My Funny Valentine

Be afraid.

Be very afraid … for the world is surely about to end.

Stop whooping, Shan; it's not Judgement Day just yet but I do believe one of the signs of impending apocalypse is for me to receive a Valentine's Day card; something I have not done since college, when Jackie the anorexic girl (model for "Anorexic Girl" in the New Kid comic strips) was chasing me.

And speaking of Anna Rex, the card that plopped on to my doormat (or was it into my in-tray?) features her, too.

Hokay, conspiracy fans, over to you:
The clues are:

(a) It was addressed to "Dive" so I must assume it came either from Blogville or one of those weirdo lurkers (hi, guys).

(b) How the fuck did the sender find out where to send it (though I confess it is pretty easy to figure out where I live and where I work from my posts)?

(c) There is an initial inside, but no name.

Any clues as to who Dive's secret admirer may be?
I know and I am grinning bashfully.

Hee hee hee hee hee …

The Circadian Rhythm Method

Let's update that pesky Brontë bird, shall we?

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a bloody good job and a nice house (and who also irons), must be in want of a wife/partner/girlfriend/shag/good cuddle/whatever."

Thankfully, now that I'm back in the hectic routine of commuter hell, the lonelies seem to have receded a bit.

Before I expand on that, I feel I must apologise to my dear blogpals for my appalling mood swings over the past week or so.
While they've certainly brought in the old comments - 46 yesterday, 55 the day before - I don't really enjoy bouncing from euphoria to despair every few hours.
And then yesterday, exhaustion hit me … BAM!
I know some people pay good money to experience those effects. Well, they're welcome to 'em. They fuck me up big time.

After two lovely weeks of natural circadian rhythms (groovy), my poor old body is going through the transition shock of getting back into the old "4:40AM leap screaming out of bed/seven hour commute with a full working day in the middle/get home knackered, check my posts and tumble into bed" routine.

The first few days back after a break are always hard and my body gets its revenge by kicking my brain around my skull until I don't know which way is up. Hence the mood swings followed by exhaustion. It's like jet-lag, only nastier.

The one good side-effect of all this is that I now don't have time to get miserable and lonely. It seems that if I keep moving and keep busy, I can keep the lonelies at bay. Depression can't be arsed to catch up with me; it's too much like hard work.

The down side of course, is that loneliness lies in wait, ready to drag me down into despair whenever I so much as stop for a breather. Douglas Adams was right about Sunday afternoons: "The long, dark teatime of the soul" …
I've learned to do my ironing then; around tea time, in front of something funny like a Red Dwarf DVD.

So basically, I've not really got anything to say this morning other than I'm exhausted, but gradually getting back into my routine, and that even with all of your wonderful dating advice over the past week I still don't have a clue about how to find my "wife/partner/girlfriend/shag/good cuddle/whatever."

Hey ho … Same old same old Dive …

Hunky Dory Day

So I fancied a nice long soak in the bath in the middle of the day.
What of it?

One of the few advantages of living alone is that I can do what the fuck I want, when I feel like it. The same goes for eating and drinking.

Actually, now that I come to think of it, it IS rather nice that there's nobody trying to call me up or wondering where I am or what I'm doing all the time;

nobody filling every square inch of the bathroom with crap and making my bath stink of rotting fruit and washing powder (yes, Ame, I dated a Lush addict);

nobody saying "You've got thousands of books, what do you want another one for?";

nobody throwing a strop and scoring fucking points;

nobody saying "You're not thinking of wearing that, are you?";

nobody to moan that it's black and white or it's got subtitles;

nobody shouting, swearing, abusing and slapping me around every fourth week while expecting me to be angelic and supportive about it, yet never once apologising … ever;

nobody to stop me drinking scotch in bed;

nobody to scream at me for ironing her silk blouse on cotton setting;

nobody to stop me following that police car round and round Norwich with a fucking great spliff on the go;

nobody putting their COLD feet on my nice warm tummy in the middle of the night;

Hmm … perhaps this dating business is all just a cunning and fiendish trap set by weemen to get me to cook and clean and iron for them … Damn my stupid penis for getting turned on by nice perky little boobs …

Anyway, back to my lovely hot, slightly overfilled bath … Brew up some yummy Cuban coffee and relax … Mmmmmm …
Today is a Hunky Dory day (thanks, Rich), so Hunky Dory goes on repeat play in the studio, whilst just down the landing I settle in to my wonderfully unperfumed bathwater and get to work on becoming seriously wrinkly.
Before I get in, I check my bum cheeks for the telltale signs of alien abduction and anal probing after reading Ame's mysterious description of her own experience (check Saturday's comments).

The upshot of all this crap is that I get to thinking about bathtub music, so when I get out, I click on the "play count" in iTunes and am genuinely shocked at what it says about my age.

Crikey!
Most of the top few hundred tracks (we're talking over 90Gig of music collected over forty-eight years) are stuck firmly in the seventies … The SEVENTIES! The decade taste forgot! The decade that saw the death of the mini skirt and the rise of flares. Fucking hell!

This is alarming. If you wander on over to my profile, you'll see the kind of music I actually profess to liking. And that's not it.
The seventies! Shame on me. Although I suppose it was my teenage years, so it must have been pretty formative (newer readers: check back on old Dive's musical history) …

Having said that; Bowie, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell all loom large, together with Dylan and the Beatles leaking over from the sixties; then there's Jeff Beck's Blow By Blow album (the only record of guitar music ever made that is actually listenable), Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On", Elton, Zep, Beefheart, Neil Young, Zappa, a fair bit of (ahem) prog, some punk of course …

Actually, I'm not so ashamed now I look at it. That's some damned fine music.
Let's have a belated hoorah for the seventies!

The puzzling thing is that ever since it first came out in 1979, one song has been stuck in my head.
It's like it's been hard-wired into my brain.
I mean we've all got songs running through our heads pretty much all of the time, right? Yet whenever I'm too busy or distracted I find my brain reverts to default and there's ALWAYS the same fucking song there.
And it's Joni Mitchell's "Sweet Sucker Dance" off her Mingus album.
WHY?
It's not as if I have any particular attachment to the song; it's not even close to being one of Joni's best. But there it is … all the time … stuck in my head.
And it's not exactly something I can sing along to, or even dance to …
Somehow it just got hard-wired in there. My brain's default song … Weird …

So. This calls for a mini-assignment:

Question 1:
Does your iTunes "Play Count" say anything surprising or embarrassing about you?
And please be honest.

Question 2:
Do you have a song that's "hard-wired" into your brain? Again, be honest rather than trying to be cool …

And Question 3:
Given the small list of examples above, am I really sure that I want a girlfriend?

Yesterday's Comment-fest Continued …

Bloody Hell!

This "what women want and how do I get hold of some" business has sparked off such a deluge of comments that I'm somewhat overwhelmed.
As I'm back in Norfolk for the weekend, where - as you know - my broadband connection is made of mud and straw and powered by a donkey, my comments page (31 from the last post so far) takes a bloody age to load.
Therefore, I'm continuing it up here.

So: in answer to those comments thus far unanswered:

Kate:
Voldemort. Love it! Ew indeed …

Robyn:
Sugar daddy? The thought of bestowing my largesse upon a younger lady in exchange for her favours had never actually occurred to me before, yet it is strangely appealing …

Please thank your daughter for her suggestion. I would ask you to box her up and send her over, but Kundsen once sent me a girl in a box (we had airholes cut and everything); and our postal service is so dreadful that she never arrived.
She's probably rotting away in the corner of some postal depot in Dundee …

Old K:
I had always thought that romance in Scotland involved clubbing something over the head with a haggis, rummaging around under its kilt for a bit, then dragging it away if it was vaguely female …
Yet here you are distilling a lifetime's experience into "all a man ever need know about weemen". Wonderful and sage advice.
I'll definitely be buying a cap …

Ame! California Girl!
Yay! Definitely up for meeting in April. Just let me know closer to the time which day you're likely to want to meet up and I'll book some leave and we can "do" London. Whatever you want … And yes, I suppose that would have to include the big Lush shop in Covent Garden …

GG:
Boy, oh boy, girl; you've sure got me sussed. You've been poking around in what passes for my brain and found a biggie.
There are things that'll never appear on this blog that have shaped the way I am. I suppose I should say "thanks" for stirring the sludge and bringing them back up to the surface … and maybe making me think about changing things a bit.
By the way; a nice change would be if some Australian girl living in Japan developed an irrational passion for a tatty old English bloke and turned up naked on his doorstep … er …

Spinny:
There are indeed some regular women commuters on my train. I've referred to them in a past post.
"A Woman Called Horse", "Mary Hopkin, Witchfinder General", together with several who are grouped under "Shouty Bitch With Mobile Fucking Phone" are women I would perhaps date in some dodgy-prawn-curry -induced nightmare, but never EVER in real life … Yikes!

Oh, by the way; EVERYBODY please click on the "Shouty Bitch" link. I sincerely believe it is something the whole planet should read and act upon.

So thanks for all the advice, gang. I now know (sort of) what women want and how to go about getting it.

Will I actually do anything about it?

Date Dive Continued …

Hokay …
So with our last three posts and comment-fests, we've established the kind of things women want; and from our - admittedly restricted and probably biased - focus group, it looks like I shouldn't have any problems as long as I manage to speak to a woman before she runs away (basically, I should start looking for women standing in corners so I can establish my "confident, fun and intelligent" credentials while they're still trapped).

Next question:
Just where do I go to find these women?

Bearing in mind that:
- I commute seven hours a day and work the rest, so monday to friday are out.
- The kind of woman who chats up the lead guitarist at gigs is NOT the kind of woman I'm looking for.
- I don't go to "bars" (I'm kind of old-fashioned; I find the idea of casual sex pretty disgusting). Anyway, we don't have such things as "singles bars" like they do in the US, just grotty dives where frankly revolting people go to binge-drink 'til they puke.
- Related to the above, I'm not interested in a short term relationship. Hell, I'm forty-eight; this one's got to last me out.

As for what I'm looking for … the list I sketched out got so restrictive that it became plain that no such woman could exist in this universe.
So let's just take a few points:

The woman I'm looking for:
- must be a non-smoker
- preferably a veggie
- preferably no kids or animals
- politically aware and left wing
- smart, funny, strong and independent (she should have a life of her own outside the relationship as I'm very rarely at home; someone who just sits in front of the telly or calls me up every half an hour would drive me scatty)
- tattoos turn me right off

As for looks (though I know beggars can't be choosers):
- I like slim (I'm NOT a big boob man), quirky looking, bookish, academic types (the old "sexy librarian" / long hair and glasses thing), and I like "feminine" (I'm old fashioned) …

So come on, gang; where does old Dive start looking for a woman like that (if one actually exists) now that you've got his confidence up?

Same Old Same Old

As this is going round and round in circles (see comments to the last two posts), I'll refine my original question to "Regardless of what a woman might (or might not) want in a man, what is it that first attracts her to him … and how the fuck do I get hold of some of that?"

Twitch, Damn You! Twitch!

I've spent the morning putting together a Powerpoint presentation for a talk I've got to do in Japanese class tonight on Japanese cuisine.

Dive's Dining Room (click for bigger table)

As a consequence of which I've drooled my weight in saliva.

The rice steamer's on. I'm making どんぶり for lunch because I'm bloody starving.

While I'm waiting for that; the girls hit back after yesterday's comment-fest, wanting to know what I'm looking for in a woman.
Well I had a good think and wrote out a list, but it very quickly became prohibitively restrictive.
So I have two choices: I can write my shopping list out for you to guffaw at and snort derision upon, or I could just say "anything that still twitches when you kick it."

As for the girls' answers to my own question; all of those things (with the possible exceptions of the blatantly materialistic items) are admirable qualities is a man but I bet my bottom dollar that none of you would date a man who had all of those qualities if he happened to be "differently attractive", like myself.

So I'll revise my "what I'm looking for in a woman" list.
Now it's "any woman who would actually date me".

Don't hold your breath … I've been looking for forty-eight years …

Drop Dead

Just got back from the Health Centre where the lovely Doctor Amanda was delighted with the results of all my hours and hours of waiting around in the hospital before Christmas and once again declared me obscenely healthy.

Sheesh! What's a guy gotta do to drop dead around here?

That means next time I'm depressed, I can't just go running after trains and hope for the best, I've actually got to do something about it like buy a gun and shoot myself.
Bummer …

So I popped into the city to celebrate with a caffeine overdose and the most obscenely fattening thing on the coffee shop counter and a girl's voice said "Ooh! Leicester Tigers!" (I was wearing my nice new Tigers rugby shirt I got from Phil at Christmas).
I turned and there was a really pretty woman (mid-thirties, slim, red hair … Mmmm) smiling at me from the coffee queue.
So we sat down together and got chatting and …
inevitably she told me all about how her boyfriend and her are big Tigers fans …
… so we had a lovely chat about rugby and how wonderful her boyfriend is …

Arse!

Why do pretty women have bloody boyfriends?
Don't they realise that they can have me instead?
Bugger, bugger, bugger …

Dive's Christmas Appeal

Around this time of year we are bombarded with Christmas appeals.
There are so many groups who are in need and it's nice to give something so that someone will have a less shitty time of it at the peak of the suicide season.
I like to slip my Big Issue guy a twenty pound note for the Christmas Issue, and my big 'pennies' jar (£170 odd this year) has gone toward Motor Neurone research, which also goes toward making me feel less shitty about myself. And there are lots of others …

This year, when you set aside a moment to consider those less fortunate, I'd like to remind you of a group who get left out year after year; snubbed and ignored, especially around the "party season" when everyone else is so happy.

So Dive's Christmas Appeal for 2006 is:
"Spare a thought for the ugly this Christmas".

I admit to a special interest here as I am a longstanding and fully paid up member of this group. Take it from one who knows: Christmas is a fucking awful time to be ugly.
I mean, I'm not hideous (well not very), but when I walk into a party and people turn to see who it is, I can feel a palpable flinch from all the unattached women in the room.
We ugs are the people who put the "N" in "hello" … We say "Hello" to a woman and her mind forms it automatically into "Hell No".

And even if one of us somehow makes it into a relationship, we get the feeling that we're as sexually attractive as yesterday's washing-up … You know, you see it all piled up and stinky in the sink and you know somebody's got to do it, but … (shudder). No way! Not even with Marigolds on …

And mistletoe. Fuck all round that.

And stupid drunk office girls in Santa hats snogging everything that moves … everything but an ug, of course.

And stupid "feel good" Christmas crap fucking TV. Where are the ugs? Nowhere.
Except for "fake ug", like Ugly Betty … Listen, you TV twats: putting a brace and glasses on a pretty girl does not make her ugly. Ug is Ug. If TV used real ugs, nobody would watch. Just like real life … Bastards!

And "the youth of today", pretty girls binge-drinking 'til they puke, then fucking in their own stink and leaving pools of chlamydia wherever they sit. But even semi-conscious from booze, they won't go near an ug.

And sicky-sicky married couples with their "lovely" kids. Do we ugs get to be attractive married couples? Do we bollocks! So don't invite us over at Christmas; seeing you so happy only makes us more fucking miserable when we get home alone to our dark empty houses.

And girlfriends who are 'friends who happen to be girls'. I've got girlfriends coming out of my fucking ears, but they'd all puke at the thought of dating me. (Ugs make girlfriends as easily as gay guys do; we're "safe" … Hah!).

And Christmas parties? Don't get me started … really … don't.

There's no love in our ugly lives and no prospect of any, so Christmas really sucks huge ass.

We ugs even have our own anthem. The lovely Mister Mozza wrote it for us; How Soon Is Now (sing along):

I am the son
And the heir
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and the heir
Of nothing in particular

You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am Human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does

There's a club, if you'd like to go
You could meet somebody who really loves you
So you go, and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home
And you cry
And you want to die

When you say it's gonna happen now,
Well, when exactly do you mean?
See I've already waited too long
And all my hope is gone

You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am Human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does

So, this is Dive's Christmas Appeal:
Embittered, lonely, rejected, heartbroken and self-pityingly miserable as we are, please spare a thought for the ugly this Christmas.

Grit your teeth, pucker up and kiss one of us. You can have some chocolate after to take the taste away.
And you can enjoy your Christmas knowing you've done your good deed.

Sorry guys; I tried, but the Grinch is back with a vengeance.