A nod's as good as a wink

My three-month subscription to Dating Direct ended at the weekend. In an attempt to make me waste another £45, the website embarked on its usual trick of promoting me to its female members in every possible way. But not only did it fail to entice me into prolonging my tenure on the site, but I would imagine that female members quit in their droves, after the indignity of having my profile emailed to them ‘as a good match’ or having to continually endure the sight of my profile on the homepage.

Of course, such a tactic garnered me far more ‘views’ (up from a couple a day to about 20), but none of these elicited a ‘wink’ or an email. That was until the penultimate day, when I received a wink from someone and an email from someone else. The woman who emailed me was a better bet than most of my previous correspondents, but her message was dull and made little sense.

The woman who winked, although not ostensibly my type, had a reasonable profile. So I sent her a message. She replied a couple of hours later, saying that she was really glad that I had emailed her. I explained that it was my last day on the site, so I gave her my Googlemail address. A few minutes later, a ‘chat’ request appeared on my laptop – from her. Unfortunately, I can’t reply to chat requests. So I emailed her to this effect, reiterating that she should drop me an email.

Five days later, I’m still waiting to hear. I know you will be thinking that I should resubscribe, but I’m loth to do that for several reasons. First, I didn’t intend to subscribe for the last thee moths. It’s just that Dating Direct has a sneaky way to make you think that you have cancelled when you haven’t (after several questions, you are asked whether you still want to cancel – but clicking on the ‘cancel’ button, cancels the cancellation process, rather than your subscription). Second, there is no one on the site that I want contact, who hasn’t already ignored me. Over the past three months, I have sent no emails and winked at nobody. Third, the woman in question has received more than 1,000 winks and is undoubtedly emailing other people. Fourth, she will lose interest before we meet as a result of misunderstanding my sarcasm. Five, I’m skint (see A Change for the Bettor for the sickening reason why).

I don’t know why she won’t send me an email. I can understand that she doesn’t want to reveal her identity so soon, but it takes two minutes to set up an account under a pseudonym (and most people on dating websites already have one). It’s not as if I gave her my Hotmail address.

And I haven’t heard a word from Susan Boyle.