose – I KNOW this man.

Me: Oh gawd, do you?

Beryl: Yes, and more to the point, you’ve met him yourself.

Me: I have? Actually, this man did seem weirdly familiar…

Beryl: We went to the pub - the man, Tim [not real name]…

Beryl then expounds at great length – seriously! – upon your many qualities. It feels a bit strange to correspond when we have in fact met. I suggest (unless you’re appalled by this small-world weirdness and can remember me being appalling!) we meet for a drink. If we get on, great. If we don’t, it’s entertainment for Beryl and Tim.

What do you say? Have I destroyed this for you?!

Oh, and Beryl told me that it's your birthday today. Happy birthday!

Emily

This is certainly not good news. I do vaguely remember meeting her in the pub. About all I can place on her is that she was crushingly shy.

Problem is that all the acceptable abruptness of internet dating is now out of order. I can't meet Emily and then decide never to get in touch again. This practice may seem a little harsh but I think it's what this type of thing relies on. Meeting up with strangers - perhaps 10 or 20 of them over a few weeks - is a far less enticing prospect if you must then extricate yourself from the ones you're not keen on using phoney emails and phoney phone calls. There's no way I'd even start.

I'm going to have to speak to Beryl. Cheryl.

2009-02-10T11:25:00.002Z

The half-expected boom in popularity from being on the Pop20 emphatically hasn't materialised. I've gone up a couple of place but on the back of just a couple more people favouriting me, and a few emails. I'm not complaining but am just curious. I had clearly over-estimated how much attention people pay it. It's quite good really.

Not sure if it's a coincidence but I had a couple of critiques of my profile yesterday. One said that the photo looked like I was wearing a dog collar. The other was of a bit in my ideal match blurb where I ask for a strong nose which crinkles, and the critic said that it read like "I haven't got over my ex with a strong nose".

I changed the photo.

2009-02-09T12:55:00.003Z

An unexpected development - I entered the popular profiles list today. This is the top 20 females and top 20 males on the site according to how many people have favourited them or written to them recently. I am at the moment at lofty #17.

I have railed against the Pop20 in the past. I don't really like the idea of it or how easily I imagine it is abused. (Although I must admit that getting on it is better than anything else that has ever happened to me.)

Firstly the concept is a rather jarring one especially considering the site in run through The Guardian. It is simply a way of making the popular more popular. (I will doubtless buck this trend now by swiftly returning to oblivion.)

But it is the abuse it encourages that gets me most. It seems obvious to me that I could set up a half-decent profile and then simply favourite every man, woman and child out there. Even if I restricted myself to women, there are around 50,000 profiles to hit on. I know that a great deal of those probably haven't visited the site in months and a significant minority haven't visited anywhere in the last few months being that they are dead. But I imagine I could rack up say 3000 lively types.

I wouldn't even need to click on all these 3000. I'd just do some almost criteria-less searches and favourite each and every thumbnail - it would be done in an hour or two.

Then I'd watch the fans roll in.

It would require a little more attrition but I could send all these patsies emails as well. Some generic crap like "I really liked your profile. Tell me more. Did you have fun in the snow last week? I built a giant snow cock-and-balls in my front garden."

In no time I would surely be top of the pops.

Of course the people at GSM might have safeguards against this type of carry on. Their algorithm may be fairly sophisticated, taking into account how many favourites the user has, weighting each fan according to how popular they are in turn, and so on.. But I doubt that is happening.

When I was doing GSM v1 I set up a dummy female profile with no photos and jibberish for the blurbs, something along the lines of "dskjf sfsk dsmshgr smjd wql..." Within the hour she had 4 fans, 2 of whom were on the Pop20 list.

By the way, I know that the abuse I have outlined is a relative thing. Some might say that 190 favourites is rather profligate. But I really did look at all those people and genuinely found them interesting or attractive. Ok - attractive or interesting. And I have written to almost all those who favourited me back. I know that it is exciting to be favourited my someone you like the look of and it's a pretty mean trick if this turns out to be wholly bogus.

I also know that it is sad that I have looked through so many profiles in detail. But that's not even the half of it. Not even the tenth of it.

2009-02-08T23:09:00.004Z

Favourites 189
Fans 73
Emailing 16
Dates 0
Kisses 0
Sexes 0
Wifes 0

Actually I won't be starting each post with those rather tawdry statistics. If for no other reason than that I won't be updating the last three, even if they require it.

It looks like real dates are looming on the horizon. Now that is the case I have remembered just what going on a partially-sighted date is like. It is in the top one most terrifying pastimes I have indulged.

In the last week I had been fairly blase about it and thought that this time around it would be a whole lot easier. But now that I have two emails suggesting actual meetings I am writing this so as to avoid setting actual dates.

The Hannah date will probably be in Lucky 7. This is because I had told her I had tonsillitis and was off alcohol. She replied that it might be best if we wait till I was fully recovered as she didn't want to catch anything. Sounds like she's even keener than me to ratchet up her kisses counter. Assuming she has one.

She is quite forward and was in fact one of the first people to favourite me, back when the monkeys were spanking themselves. But she also has probably the best looking photos of them all. I expect I have picked the wrong first date.

Date #2 will probably be Jane and that will be in a localish pub. I must make sure to not schedule it for a Thursday in case my friends are in that same pub. Better not do a Wednesday either. I'm shaking so much at the prospect that Tuesdays, Mondays, Sundays, Saturdays and Fridays aren't looking good either.

She had asked if I knew of any good pubs in Kilburn as we both live near there. I replied that I was once in a pub quiz and our team had scored 23 points (of a possible 27 or 28) on the one-off round Name All The Pubs On The Kilburn High Road. Like the tonsils thing, I think I was hoping to scare her off because of the mounting fear I mentioned earlier. Turns out she loves pub quizzes.

Ok. This exercise still isn't proving very funny. But I have realised fear has driven me here. As I approach a date venue trembling with fear I will know that one or perhaps two people will make cocks of themselves within earshot of me in the next couple of hours. And it might make good copy. That will be my near invisible crumb of comfort.

(I have noticed that Blogger has added the Followers mechanism to this thing since I was here last. Another way to measure popularity. I think I might hide that one. My vanity can't handle it.)

2009-02-07T16:49:00.007Z

I relaunched myself on the dating website Guardian Soulmates almost a week ago and was going to start blogging about it but forgot. Last time round it was a quite amusing yet ultimately irrelevant exercise, so I thought it would suit blogging well.

It is a topic ripe for some sort of irreverent book. But perhaps the idea is a little hackneyed. I suppose that it would also be necessary to try out other dating sites and I really can’t be bothered. The beauty of GSM is that it’s well established with a good infrastructure and most of the people are most likely to read The Guardian.

So for those reasons, I won’t be writing a book.

For those unfamiliar to the way GSM (and no doubt many other dating sites) works...

You set up your profile for free. This must contain some basic information like your age and your postcode. Beyond the essentials there is a plethora of other stuff you can add from drop-down boxes, ranging from your height, self-perceived attractiveness and religion to your tv habits, body art and recreational drug use.

Once the profile is set up you may search for other profiles you might like according to the criteria you’ve just subjected yourself to.

So far so dreary.

Actually a lot of this first blog will be tedious explanation. Best just to go to the site and do it yourself.

The only other bits to your profile of any note are your photos and the blurbs you have to write about you and who you are looking for. And these parts probably get 95% of the potential suitors’ attention. With 94 of those 95 going on the photos.

You are allowed to have up to 10 photos but aren’t obliged to have any. One of these will be your primary photo which will show up on your thumbnail when you show up in someone else’s search. So that one ought to be good since that person might have 999 other search results to sift through.

If you don’t have any photos it is unlikely that you’ll get any attention. If you have only one then there is a danger people are going to think it’s a fluke.

Internet dating is nothing if not hopelessly shallow.

After your profile is set up you go searching for others. If you find someone you like then you may add them to you favourites and thus become a fan of theirs. They are notified of this by email and will check out your profile in turn. If they can be bothered. If they can and they like you then they can favourite you back. Then you will probably want to send them a message or else the relationship is going nowhere.

To send messages you must first subscribe and this is where the the site makes its money.

Once you are messaging someone you can arrange to meet up, kiss, have sex, get married and whatever else.

So. Here is what my thumbnail currently looks like. (I realise that exposing my username could cause myriad problems with the future kisses, sexes and wives I’ll find online but I’ll risk it. I won't be divulging their monikers.)

(Rather hilariously, I chopped down that photo and you can still see wisps of hair of the person who I'd perhaps most like to kiss/sex/wife.)

You can see that age and location gets a mention. These are the only two out of the scores of drop-down options that are in any way important. And height as well maybe. But none of the others. Who’s going to believe someone who calls themselves Very Attractive anyway?

The only other bits are the 5-6 word summary which goes beneath the username and the first 20 or so words of the About Me blurb.

The blurbs about you and about your ideal match are the only places you get to write freely. Almost everyone uses them to whinge about how hard they are to write. Almost everyone writes the same things such as “I love music” and “looking for a creative type”. Almost all of them are unutterable shit.

In my first try last summer mine was pretty dull. It avoided cliche but did little else. But when I sent my first message to someone, I used the conceit of a mock conversation between her and me. It seemed to work on her so I shamelessly adapted it to use in my profile. I also shameless nicked a line from the comedian Richard Herring.

In GSM v2 I realised that the first 20 words were mildly important because of the thumbnail thing, hence the monkey business. In the first draft the monkeys ended up wanking furiously but I edited that bit out on Tuesday or Wednesday cos I thought it might not be the best romantic gambit.

So, in full the blurb goes...

I have an infinite number of monkeys in my sitting room. I got them so that they might come up with an ode worthy of Shakespeare that I could use here. Unfortunately I had to buy an infinite number of bananas and now have no money left for typewriters.

I'd better do the writing myself. But speaking is more interesting, don't you think?

You- Yes. I suppose I do.

Me- Oh good.

You- Get on with it then.

Me- Well I've lived in London all my life but enjoy visiting new places. I have a geeky jones for geography trivia. I think flags are cool but people who wear them aren't.

You- Do you have a favourite flag?

Me- Somalia's is good. But I think Cuba wins.

You- Well I'm glad we’ve covered favourite flags. In fact it's surprising that there isn't a drop-down box here for them. What else?

Me- I'm not much into watching sport but I do cycle a lot and take on the Alps or Pyrenees most summers. Sometimes I win.

You- Wow! You must be well fit.

Me- Well that's for others to say.

You- 'Others'?! What - like beguiling girls you've engaged in fantasy dialogue?

Me- For example.. But I never called you beguiling.

You- You did. You're writing this crap.

Me- Oh yeah.

You- Maybe we should wrap this up before the conversation eats itself. Besides - those monkeys are making a horrible din.

Me- I'd better go check on them. I just hope they haven't found my collection of Star Trek figurines.. *

You- Okaaay.. I'm off.

Me- Hold on, err.. reading! Films, books, picnics, exhibitions! ..Radio 4, grime, Dylan, candlelight. And so on...

*Ok - so this bit I made up. I don't own any Star Trek merchandise. That would just be silly.

I think you’ll agree that the edited ending is rubs.

In fact this whole blog entry has been rubs. It’s more of an administrative thing. I haven’t met anyone through GSM v2 yet. If and when that happens hopefully things will become more interesting.

As a progress update... 6 days in. 190 favourites. 62 fans. Not a great ratio really.

Of the 62 fans, 31 are in my favourites. And of those 31, I have been in email conversation with 16. I'm already exhausted.

We’ll see how it goes.

I should probably get a black and white profile picture.

2007-06-05T18:16:00.001+01:00

Last week was the first family holiday I've been on in 15 years. We went to the Alps. My dad and I spent most days cycling around the mountain passes. The weather was pretty shit, raining most days with snow higher up the roads. Got quite a few kms in though and feel much fitter than before. All good preparation for La Marmotte which I've entered in July.

I lost a few pounds in the week although I would have lost a lot more if my mum hadn't been there as I'd have put myself on the Pink Lady diet where you cycle hundreds of mountainous kms on a few energy bars, have an apple for dinner and then go to sleep. That would have got results. Oh well - next time.

One of my mum's friends came along as the fifth wheel. I really don't like her cos she dominates every conversation she's involved in. I know others that do this but none anywhere near to the same extent. She'll just start talking over anyone at any time in a really loud voice so the other person is left with no choice but to back down. It is one of the worst things a human can do - easily in the top 1000 anyway.

When all this became too much I would slope off like a sulking teenager - rewinding 15 years. Harriet had brought her iPod. As I don't have one I'd amuse myself with the novelty of flitting through artists using the alphabet. There was quite a strange array of stuff in there.

"Father and Son" by Cat Stevens was one of the more familiar ones. It was quite painful to listen to. Rather like "Unchained Melody" by The Righteous Brothers - even if you hate the song the crescendo of it makes the hair stand on end. But my pain wasn't due to a wave of emotion about my relationship with my father or the inexorable march of time. No - a week before I had waxed my legs and I'd forgotten to pack a loofah.

I needed something trite instead, like "Father and Son" by Ronan Keating.

Towards the end of the Cs I found "Insane in the Membrane".

At least my hairless legs fitted in with all the other cyclists around Alpe d'Huez. That's the main thing. I didn't do quite as well as I'd hoped on my races up the Alpe. Last year I'd done it in 62 minutes and only managed to match this this time around. But that was after a week of hard cycling and it was raining.

I'm going to do a few laps of Regent's Park now on the way home. There is a mini peleton that zips round the Inner Circle on Tuesdays. All the others are on expensive racers and I quite like keeping up with them on my crappy commuting machine. I didn't really ingratiate myself on my first outing cos I accidentally snotted the guy behind me.

2007-05-14T21:01:00.000+01:00

Waiting in Hammersmith bus station at 1:30am on Saturday night, I wasn’t much looking forward to my alarm going off in 6 hours time and going on a 130 mile bike ride. I’d entered a cyclosportive which started in Cobham at 9am.

Having gone to Tom’s birthday meal, I’d managed to miss the last tube from my flat back to the parents’ house. I was clutching a plastic bag full of bike clothes that I’d drunkenly gathered off the floor. It included two pairs of shorts and no pairs of socks.

The next morning I woke up just before the alarm and still felt a bit tipsy, but that gradually wore off on the ride to Cobham. The weather was pretty shit – raining and cold – but the first few miles went okay. I was keeping warm and going pretty fast. In fact I was faster than anyone else on the climbs, and was feeling pretty pleased with myself.

In the wet conditions my brakes weren’t working very well and I almost ran off the road on a steep descent. Soon after that my chain started slipping and it got worse and worse. My gears were fucked and I was too inept to fix them. I was getting colder and wetter and like a quitter I quit and got the train home from Haslemere.

On the train I sat glumly in my soaking Lycra looking around me at all the wan faces. Opposite me someone was reading about football in The Telegraph. On my right a bespectacled man crammed a white bread sausage sandwich into his thin lipped mouth. It took him a full ten minutes to eat the thing – five minutes chewing and swallowing and five minutes sucking the resulting detritus from his teeth.

I felt like getting up and moving. To the toilet perhaps. Anywhere. But I was too embarrassed about exposing the wet patch I’d formed on the seat. And besides – the toilets were all out of order. In fact the driver kindly informed us that we’d soon be taking an unscheduled 15 minute toilet and cigarette stop.

Sunday lunchtime spent in Guildford station waiting for a train load of people from the South Coast to finish smoking, urinating and defecating. It’s what dreams are made of.

Later on I arranged to meet up with Antony and Helena in Soho. On the bus to Hammersmith I saw a friend from school called Louis get on and sit down about two metres away. Fortunately he didn’t see me, so I began furiously playing backgammon on my phone. I was actually quite good friends with Louis about 10 years ago. We worked together on Saturdays in the local stationery shop. It wasn’t really going anywhere. But it was fun.

We had a running competition to see who could provide the poorest quality of service. Louis did well at startling the customers with unexpected comments. One lady asked his advice on the wide selection of Filofaxes. Louis picked out an expensive brown leather specimen and said “I particularly like this one.” He held it up to his nose and said “It smells wonderful. Beefy.”

She didn’t buy it.

One of the proudest moments in my working career was beating Louis at the Talking Competition. We had to serve a customer at the till using the fewest words possible. It took a couple of weeks but I eventually managed zero. I went on to refine this feat by also employing no facial expressions.

So we had been good friends but I just couldn’t be bothered with small talking my way through the last decade. Unfortunately I didn’t have any choice – “Ed!” He’d clocked me. We talked about him being engaged and me being not. And houses, and jobs, and so on.

It would have been a million times better if I’d replied “Louis!” and we’d gone on to play the Talking Competition with eachother, neatly satirising small talk.

Drinks with A and H were fun. We ended up at the 10th birthday party of Momo’s near Regent’s Street. It was supposed to be star-studded affair with Madonna and Mick Jagger rumoured to be making an appearance. But I didn’t see anyone famous. Apart from rugby player Lawrence Dallaglio. I just about managed to act cool and pretend I wasn’t the least bit interested in him or anything he’s achieved.

Despite the paucity of celebrity the party was good. The momojitos were free and the place was full of beautiful people. Apart from rugby player Lawrence Dallaglio.

As the evening wore on, more and more people turned up and the queue for the loos became ridiculous. There was one cubicle per gender and there were about 300 people there, 90% of whom regularly needed to powder their noses.

The scene was light years away from that of lunchtime, but the toilet gods had followed me all the way and were once again soiling my mood.