Dances with Fleas!

'What's happening with the fleas?' asked a friend, in an email earlier today, after she'd admitted to crying with laughter at my sorry dating history!

'Hopefully they're dead,' I replied optimistically, having left them in the capable latex gloves of Stan and Tone of Pest Control, when I went to court this morning.

The whole business reminds me of a case I had several years ago at the Crown Court where a client, with an extreme aversion to soap, entered the dock at my local Crown Court charged with assaulting his step daughter...joined by the entire cast of Dancing with Fleas for moral support (mmm...nice)! 

Resplendent in a grubby anorak (style-circa. 1970), his star turn and lack of personal hygiene were not improved by the fact that a team of Premier league footballers, charged with match fixing, had just left the dock in a cloud of Armani aftershave and designer suits!

The court room had to be fumigated the following day ... I only hope the same isn't necessary after my appearance at court today!

Anyway, I digress....again...! Enough of the wildlife, and back to the dates (even though the two are often essentially interchangeable)! It really is time I told you about Mr. Dyson....this may take some time...

Mr. Socks!

Sitting writing this, I can see outside the French doors several fat orange blobs...

You'll be pleased to hear they aren't the remains of a recent perma-tanned, wannabe Romeo that I had the misfortune to date, although had I owned a shotgun on that occasion I may well have used it....but the remains of the slug colony that Mr. Dyson murdered on my instructions yesterday.

Due to their rather disconcerting colour, they also remind me of the episode concerning Mr. Socks.Have I told you about him....?

Mr. Socks is someone I've known for some time; he dated an acquaintance of mine many years ago (she married someone else, when he wouldn't commit! Red flags should have been waving madly at this juncture!).However, I bumped into him again only recently, having always thought him to be horribly handsome. After a few glasses of wine, he seemed irresistible...perfect even.

Yes, for a few dates, I considered Mr. Socks perfect...in a matching socks and pants kind of way. From the way his neatly manicured hands removed, folded and carefully placed his socks (that matched his jumpers) on the table, before getting into bed, I suspected he was not the sort of man whose washing machine ever produced odd socks or, for that matter, the sort of man who spontaneity came easily too. Wild uninhibited sex would clearly be out of the question!

Mmmm......lucky for him, life as he knew it, was about to get a whole lot more exciting. I was convinced I might even have him wearing odd socks after a few more dates, or at least socks that didn't match his jumpers! Sadly, it was not to be; whilst we did meet a few more times, I decided that despite his gleaming white veneers, seemingly year-round tan, and orange sock collection that, as it generally took him 2 days to return my calls, he was hardly that in to me, so called time. I am not in the business of chasing men, who are more interested in their golf clubs than me, these days...

Another date like that and the rest of the slugs will get it! Mr. Dyson still has his uses....

Love bites!

Lonely! Well that's something I'm definitely not at the moment! Despite the lack of success in my ongoing quest for a significant other, I have an unexpected army of guests staying with me at the moment...

Unexpected and uninvited...!

Whilst I'm very sociable, and have always adopted an open house policy, I am a little choosy about the company I keep. I am therefore somewhat disturbed, after the recent visit of my time-share Labrador, that Chez Daisy appears to have become infested by a circus of dancing fleas, alongside the slug colony already inhabiting the back garden! I'll be advertising as a wildlife park, and charging an entry fee, if this carries on!

Apparently fleas prefer dogs but, as my canine compatriot has left, they've settled for a human host instead! Don't worry guys, I don't have fleas....but my house, temporarily, does! Bet Blind Date is breathing a sigh of relief at this point, that he didn't get an invite to Chez Daisy...!

Apparently, fleas are very common this year as the weather is perfect for them! Marvellous! Not only do we get rained on all Summer, but we get to share our homes with teams of blood sucking acrobats...a very different take on love bites!

Pest Control Officers are coming to rescue me soon. Maybe I could contract them separately to deal with certain men of my acquaintance...now there's a thought!

A friend who manages an environmental health team elsewhere in the country has suggested I try and catch one (a flea, not a man-she knows that's a lost cause!), so they can be sure what they're dealing with. There's about as much chance of that as there is of me catching a great bloke on recent form...!

It could only happen to me....

Diet Coke Man!

I was chastised yesterday, by a friend, for regaling my dating experiences in such a chaotic fashion that I had yet to come back to many of the dates I'd mentioned in passing and tell you the full story.

So, in an attempt to redress my errant ramblings, I've made a list - Diet Coke Man, Mr. Dyson, Mr. Socks, Paris Match/The Beached Whale (now he's a good one, as he forms the basis for Hugh - the character in my first, yet to be published, novel - are there any literary agents reading this who fancy meeting for a coffee, or a Diet Coke for that matter?!), the other date involving flowers, Loves of my Life Marks III and IV and I promise to come back to them soon!

Diet Coke Man is a quick one, as was our one and only meeting - I was actually quite excited about him, not least because, from his photos, he could have done a passable audition for the role of the real Diet Coke Man as we all know him - tall, dark, devilishly handsome and beloved of women the world over...

My own Diet Coke Man didn't actually look like his photos (why, oh way do people do that), so we did not get off to a great start as I did not recognise him. When I finally identified my quarry, as he rose from his seat in the corner of the pub,and waved manically at me, my heart sank. The dashing man on water skis on his profile had metamorphosed into a caricature of the ultimate IT geek with, as it transpired, a personality to match...

It is fair to say that his sobriquet was only coined post-date, as the 62 minutes I spent with him, before I could politely effect my escape, were the longest two diet cokes of my life....NEXT!

Twittering...!

...follow me on Twitter @loveandlaw to be notified of latest posts, and anything else amusing that happens along the way! If you're enjoying what you read, please tell your friends too....

Love Daisy x

The 'C' word!

No, not that one! But the small cute ones who change your life, challenge your bank balance and, at times, chase your patience to its limits! Children! Dating when you get to 40 is a game of skill, when it comes to the 'C' word - whether you have kids, or whether you don't! Possibly harder, if you don't....

For the record, you should know that I don't.

I would have loved children and could never have envisaged hitting 40 and not being a mother, but life had other plans. I admire the courage of women who go it alone, but that wasn't for me. So having recently, and reluctantly, accepted that children were unlikely to be part of my future, where does that leave me in the dating game?

Experience has shown me...it goes something like this...:men of my age and older who have children rarely want more. They spell out, in no uncertain terms on their profiles that their children are the most important things in their lives - well of course they are, and should be, and any half-intelligent woman, with or without kids, acknowledges and accepts that. After all, children don't choose to be born...

However, in my and many of my friends' experience, stating it so vehmently is generally shorthand for me, my kids,my job, my ex-wife's demands as to childcare arrangements, reasonable or otherwise (as to bend to them makes my life easier)...come first. If you date me, and I have any time left, you might occasionally get to see me for a quick servicing of my carnal desires.... you have been warned...

The men of my age and older, on dating sites, who have spent their 20's and 30's concentrating on their careers or sowing their wild oats, or in fact made a career of sowing said wild oats, and suddenly decide they want children, are generally seeking someone significantly younger and more fertile than 40. There are, of course, a few who allegedly want kids and set their ideal match's age parameters 30 to 50. I can only assume they weren't very good at biology, if they are really looking for a 50 year old with child bearing ability!

So in negotiating the completion of the critical question on one's Internet profile - 'Do you want children -yes, no or maybe?' - what am I to say?

Yes, generally sends the few men of my age and older with children, who haven't had the snip, or the rare creatures who do not want children, running for the hills.

No, is generally interpreted, wrongly, as meaning I don't like children, so wouldn't be great with theirs...so they run in the same direction.

Or the box I've recently taken to ticking - maybe. So when I do meet that intelligent, funny, man, who may or may not want children, but, first and foremost, wants me for me and not for my ability to breed, then I've covered all bases...anyway, all that's breeding round here right now is the slug colony in my garden...Mr. Dyson came round last week to exterminate the latest onslaught...mmm...think it's time I told you more about Mr. Dyson.....Love of my Life Mark II.....

Monosyllabic Man!

Monosyllabic Man was the ultimate humiliation! He was an accountant living just 30 miles away which, in Internet dating terms, made him pretty local. We had a brief chat on the phone and, whilst he wasn't exactly bubbling over with witty repartee, he sounded normal and, bearing in mind past experience, my standards were dropping all the time ... so I agreed to meet him for a drink at 8 the following night.

At the time, I was in the midst of a major house renovation project so spent most of my waking hours, away from work, covered in soggy, steamed off wood chip, plaster dust or paint. Saturday evening arrived and I knew I wasn't excited about the evening ahead when I found myself still splattered in Dulux, 50 minutes before our date and the venue was a 20 minute drive away. I considered cancelling but, knowing how often myself and friends had been stood up by guys at the last minute (usually, when they'd had a better offer), I felt that the decent thing to do was to go despite my lack of enthusiasm.

So after some swift paint stripping in the shower and make-up in double quick time, I drove to our agreed rendezvous - a busy country pub where we couldn't initially find a table. For those of you who have played the dating game, you'll know just how excruciating dates can be at times and, as soon as I arrived at this one, I knew it was going to be one of them.

For a start, he looked nothing like his photo, for another he had absolutely nothing to say...or at least nothing that had more than one syllable. I'm generally not a great lover of small talk but, on this occasion, I would have welcomed comments on anything, and I mean anything, from the state of his garden fence to the state of his sock drawer....I have never found it so hard to make conversation in my life and it was the longest hour I have ever spent, standing amidst a sea of happy couples and groups of friends having a great Saturday night out...

Happily I was saved from a further hour, by the bar maid asking if we'd like to take part in the 'Rock 'n' Roll' bingo....err no...time to take my leave.... the evening was so appalling that I didn't believe for one moment that I'd hear from him again, as I kissed him politely on the cheek and we went our separate ways, nor did I want too...

So to receive a text from him 48 hours later saying, he'd considered matters very carefully and had decided due to the distance that we lived from each other he wouldn't be pursuing it further...

Pursuing it further! What did he think I was - a job application?! One thing was for certain I wouldn't be pursuing him any further....but it wasn't the most flattering of endorsements - being rejected by, possibly, the most boring man in the world (or perhaps the second most......have I told you about Diet Coke Man?)...NEXT!