The Hoffice

A highlight of Yahoo’s Finds of the Year awards, if not the highlight, the Hoffice Calendar is making the rounds with bored office workers, ironic students and genuine German fans. If the Hoff isn’t already hanging off your wall download it now.

Waiting for Beth

Waiting for Beth has become almost as popular and certainly as absurd a tragicomedy as Samuel Beckett’s original, playing off-off Broadway in restaurants and bars in my hometown. In the past week I’ve sat waiting for my ex-girlfriend on a number of occasions – not including the two years in which she lived in California – and have realised that tardiness is a theme that concerns both plays.

In mine however the waiting is not in vain, but it is in discomfort. Waitresses watch from the wings, deployed one by one, with tilted head and sympathy, to ask if I need another drink, if I would like a starter, or if I might require a counsellor. It’s a surprise to them, and an enormous relief, when Beth shows up, by which time I’ve already had crab cakes, a chat with a professional and one too many Brewskies.

If breaking up is hard to do, dating is harder

Fear not, loyal readers, your hero to zero has not found love in his absence. I am sorry for not having written sooner but, rest assured, my adventures on Match.com have resulted in nothing more romantic than a couple of e-mails and a costly credit card bill.

I am glad however that things are working out for my readers. Sian, 40 from Shrewsbury, joined Match.com as local_minger on the strength of my recent posts. “I've got fleas, large facial warts and all manner of infectious diseases... but a great personality!” says Sian on her online profile, which, despite it’s raw honesty, has led to over 200 viewings, scores of e-mails and a couple of dates.

Divide those figures by four and we’re closer to the sort of statistics my online profile is enjoying. Despite my “virtual winking”, even e-mailing a few girls, I have as of yet been unable to score a single date. But before my winking develops into a nervous tick, I’m not going to worry. I like to think that I have a very slow release charm.

It has actually been oozing rather gently over a long conversation with ChicClimber, a 26 year-old junior doctor, with whom I share a love of Belle and Sebestian and Ben Folds. After a couple of inappropriate jokes regarding incest and espionage I guess the slow release charm slowly retracted and ChicClimber went rather quiet. Either that or she found my blog.

If that is indeed the case, Amie, I do apologise and hope you might get back in touch. It’s customary that a girl dates me at least once before breaking up with me. This way is so premature. I know it’s hard to break up in person but it’s much easier to date that way.

Can't Buy Me Love

For all its techno wizardry, match.com follows simple, if outmoded, rules of dating. In the real world you might linger at the bar, building up the courage to approach the object of your desire, practising your witty and ironic opener in your head, before going for the kill. On match.com you send a virtual wink. It lets the other person know that you’re interested.

If, like me, you’ve registered for match.com but not yet paid the subscription fee, winking is all you can do. It’s like being outside of the bar, pushing your face up against the glass and winking at the hottie in the short dress. Without paying the cover charge you’re just a weirdo, winking.

And so, I’m tempted to pay the subscription charge (I figure I’m pretty weird as it is), but wonder how else I could invest that money towards finding a date…

New shirt: £30
Cover charge: £6
Drinks: £30
Cab fare home: £10
Pot noodle: £1.20
Watching Jonathan Ross on your own: Priceless.

Right. Where’s my credit card?

Tall, dark and handsome seeks short and fat

It’s no good bragging about having a bachelors degree or a knowledge of modern Czech literature when you can’t even work the multiple choice section of match.com’s profile builder. It seems, in my haste to get my own written statement right, I rushed building an accurate portrait of my desired match.

If I didn’t already sound desperate imagine reading a profile that seeks a woman anywhere between 3’1’’ and 8’11''. Also, I checked ‘heavyset’, thinking it meant busty – like having a heavy set. Apparently it does not.

So, before I’m inundated with short and squat dates, I’m changing my profile. Again.

Meeting with Approval

Online dating service, Match.com, was quicker than I had expected in reviewing the personal profile I’d submitted to the site. Yep, within two hours of an estimated 72, a member of staff had deemed my submission inappropriate and declined to approve it for publication. “A portion appears to be confusing, filled with random text, cut off mid-paragraph or inappropriate, but it may be approved with minor changes,” the e-mail read.

It was a disheartening start to what was becoming a typical dating experience. If Match.com is singles’ night at the virtual bar of online dating, I had just been declined entry on account of my footwear.

So, I changed my shoes and my approach, read the site’s advice, which recommended opening with a joke (a suggestion I took literally), and submitted my updated profile to almost instant approval. Not only that, I’m told, but its “being considered for the member spotlight.” It can’t have been the picture.

So, a guy walks into a bar…“ouch!” This clumsy but charming man is seeking someone to fall about laughing with. Knock knock…

By day, a mild-mannered designer; by night, a fun loving, music aficionado, this Clark Kent is looking for his Lois Lane, or something less cheesy. Though I’ve never – quite gladly – been mistaken for a bird, or indeed a plane, I like to think that beneath the spectacles and the modest, self-deprecating demeanour is something of a Superman.

I’m not always this annoying. But I really do like music. I listen to everything from Ryan Adams to Frank Zappa, a lot of Indie stuff, and even soul and funk. In fact, I wrote my university dissertation on the latter and its relationship to the Civil Rights Movement in America.

I don’t expect my match to know anything about that! But I am looking for somebody who appreciates good conversation, likes to laugh (I mean who doesn’t – it’s brilliant), and enjoys life. So if you are indeed alive get in touch!

Okay, so the ending sounds a little desperate, my only request being that my date can talk, listen and, essentially, breathe. Still, I’m not holding my breath. My profile’s been online all of 8 hours. And been viewed once. And that was me.

Meeting My Match

There comes a time in your life when you concede that you need help. For me that time is now. I just never thought it would come at 23 and have anything to do with my love life.

In a straight run from my 15th birthday right up to my 22nd, I had a steady stream of girlfriends. Okay, hardly a stream, more like three big buckets of water. But in the last year there’s been something of a dry spell.

My website too has all but withered from the draught. And so, with it, and my love life in mind, I decided to dip my toe in the wet and wild world of online dating, thinking it might provide amusing fodder for my blog and a story to desperately conceal from the grandkids.

Match.com seemed an obvious place to start. It’s the world’s largest online dating service, has inspired twice as many marriage as any other site, and though it doesn’t appear to have a returns policy, it does come with a guarantee. Apparently, I’ll find the special someone that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside within 6 months.

This sounds good. In the last 6 months only whiskey has made me feel that way. But it’s also made me vomit on more than one occasion. Just as long as I don’t do that I imagine my love life is about to improve. Or else it’ll make for interesting reading.

After clicking past several photo montages, at once putrid and promising, of attractive, mostly interracial couples, I’m asked to enter some information about myself under four broad categories: Basics, Appearance, Interests, Lifestyle and Background/Values. I’m modest about my body type, list my lips as my best feature (from a selection that included ‘calves’ and ‘belly button’), and mention nothing about my website, or indeed, the devil worshiping that requires human sacrifice. I am, of course, just joking. We can use lamb.

I do however brag about my frequent trips to California, drop a Norah Jones lyric about “rain falling on a tin roof” and admit that I am an incredibly slow reader and have been reading modern Czech classic, The Unbearable Lightness of Being for an unbearably long time. I figure that will make me sound rather sophisticated, if a little slow.

I struggle however to choose even one sport or exercise that I enjoy.

Questions regarding my “match” are even more taxing. What colour eyes do you like to stare into? What kind of hair do you like to run your fingers through? Should she want kids?

Hitting next takes me to a screen even more daunting. Describe yourself and your perfect match to our community. I’ve got 2000 characters in which to do it and a further 128 for my ‘dating headline.’ If you’ve ever used eBay this is the equivalent of an item description and title. Except this is not granny’s old tea set from the loft, this is San, you know, from the block.

Still, I hit submit and send my profile for approval by a match.com member of staff. In 72 hours time I’ll be out there again, albeit in the online dating world, leaning on the virtual bar, looking for that special someone who makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, but doesn’t make me vomit the next day.

Stay tuned to see if I do indeed find a match, strike a flame or blow chunks.