We made it to San Francisco by plane and train. It seemed only natural then to complete the final part of our journey by automobile.
When my friend, Meghan, picked us up from Union Square we hit speeds of zero to weird in under 15 minutes, stopping at her old workplace for an office party.
Imagine the scene: the UK Office meets its US counterpart by way of Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends and Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Awkward humour, tongue in cheek and social faux pas.
I was under the supposition that by leaving England I was leaving behind its vagaries and virtues. And though I'll miss the Beeb, logical road systems and PG Tips, I'd imagined a fond farewell to the many fouls of English customer service.
We'd not even left the runway however before being reminded that for the next 10 or so hours we were at the service of British Airways.
A Geordie voice crackled over the tanoy.
"This is Dean, your flight service manager," it said. "Can I just say, it's very difficult to do our job when yous lot stand in the isles.
"And another thing," he continued. "There are 208 passengers and 208 meals. It doesn't take a genius to work out that some of you might not get the right kind. Can I just apologise now?"
And with the pre-emptive apologies of the British Airways cabin crew we were ready, more than ever, to take off.
The abuse of the English accent happened long before landing on American soil. Having been denied a seat next to Pete on the plane I thought I'd approach customer services with a smouldering look that in my head resembles James Bond, in the external world, a man in need of a bathroom.
Overhearing her name in conversation, I say, with perhaps too much surprise, as if seeing an old friend, "Sarah!"
Within five minutes, a few smouldering looks and the most charming English accent I could manage, I had young Sarah printing me a new boarding pass.
Let's hope my skills of persuasion work just as well at immigration, where I'm paranoid to the point of feeling like I'm only pretending to be a "regular tourist."
Though it seems a shame to leave the bitter cold of a lingering winter, the oodles of work piling on my desk, the threat of bird flu even, I've decided to blow my holiday entitlement on a month long trip to California.
Accompanying me this time is my not-so-glamourous assistant, Pete, my trusty Moleskine (notebook to Hemingway and Chatwin) and a number of Biro pens.
Expect witty field reports, acute observations and, ultimately, bitchy comments about my travel buddy, Pete, as we venture on a journey across the state, through the Nevada desert and into the longest period of time I've spent with a single person.
How will we get on for a month? Who will flip first? Where is my red shirt? Just a question for myself there. But stay tuned for answers to the other two. And more besides.
Ah, first dates. The nerves, the sweaty palms, the possibility that they’ll actually show up. Today was mine with an online match, or so it should have been. Instead I was left nervous, sweaty and alone.
And a little bit confused. It was as whirlwind as an online romance could be. On Wednesday she ‘winked’, by Thursday we had exchanged e-mails, on Friday we were making plans to meet. It was like a Craig David song.
In fact, I thought she was very keen, having suggested that we meet up today. She even suggested that we do so at a time and a place convenient to me. Instead, I arranged to have coffee in a trendy, Birmingham bar, about an hour from home. It might have not been convenient but it was at least in her home town.
Sitting at the bar I wondered when ‘fashionably late’ became ‘you’ve been stood up, mate.’ But considering she hadn’t far to travel, and that she was so keen to meet in the first place, I figured circumstance had prevented her from coming. Perhaps a family crisis, an accident, last minute nerves even. Maybe she died.
It took a real friend however to suggest that perhaps she had seen me and decided to leave. I still think that she’s dead.
Have you ever been somewhere embarrassing, like a sex shop, and worried that you might see somebody you know? Well, the chances are that if you do, they'd be just as embarrassed. There's some comfort then in knowing that should they ask, "what are you doing here?" you could just as easily reply, "what are you doing here?"
The Internet being one big sex shop, in which the goods are on display but the customers are not, gives surfers a feeling of anonymity and the confidence, however misguided, that they can peruse, pick up and play in privacy.
But put that dildo down.
Our privacy is this century's Civil Rights but its protection is not yet assured. And, should the ne'er-do-wells in the Bush administration get their way, even our search results will be monitored (I’ll save you the worry, it's annsummers.com).
Whatever it's long term plans (and don't believe everything you read at google-watch.org), Google last week emerged as a sort of Rosa Parks, refusing to give up its seat, or rather its records, to the Bush administration.
So, and I digress, while my IP address, cookies and crumbs can give me away online, last night my web whereabouts were revealed by nothing more scientific than actually bumping into somebody I know somewhere I shouldn’t have been.
Well, I was on match.com, not that there's anything wrong with that, but decided to check out my competition. To do so however I had to search for men, roughly my age in and around my area.
As the results loaded I recognised an old school friend and, in my haste, clicked on his profile. Though mine, and the exercise as a whole, has been mostly tongue in cheek (so far only my tongue in my own cheek), his was very sincere.
And I say in haste, because clicking his profile was with more so than sense. The match.com service being what it is (that is quite impressive) members can see who has viewed their profile.
Not only will I be revealed for using the service – something I'm obviously not too shy about – but seen as searching for men, roughly my age in and around my area.
It's like I’m in the sex shop and I've been caught picking up a dildo.
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 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
It’s as common a question as I’m ever asked. And remember, I’m from an Indian family, and it’s more common even than questions regarding my ultimate wedding to a nice Hindu girl, or my decision to not study law or medicine, or why I’m not more like my cousin, Dinesh. It’s so pressing, in fact, that my dad himself, a man of few words, and certainly not with a vocabulary of emotive language, felt it necessary to ask: “Don’t you get lonely?”
This usually follows a tour of my flat, and is becoming as obligatory as the tour itself; my response as short. “No,” I say. “Of course not.” But, for some reason, people tend to equate my single life with a life of bleak loneliness, posing the question with a tilted head and a look of concern.
The truth is, I’m too busy to feel lonely. And, in fact, I’m rarely even alone. Sure, I don’t have a girlfriend, a life partner, a Hindu wife, or whatever else people think is the opposite loneliness, but I’m so inundated with visitors asking me whether I’m lonely that I’m, frankly...not.
I was on my way to see an attractive local weather girl switch on the Christmas lights when I met Lucy. There she was, standing on the platform, practically illuminating it, when I began to rethink my 15 mile journey. Here are the Christmas lights, I thought. And this is my weather girl. And though I couldn’t, from my vantage point on platform 5, accurately ascertain her occupation, I nevertheless took my thoughts as profound, broke all the rules of my involuntary celibacy and asked for her number. Breaking further rules, and indeed, expectations, she gave it. And I waited just a few moments until she disappeared behind the station building to punch the air in delight.
As I swung somewhat pointlessly into the cold, dark night, I considered my recent romantic misfortunes and felt glad to have not seen Lucy with a child, a grey hair, or even a hint of a penis.
My friends were less sure. “Come on,” said Bill. “What’s wrong with her then?”
“Nothing!” I said. “Well, anyway I’ll find out on Sunday. I’m seeing her then.”
“There’s got to be something.”
“Can’t this just be that I meet a hot girl, my own age; I ask her out, we have a good time and it all works out?”
And, though this was really a rhetorical question, by Sunday it had been answered loud and clear, and only fifteen minutes into our date.
“So, do you live with your folks or do you have your own place?” I asked, already thinking of potential sleeping arrangements.
“No,” she said, putting her coffee down, as if getting ready to leave. “I live with my daughter.”
Thinking, perhaps under some sort of illusion, that I wasn’t the kind of guy to just get up and run, I held steady on to my coffee cup, and looked interested. “Oh wow!” I said. “What’s her name?” I didn’t really care what her name was. What difference does it make? And the smile that curled at the edges of my mouth wasn’t in excitement at this news but in knowing that, of course, this was “what’s wrong with her.”
Whilst she told me her daughter’s name, and the story behind it, which I hoped I’d never be quizzed on because I wasn’t really listening, I began to rationalise the situation, and think of how this could work without my becoming little whatsherface’s new daddy. The pause, I thought, signified the end of her story.
“So that’s where little…your little daughter gets her name from!” I said. “Great. Shall we go for a walk?”
And so we did. But at every turn was another startling revelation that only the illusion of my own kindness kept me running from. She’d been unwell for several years, she said, and so, tempted by curiosity I asked with what. And when she answered, “anorexia”, I again responded with “Oh wow!” but suddenly felt awful for having listed ‘thin’ as a quality in describing her to Bill. (I’m surprised he didn’t already guess.) But that wasn’t all.
As our walk took a turn towards the river and our conversation for the worse, she began to recall her days in the mental health institution where she was committed with schizophrenia. It was there, in her defence, that she discovered that she was pregnant and that she must recover for the sake of her daughter, whose name, at this moment in time, escapes me.
Her recovery and, indeed, the sing-song way in which she told her story, endeared me to her and, as our walk led us to the pub and one drink to another, the date somehow picked up. But whatever good she impressed upon me that evening she soon undid with the 87 text messages that followed.
In the brief moments between them I pondered my dilemma. Just how do you break up with a young, single mother with a history of schizophrenia and anorexia? Despite the phrase ‘unlucky in love’, which I take credit for coining, I’d never been in this situation. I thought that doing it in a text message was a bad idea. Over dinner was even worse. I mean, what do you say? “It’s not you, or you, or you, it’s me”?
You can’t imagine what it’s like to lose your mobile phone until it happens to you. At first there’s the sinking feeling that it’s not coming back, an anticipatory worry, building like the interference that interrupts a radio signal – pip-piP-pIP-PIP; then the silence, and a brief moment of liberation, when you can just about imagine a world without it; before the ringing sound of panic, blaring in your ear, like an inaudible melody of the names and numbers that you realise you’ve lost for good.
This happened to me yesterday, like some sort of comeuppance for actually engaging in any kind of physical exertion, on a golf course. I guess I swung too hard, and now, only a day later, I’m quickly realising what a handicap it is to be without my phone.
In that time I’ve been unable to cancel a meeting with a mate, respond to the outrageous advances of a lady friend and wish my big sister a Happy Birthday, leaving three people waiting, wondering and wanting to kill me, respectively. Worse still, sitting now on the train, I can’t tell the woman meeting me at the other end that I am more than one hour delayed.
I guess that’s two people wanting to kill me.
If only my cleaner had more in common with Gwyneth Paltrow. (Sigh.) I realise how that sounds, but it really is the least of my problems. (For starters, I can’t even park my Hummer in the street and my £50 notes won’t fit in my wallet.)
After walking home in the drizzle (there is no Hummer, but if anybody has any suggestions about the £50s...), I found a note from my new cleaner, Sylvia, whom I’d recently discovered was pleasant but not hot. I always imagined Jennifer Lopez in Maid in Manhattan – a weapon of ass distraction. Instead Sylv, although very pleasant, is more of an A bomb. And, it turns out, no Sylvia Plath.
Sam [sic],
Could you get me some more bleach please? And you need washing up liquid. Don’t like this weather.
Sylvia
What’s particularly interesting about this note is not that she spells my name wrong, despite my attempts to print it clearly in all correspondence, but that even in its economy of only five lines we still see a mention of the weather. Are we Brits so obsessed, or rather, so upset by it that it pervades our every conversation, whether spoken or otherwise? The weather constitutes one third of the message body. I didn’t even get a mention when it was obviously my birthday, cake and balloons strewn around the flat. (Maybe that's why.)
Okay, now I’m complaining. But that too – I suppose – is as British as talking of the weather, which brings us back to Gwyneth Paltrow, whom by doing both, last week became 'officially' British. It seems all is not yellow for Mrs Coldplay.
“Bring a raincoat, definitely,” she advises potential ex-pats in the US edition of Marie Claire magazine. “Or at least a little umbrella that can fit in your bag, because it always does rain.”
Even on the off chance that it’s not raining, things, according to Gwyneth, are still rather gloomy, with poor customer service and dirty streets. “My husband thinks I'm way too obsessed with cleanliness and germs. I'm just like, ‘The street is filthy, could we take off our shoes before we come into the house?’”
To be fair, Sylvia says the same. And at least one of the two has no complaints about British men. Gwyneth married Chris Martin in under a year and who knows what the future holds for Sylvia and Sam. At least he takes his shoes off.
There was an awkwardness with which Peter swept his hair across his brow. Noticing it, I asked, “did you do something different with your hair today, Pete?”
“Yeah, I switched my parting,” he said, once the motion had completed its conspicuous path.
“Can you just…do that?” I asked.
“Well, guys usually have their parting on the left,” he said. “And girls on the right. But I thought I’d switch it up a little.”
My mouth curled into a smile at the thought of Pete, extending the switching up to his dressing habits, turning up at my flat, not as Peter Woods, sports fan and Dylan aficionado, but as Petra, wood strapped firmly to the thigh, bra stuffed with tissue and long black hair, parted from the right.
“Why do we bother with all these gender rules?” he asked, his sensible question interrupting my sordid thought. “Left or right, does it really matter?”
He’d had more profound thoughts, I’m sure, but his question was an interesting one. Watches, badges, earrings, depending on which side they’re worn, can indicate one’s gender or sexuality, in case it’s not already obvious (in which case, the ‘left or right’ dilemma is probably the least pressing).
“It makes me anxious,” he said, “these rules. I don’t know if I’m misrepresenting myself.” Throwing his hands dramatically in the air reminded me of Petra. “If I wear my watch on the right hand does that make me a girl?”
Wearing a bra does, I thought to myself.
“And if I wear an earring on my left ear, does that make me gay?”
“I think with the watch on your right hand it would make you a lesbian.” I said.
Pete thought about it for a second, long enough for the excitement to wear off, imagined himself as Petra, stuffed bra and long hair, and unceremoniously switched his parting back, sweeping his hair across his brow so that it started at the left. Like a man.
In, what can only be described as a twist, a pirouette and a crotch-grabbing of fate, singer Michael Jackson today received a jury summons at his Neverland Valley Ranch in California – four months after he was acquitted on child molestation charges.
If anybody remembers the trouble lawyers had in finding a jury of his peers (although I think two-thirds female, and mostly white was about right), imagine the fun they’ll have with Jackson in the jury box. Although by the sounds of it, he could do with the $15 a day.
On his recent trip to London the singer spent only £85,000 in 30-minutes at Harrods. Looks like someone’s tightening the belt...
