House of Love

I had to meet Esteemed Partner's new girlfriend last week.  

He found her through Guardian Soulmates. She lives in Totnes. She'll be a crystal-polisher. She'll have straggly, unwashed, unbrushed, long thin hair with grey roots, wear floppy brown clothes all made from natural fibres, and on her feet will be hideously expensive, individually handmade, leather, cornish pasty shoes.  She'll exude the smell of musk, joss-sticks and what my son refers to as 'weed'. She'll be a Vegan Liberal Socialist (although if you ask me, there's nothing liberal about these people's attitudes to Daily Mail readers.)

Sigh.  Better quickly mow the lawn between storms. And be late.

I roar up outside the quiet country pub in my huge bling truck,and quickly replace my bright pink wellies with more sober and tasteful sparkly blue flip-flops.

I walk in, there they are, and ping!  She has something about her.  I really like her.  Immediately. Before she has even said anything.  One of those unusual special people who exude an aura of calm, smiling, gently humorous, modest self assurance.  She's also got more hair than me, and is thinner, and trendier too, even though she is two years older.  She's wearing undone little gymshoes with no laces.

She is so funny.  She really makes me laugh.  She and Esteemed Partner feel to me like grown-ups indulging a kid, and I am allowed to be loud and to show off, and to be enjoyed.  She is great.  She is going to come riding with me soon.  I am so glad that he is in such a safe pair of hands.

X also has a new girlfriend, predictably ten years younger than him, and apparently looking a bit like me only smaller.  Beloved Daughter gets on well with her daughter, and both my children like her.  I thought X would choose well when he eventually found someone whom he was happy to introduce us to. I have invited X to ask her to stay, but I don't suppose he'll be doing that in a hurry.

Just about all my guests are couples who seem very at one with each other.  They either both completely get it, and love Wydemeet for its remoteness, beauty, comfort, peace, and amazing surrounding wilderness.  Or they're both wondering where the wardrobes are and why there are bats in the trees.  We've had an engagement and two pairs of honeymooners staying in our first year alone!

Which leaves me.  My love-life becomes ever more rubbish.  I forgot to cancel Times Encounters, so I am still a subscriber to that, but Guardian Soulmates has recently run out.  Just as well - the past three 'likes' I received came from bald men of varying strange religious pursuasions. I emailed them back saying "I read the Daily Mail so I don't think you would like me."

Last night I sent a message to a hunk from Oxford who claimed to like all the arts, both highbrow and lowbrow.  

I said, "What - even X-Factor?"  He replied with
"I haven't been lobotomised!"
I thought that was rather good so I came back with
"Pity, I love X-Factor.  Clever you to be able to spell lobotomised."

Anyhow - this morning I discover that he has 'blocked' me.  I have never been blocked before.  So I can't get back to him to explain that I am extremely civilised and erudite, despite my penchant for all things Cheryl Cole (or Fernandez or whatever she calls herself now).  As well as Simon Cowell.  He is a living legend.

My take on it is this. If you imagine you are at Exeter College with 2000 people of the same age and in the same kind of world as yours, and it's still tricky to find a suitable boyfriend or girlfriend, then it's no wonder that on-line dating can prove a bit slow, when there's only a handful of like-minded people of the same generation living within a 200 mile radius of yourself. Your other choice, of course, is sheep.  But they're nearly all ewes.

"So give it a chance!" my logical side says to my impatient one. 

And I say, "Bring on Four In a Bed!