Back to reality

In a desperate attempt to provide some positive news, I have to admit to misleading you about my feelings for Sarah (although I’m sure that the sob stories make better reading, anyway). The reality was that despite enjoying her company (and a much-needed snog) at the weekend, I had no desire to have a long-term relationship with Sarah.

It’s so rare that a woman shows an interest in me on anything other than a platonic basis, I get more excited than I should when it does happen. In all honesty, Sarah is a nice woman with a lot of qualities. But on a superficial level, she couldn’t be less my type. She reminded me very much of one of my ex-girlfriends. A ‘traditionalist’ might be the kindest description. Someone described Sarah as having a warm and friendly face, with character. But so does Father Christmas – and I’m certainly not interested in the contents of his sack. And she’s a Daily Mail reader.

But the idea of having someone with whom to explore a new city, go on a few weekends away (and particularly as someone who would pay her own way financially) and to enjoy the other benefits of being in a relationship appealed in the short term.

Not that Sarah could have known that she isn’t the woman of my dreams because I had said all the right things in texts and emails in the 72 hours between our initial meeting and our date. So we met up in the City on Wednesday evening and were soon snuggled up on a leather sofa. Everything was fine for the first 30 minutes, as we chatted away while holding hands, occasionally breaking off to kiss (I know this sounds inconsistent with what I wrote above, but Christmas is a lonely time).

But then Sarah let slip that it was a long way from Essex to Bristol. I concurred, but said that wouldn’t be a problem if we didn’t want it to be. In fact, I found the idea that I would probably see her only once a fortnight quite amenable – as long as it wasn’t when West Ham were playing at home.

She was just apologising for putting a dampener on our prospects when she said that she didn’t have a free weekend until March (even bizarrely claiming that she hardly had a free evening). Before that had registered, Sarah then said that she didn’t want a relationship, as she was enjoying being single after finishing with someone in July (she said that she has been ‘surprised’ by the effect I had had on her). It was as is she had a form of Tourette’s, continually barking out excuses why the relationship had no future.

The whole time, we were wrapped round each other on the sofa (you know those unpalatable over-tactile couples that you want to shout ‘get a room’ at – that was us). To my embarrassment, I tried to persuade her to change her mind. She admitted that she was more than tempted to take things further on a base level, as she really fancied me, but used the moral high ground of never having had a ‘casual relationship’ to quash her feelings. It was all a question of ‘bad timing’, according to Sarah.

I asked her where we went from here. Sarah shrugged, but was more than happy to sit there till closing time, making small talk and kissing. I finished my beer immediately (well, it probably took 20 minutes – I did have a third of a pint left) and walked her to Liverpool Street station. I almost lost my temper when she kept asking where I was taking her. Did she think I was going to kidnap her and not let her go until she acquiesced?

Sarah was apologetic, but admitted that she hadn’t thought her feelings through before turning up at the pub. But I found that hard to believe, as I was the first bloke she had been near for five months, while she had discussed the subject with all her friends and had admitted to her colleagues that she was going on a ‘date’. I only wish that I had known things were not going to progress beyond a very average kiss that night in the Peak District, because the other two women (a stunning lawyer and a feisty woman who has paid off the mortgage on her riverside apartment by the age of 36) in the group were far more what I am looking for.

To top it all, I had to buy the drinks.

Everything is ship-shape and Bristol fashion

There was no awkwardness on Sunday morning. Despite our drunkenness – her more than me, as she had sat in the pub for seven hours – perhaps our actions had been borne out of something a little deeper.

I don’t know whether it was the fact that we had done two or three dates worth of talking, but overnight we had strangely become two people in the early stages of ‘coupledom’. We hung at the back of the group, holding hands, gazing into each others' eyes and kissing. We were like a couple of love-struck teenagers.

At the end of the walk, I took her number. The Bristolian told me that she would hopefully be in London for a meeting before Christmas. I texted her on the way home and a few more messages went back and forth during Sunday evening.

I was off work the following day, and when I logged on to my computer, I had received an email saying that she would be in London on Wednesday – and did I fancy meeting up.

We exchanged emails all day. The conversation on Saturday night had been interesting (the fact that she had written a book and done two marathons clinched the deal from my point of view), but there hadn’t been any particular spark. Was it was just a case of two single people with a lot in common having a snog?

But the emails had ratcheted things up several degrees. The banter was good and there was plenty of flirting. This woman was clearly very keen on me. And despite one or two concerns (primarily the fact that we live 200 miles apart), I am very fond of her. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow night.

Walking on air

The journey from Epping to the village of Castleton, in the Peak District, took six hours last Friday afternoon. It was cold and miserable, but my best mate, who runs an outdoors-activities company, had told me that this walking weekend was ‘unmissable’, as it was going to be ‘heaving with single women’. So in the interests of providing material for this blog, I felt duty-bound to attend.

In the evening, I dragged myself around five of the village’s six pubs. As if my chances of pulling weren't slim enough, sitting at the bar like a Billy-no-Mates doing the Sun crossword, I was wearing a will4adventure.com t-shirt (hardly a sartorial statement), as requested by my mate, so that any of his clients could come over and introduce themselves. But nobody did.

After five hours (12 across was particularly tricky), I gave up and headed back to the hostel to bed. But the cold (the room was an old stable block, and despite me appropriating most of the available blankets, I was shivering all night) and the noisiness of my room-mates returning drunk at intervals throughout the small hours, ensured that I didn’t close my eyes all night.

Things didn’t get any better when I met my fellow walkers – the woman that my mate had considered ‘my type’ had failed to turn up. I took one look at the others (estimating that six were single), decided that I didn’t fancy any of them (in fairness, it is hard to look good in walking clothes) and proceeded to spend the entire day bemoaning my love life to my best mate’s missus. And I had forsaken a day's wages for this.

At the end of what was a beautiful walk, I headed back to the hostel to get smartened up, while a few headed straight for the pub. When I got there, two women from Bristol were sitting in the company of my best mate. I settled down and we proceeded to have a good conversation, mainly about being single in your thirties (as they both were).

One of the women went upstairs to freshen up, while the other remained in the bar. More and more of the group gradually joined us. I got chatting to the remaining Bristolian and we were soon having a good conversation. Her mate returned, while another of the single women turned up, having made a real effort (although she couldn’t shake off the other single man in the group, who rarely left her side all weekend).

Now I’m not particularly into high-maintenance women, but I would generally draw the line at chatting up a woman who was wearing filthy walking boots and a skanky fleece. But the conversation was good – and the beer flowing.

One by one, everyone else went to bed. My best mate and his wife were driving back to Sheffield and offered me a warm bed in their house. I declined. It was soon just the two of us. I’d had no particular positive signs during the evening (I’d popped over for a pep-talk from my best mate’s missus halfway through the evening, and she had agreed that the Bristolian’s body language was not great). In fact, there had been an anorak on the bench seat between us all night.

But I slowly worked my way to sitting with our legs touching, before subtly putting my arm behind her. When she started leaning back against me, I was beginning to think that my luck might be changing.

Within minutes, we were snogging and, in all honesty, being a little more tactile than polite company allows – particularly in a brightly lit pub. Unfortunately, last orders rang, and after a frenzied kiss in the corridor outside the toilets, I was on my way back to my dorm – with a huge smile on my face.

Party pooper

In my opinion, parties are the best places for meeting people.You don’t need an opening line – you can just ask how they know the host.

So I had high hopes for last weekend, as I had been invited to my best mate’s housewarming party – my first house party for longer than I could remember. Not only would I know most people there, but everybody had been asked to bring a single friend. I had even been guaranteed the presence of two ‘suitable’ women.

So to say I was disappointed, after setting aside an entire weekend to travel to Sheffield, to find that the ‘suitable’ women were my best mate’s wife’s teenage cousins and the only other female singleton was her sister (who I have yet to have a conversation with, despite having known for more than two years), would be a huge understatement.

The week got worse. A few days later, I had almost £17,000 of work cancelled for next year, and received a letter telling me that an ISA into which I had invested £16,000 over the past eight years had not only earned no interest, but was now worth £11,000.

As I couldn’t feel much worse, I decided to ask out a cute woman in the office in which I have been working this week. She wasn’t the most attractive woman there, but she was my type (short red hair). And, as far as I was concerned, she wasn’t out of my league.

Of course, I didn’t have the courage to ask her face to face. Instead, I put a business card on her keyboard (late at night when there was nobody around) saying: ‘In the unlikely event that you are single, I’d like to buy you a drink.’

Perhaps the cleaner threw away the card before she had seen it. Perhaps she was appalled by the quality of my business card (the card is very thin – but what do you expect for free?). But she hasn’t responded.

So I’m off to the Peak District tomorrow for a walking weekend organised by my best mate’s company (will4adventure.com). He has said it will be chock-a-block with single women, one of whom he thinks I would like. Bearing in mind it was him who promised two suitable women at last week’s party, I am not too hopeful.

Net loss

I’ve been getting ‘interest’ on Dating Direct from more countries than Michael Palin has visited. There have been ‘visits’ from France, Germany, the US, Philippines, Indonesian and Portugal, as well as ‘winks’ from Colombia, Kenya, Qatar, St Lucia, the US, Bulgaria, Peru, Norway, South Africa, Russia and Vietnam (none of whom had even looked at my profile first).

I also had a rare ‘chat’ request. It was from a woman in Ghana without a picture. ‘How are you?’ she wrote. I ignored it. Ten minutes later, she repeated her fascinating missive. When she contacted me for a third time (with exactly the same message), I lost patience. ‘Go away,' I typed. ‘OK, I will go away,’ she replied. I almost felt sorry for her. But what did she really expect?

More worrying than the lack of interest from anyone who didn’t live a long-haul flight away (and I regarded my ex living in Hertfordshire as a problem) was a surfeit of women that I wanted to contact. Despite trawling the website for hours, I found only one woman who I was interested in contacting – apart from those who had already ignored previous emails.

As a result, I decided to quit my subscription the day before my trial week expired. Typical of Dating Direct, though, my bank account was still debited for three months’ membership. After a couple of terse emails, they agreed to refund me.

So it’s back into the real world I go.