New Baby

Shitty biscuits! I didn't realise how dusty my lamp was until I looked at the photo. Now it's all nice and gleaming and shiny again.

My many Macs have been misbehaving while I've been at work and I got home yesterday to find they had produced a new baby. A teeny-tiny sooper-cute ickle MacBook Pro. How sweet is that?

Apologies for the mess all over my desk. And yes, that's the Big Box of Buffy (again). Yesterday was the one-hundredth anniversary of the death of Bram Stoker, which gave me the excuse (as if one were needed) to start my annual non-stop seven series Buffy-fest; one of the greatest pleasures of not having a life.

Anyhoo … There are now eight boxes of Apples in my house. I SO need a girlfriend to nag me and shriek "YOU CAN'T AFFORD THAT!" and "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU NEED ANOTHER COMPUTER FOR?"

Yeah, right …

In the meantime I'm off to play with the new baby. It really does demand my attention …

Still Not Blogging …

Many thanks to 'Poorly Drawn Lines' for totally nailing my entire life.

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 …

Hello Ian Again

Time flies when you're having no fucking fun at all.

The undatable man hits fifty in less than two weeks and today I run face first, smack-bang into yet another bloody Hello Ian day with all its attendant crappiness.

Only a couple of you are old enough to remember, but two years ago I launched the very first Date Dive appeal with this post.

For those who can't be arsed to click a link (that'll be all of you), this was when I fessed up to my predeliction for those spooky, kooky, sexy weemen in the pointy hats and set out on a fruitless quest to date one.

My deep and admittedly creepy yearning for the incomparably cute and sexy Willow Rosenberg you are all familiar with, but any old witch can make me twitch; be it twinkly-nosed Samantha from Bewitched or Connie Booth with a parsnip tied to her face in Python's Holy Grail; even Hermione "Chlamydia Disappearum!" Granger, now she's grown up enough to throw a decent strop can make me ache in alarming places.

But as usual on this particular day of each year I end up lamenting three all too familiar failings:

1 - None of the above are real (a tricky hurdle to get over on a date as I know from long and bitter experience);

2 - They'd never date me if they were; and

3 - The modern Wiccan is - in my experience of sitting with my latte and croissant, hiding behind the Guardian book review and watching the browsers at the "alternative lifestyle" section of my bookshop - lacking in that elusively sexy essence of witchiness that lures me Wiccawards at this time of year.

Today's browser at the witchy bookshelves appears to come in three unfortunate flavours, none of them even remotely Willow-like:

- First up are stupid tweenie kids whose exposure to the wonderful world of literature consists solely of the Harry Potter books.
Spotty or fat or otherwise "differently attractive" enough to need to hide from the world in sad fictional delusions, they come giggling into the bookshop in protective groups, scanning the shelves for spell books containing love philtres or a cure for acne or chlamydia (usually both, by the look of them) and totally unprepared for any form of reality.
God help them when they have to leave school and get a job and a life.
Or a date.

- Next up we encounter the vast majority of modern Wiccans; dumpy and frumpy middle-aged women with the slightly dazed expression of the terminally confused, wearing enough bangles to give them arms like stevedores and crappy lumps of crystal hanging round their necks.
They are invariably dressed in layers of long, flowy "gypsy" clothing to which the phrase "concealing to appeal" is horribly apt.
In their mirrors (as they trowel on fistfuls of mascara) they see a young Stevie Nicks but in the flesh they resemble mad bag-ladies.

- The sole exception to those two Wiccan flavours was one pale and interesting goth girl who glared disgustedly at me as if I were some kind of … er … creepy middle-aged man with a pervy hankering for a pale and interesting goth girl; which was remarkably astute of her.

So … the dating potential of these groups:

Tempting as it may seem to don a tatty cape and prey upon spotty, insecure and feeble-minded teenage girls, I may be desperate for a date but I am not an icky creep (well not totally, anyway), so the pædo option is a non-starter.

As for the deluded and lonely middle-aged women …
Sheesh!
Listen up, laydees:

(a) You are NOT Stevie Nicks. She dressed that way because she could, not because she had to.

(b) Crystals … For fuck's sake! They may be pretty to look at but they have no more healing power than any other lump of rock.
As you'll discover if you drop one on your foot.

(c) Astrology … Duh! Anybody who believes the relative positions of the stars and planets at the time they were born has any significance whatsoever is clearly delusional and probably deranged.
This means you.
I never, EVER date anyone who tells me their "star sign". Your average root vegetable will be capable of far more scintillating and intellectual conversation. And it will taste better.

(d) Use the word "aura" around me and you'll get a whack upside the head with that fucking spell book.

(e) The thought of any one of you flabby harridans dancing naked around a standing stone is enough to put me off sex for life.

Which leaves me with the goth.
I like goths.
That may have something to do with my own lifelong habit of spending sunny summer days skulking indoors with the curtains shut, listening to songs about suicide.
And dressing in black.
Or it may be simply that goth girls are usually gorgeous.
I have always preferred pale and interesting over brash and trashy.
My problem is that pale and interesting girls are never interested in me.
And my looming fiftieth birthday makes it increasingly unlikely that they ever will be.

So … Witches and goths are probably not the best places to look for a date.
Hey ho.

While I go dig a hole in the garden to stick my head in and cry, I'll leave you with this delightful ditty from the lovely Neil Hannon: The Happy Goth.



Anyone with the cheek to rhyme "goth" with "Hoth" (a cheer there from the Star Wars fans) gets my vote.
I particularly love the trippy-happy string section toward the end.
Hee hee.
Please excuse the appalling video but it was the only version I could find.

Happy Hello Ian from undatable Dive!

Revisiting The Church Of Fornication

Hey, nonny nonny.
It's one of those days at the office …
You know the sort of day I mean; when every single person in the world suffering from a bowel disorder is standing in front of my fan and all straining at once.

You can make your own sound effect for that one.

So I'm going to cop out today and simply re-post something from two years ago; a post that has at least a tenuous link to Old Dive's not-dating dilemma and one which the newbies won't have seen.
Plus it makes me giggle.

Before we start I'd just like to ask Shan to please not go off on one; this was written a long time ago before I learned that not all US evangelical churches are scary crackpot cults.

Though this one is …

So … let's go back in time and have some fun with the Church of Fornication …
Every word of this is true:

I drove past Norwich's big, scary evangelical Christian church this morning. Or at least the building site, as somebody burnt it to the ground a little while back.
The rebuilding is taking place at an astonishing pace; perhaps we should award the construction contract for the 2012 Olympics to the evangelists, as the government are so pants that they will never get it built on time.

Now I have never really given much thought to the evangelists, to the extent that I'm still at a loss to know what branch of what church they profess to being (they're commonly known around here as "that big old cult [that's c-u-L-t] place up on the ring road near Mousehold").
The only time their path crosses mine is the event of their annual cultathon (or whatever they call it), where they take over the football stadium for the weekend and bring the city to a standstill. The roads are gridlocked with tens of thousands of extremely polite Americans dressed like extras from the Waltons, which means I either avoid the city altogether or end up with smiley-noddy syndrome from all the excessive politeness.

Then it all changes …

I am travelling back from London on the train. It is packed as usual, but I manage to get a window seat and settle in for the long crawl back to Norwich.
Beside me is what can only be termed a lovely little old lady. Grey hair in a bun; old fashioned frock; reading quietly.
Halfway home; I've finished the paper and the crossword and am about to start on my book when along comes the trolley and the little old lady orders a coffee. Now, I've got a couple of free coffee vouchers in my wallet and, to reward her for not being a fat, elbowy businessman shouting into a mobile phone, I offer to treat her to coffee (big mistake).
She has a charming smile and thanks me sweetly as she accepts.
The trolley squeaks off down the aisle and she turns to me and says:

"That was really very kind of you. Are you a Christian?"

Not wishing to offend her with "Well I was brought up as a Christian, but when my brain started to work I rebelled and became the Godless heathen you see before you", I nod and say "Yes".

And suddenly people are turning and staring. A dozen faces all around me focus on my own. The blank eyes and rictus smiles of … uh, oh … evangelists!

"We're Christians" says the little old lady. "Which Church are you from?"
I start to dissemble. I'm stuck with these people for the next hour at least, and I really don't want to upset the little old lady, so I talk about my old church from childhood.
Luckily, she goes off on a long one about the lovely day they've all had in London at a "miracle ministry" or somesuch. I nod and smile in what I judge to be the right places. The scary faces are still locked on mine. Surely their necks must ache from being twisted round like that …

My heart sinks still further when she rummages in her bag and presses a bundle of tracts into my hand.
"You really must come along to our Church."
I hazard a guess: "Is that the big one up near Mousehold?"
I'm blinded by a communal BEAM from the surrounding faces.

The little old lady continues, but by now I am trying to make excuses, so she goes to plan 'B'.
She has noticed that I don't have a wedding ring and I fess up to my single status …
"This is my daughter, Emma."
And she waves to a drop-dead gorgeous girl in her twenties, who flashes me the kind of shy smile I wouldn't even get in my wildest fantasies.
"Emma is a member of our Church. She doesn't have a young man …"

WHAT?
I mean WHAT THE FUCK?

An increasingly surreal conversation follows, with the gorgeous girl smiling at me and her mad pimp mother telling me about all the young women who attend the Church, and how so many of them are reaching "marriageable age" with no "young men" of their own …

I want to tell her to look closely at me. I am a man in my forties. Would she really want me interfering with her daughter?

I want to yell at her; to tell her that in my experience, the Christian Church does not recruit members by offering strange, middle-aged men the chance to fornicate with the young women of their congregation.

The trouble is, Emma is … er … well, let's just say that she has got me all unneccessary. Even though I know that the beautiful girl's smile is the last thing I will see before the brainwashing starts and my bank account develops a Church-sized hole, I am almost tempted …

Somehow, I manage to last the rest of the journey without actually signing any banker's drafts, but the hard sell continues full force, and as I wave farewell to the group at the station and to the beautiful, smiling Emma, I realise I have agreed to attend a service there the next weekend. They certainly know how to prey on weak and lonely men …

Perhaps there is some kind of twisted deity watching over me, because that very week the big old culty Church burns to the ground …

And I T … W A S … N O T … M E !

Honest …

And even when it's rebuilt, there's no amount of gorgeous young girls gonna drag me in there!
I promise … Really … I do … er …

Coincidences

Boy, howdy, what a wonderful postbag you guys presented me with yesterday; full to the brim with sage advice and heartwarming tales of romance, for which I am truly grateful. Some of the advice I may even act upon.

I'll get back to that in a minute or two but first I want to spook you out with a couple of boffo coincidences that happened to me yesterday.

First up: I was chatting with Joy about the crappiness of winter and the efficacy of SAD lamps.
Joy was lamenting the fact that they don't seem to work on her and I reminded her that Peahen has one and it has worked miracles with her SAD.

Just at that moment a message plopped into my inbox which turned out to be a comment from Pea (who I hadn't heard from in ages) saying how great her SAD lamp is now the daylight's disappearing.

I love coincidence.
Mind you, I'm not one of those feeble-minded delusional fuckwits who leap up with "God" or "Fate" or "Karma" in their eyes, stand over a big plate of sculpted mashed potato and say "This MEANS something!"

It means Jack Shit but it's fun when it happens.

I had another one yesterday.
Coincidence, that is …
I clicked on my daily Natalie Dee cartoon link and this one popped up:

It wasn't so much the cartoon that tickled me as the title of it: "It's not easy being fucking gross."
Which just happens to chime perfectly with my mood at the moment.

Having said that, the idea of orange flavoured mouthwash doesn't gross me out.
What truly grosses me out (apart from the contents of my mirror) is the garlic, stale tobacco and rotten teeth flavoured mouthwash that everybody on the tube seems to gargle with just before breathing in my face.

All of which has nothing to do with the coincidence.
The coincidence happened as I was reading the pathetically sad little "I'm So Lonely" line in the cartoon …

Whammo! Right at that moment my iTunes (set to random) started playing The Beatles' "Yer Blues" off the White Album with Lennon belting out the line "I'm so lonely."

I always loved that song.
The line "I'm so lonely. Wanna die." has been my motto and mantra for decades.
Plus it's got that line "… just like Dylan's Mister Jones", linking it to another favourite: "Ballad of a Thin Man".

Which leads me - in an awkward, lurching attempt at a segue - back to yesterday's postbag and a great video of Yer Blues.

Several of you have wisely cautioned me to look for a woman of my own age and I fully concur with that advice.
I have had relationships with younger women before and - while they are exceedingly decorative and … er … limber - things usually start to fall apart when I'm talking about some gig or session I played with somebody their dad was a fan of and they chirp up with "I wasn't even BORN then!"
Shit! I'd been living the sexanddrugsandrockandroll, "Almost Famous" lifestyle for years and her parents hadn't even started dating.
Holy crap, that always makes me feel so old.
So … no more younger weemen.

I need shared cultural reference points.

I need someone who knows who "Dylan's Mister Jones" is.

I need someone who remembers the Cold War.
Who remembers watching the moon landings.
Who remembers the first colour tellies.
Who remembers William Hartnell as Doctor Who.
Who knows what the sculpted mashed potato means.
Who - when shown a photo of my first car (a powder blue Ford Anglia) says "Cool!" and NOT "That's just like the one in Harry Potter".

I need someone who bought The Beatles singles as they came out.

I need someone who'd get all excited seeing this: John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Mitch Mitchell jamming Yer Blues at the end of the sixties.



And yes, Maria; of course I need someone who loves books.
I wish I could take your advice and spend more time in bookshops but I'm afraid I already spend way too MUCH time (and money) in them.
The staff in every one of my favourite bookshops all know me, and any women customers just see me as "that creepy guy who's always hanging around in here".

Besides which; when I hang around in bookshops I'm looking for books.
I DO talk to women in bookshops about books. I have even talked to several attractive women in there but have been so appalled by the crap they are buying that I would never want to ask them on a date.

I'll keep trying.
And I really am most grateful for all the advice.
But still those two lines plague me:
"I'm so lonely", and "It's not easy being fucking gross."

Question Time

Okerly-dokerly …

Moving on a step from yesterday:
We all know I am my own worst enemy and will probably be too shit-scared to act on any of the excellent advice you put forward.

One of the very few crappy things about living in rural Norfolk is that I cannot take Mark's advice and attend a "singles" cooking evening.
Regrettably we do not have a "singles" culture here.
There are no "singles" bars, no "singles" nights at clubs or restaurants, no "singles" anything.
The lonely hearts column in the local paper is populated exclusively by farmboys wanting to date something that doesn't leave them smelling of bacon; there are no women in there.
At least there are none looking for a man about to turn fifty.
If you're single in Norfolk you are expected to stay that way.

As for the description of my ideal woman; that was purely for laughs (you should know me by now) … my ideal woman is any woman willing to date me, so please don't go on about my expectations being too high.

Plus the self-deprecating thing was pretty facetious, too; I'm a nice guy (well "Dive" isn't, but I am); I have a great job; I'm pretty smart and a good musician and artist and I know it. Plus I can cook and iron … woohoo! But I'm not going to slime my way up to a woman and introduce myself as such. That's just too icky.
Like I said to Lucio in yesterday's comments: I get on great with women (witness the Katie posts) but as soon as it comes to asking one on a date it all falls flat; the closest I ever get is that tired old line that they'd rather have me as a friend.

And so here we come to step two: How to actually find and approach somebody so that I can let them know what a catch I am (I heard that snigger).

The "finding" part of that equation is harder than it looks:
- my circle of friends doesn't include any unattached women;
- the train is full of grumpy old businessmen and the few regular women commuters are vicious harridans (the fact that men outnumber women on the 5:40 AM to London by at least 12 to 1 shows just how far we still have to go to break the glass ceiling … either that or it shows that women don't like getting up early);
- the office is NOT the place for romance … especially as the closest anyone there lives to me is three hours away and he's called Mike, dating him would be impractical and kind of expensive … plus, he's married;
- I can't go out in the evenings as my commuting schedule means I must be in bed by nine so I can get up in the middle of the night and hit the road. The one exception to that is the occasional weekend gig, and …
- women who come up and speak to me after gigs are usually asking for guitar lessons for their kids; as for the others: the type of girl who goes out to clubs and hits on the lead guitarist is not the type of girl that I want anywhere near my life. Not even with rubber gloves on.

We did an experiment a couple of years back when Lynn suggested I go out to a nice country pub and see who I might find.
I went out to the Maltsters at Ranworth (a wonderful pub and restaurant overlooking beautiful Ranworth Broad) and found the barman and two old farmhands playing darts.
I know I live in Deliverance country but that's going a little too far.

What I really need are some practical examples to give me some idea of what to do next.
And this is where you guys come in …

Here's a teensy leetle questionnaire I'd like you to fill in if you'd be so kind:

1) How did you come to first meet your partner (present or favourite; whatever)?

2) Who approached whom, where and how?

3) What did they/you say to kick things off?

You know it's in a good cause.

Shit! Is It That Time Of Year Already?

First up: while I write this, Katie is sitting in the airport with - according to her notes - fifty pounds of books and some assorted bread products, about to set off from Paris on her long, loooonng journey back to Berkeley and the sunshine of San Francisco Bay.

Bon Voyage, Katie.
I miss you like crazy, as do all who had the pleasure of meeting you on your European adventure.

For the chattering types among you (and you know who you are, especially those of you who have been emailing Katie on the subject), that is not the reason I've been moping around the house and playing old vinyl; much as I appreciate the compliment of being "romantically" linked with someone as way out of my league as Katie we are friends and nothing more.
I've been reading back in my archives and it seems I suffer an attack of the lonelies around this time every year.
So you (and regrettably me, too) are going to have to put up with it for a while.

Hokay … so we return yet again to the perennial, miserably dreary subject of Old Dive's long-standing lack of a love life.

Here's the rub:
Saggy, balding, ugly middle-aged git would like to meet smart, cool, funny, academic-yet-arty woman with a view to living happily ever after.

He: cooks, cleans, is fully domesticated and as a bonus, leaves the house in the middle of the night and doesn't come home until bedtime.

She: would preferably be pretty (in a long dark hair and glasses, sexy librarian way), on the skinny side and slightly kooky.

She should not:
- smoke;
- be covered in tattoos like an elderly sailor;
- chew food with her mouth open (I once dated a girl who did that; the silver lining being that I lost a lot of weight as I couldn't sit at the same table as her without gagging);
- leave crap all over the house and the towels screwed up on the bathroom floor;
- enjoy TV soap operas and "reality" shows;
- come with kids and pets attached;
- have a hairier back than me;
- be called Biff …

Though to tell the truth I'll date anything that still twitches when you kick it.

If any of you know of a woman like that - or indeed any desperate, lonely woman with poor eyesight and low self-esteem - please let me know so we can move on to stage two of Dive's dilemma, where I actually get to meet an attractive woman and my brain immediately freezes, leaving me standing there with a glazed expression and my mouth flapping open while I try to form the word "Durr".

Stage three is my inevitable rejection. I'm particularly experienced at that one.

Sorry to rehash this same old crap but it's as much a part of autumn as falling leaves and delayed trains.

The "N" In Hello

Getting back to the "Please explain women" post, the general consensus of opinion from the comments of the good burghers of Blogville seems to be:
from the hetero-men: "Be afraid!"
from the hetero-women: "Be VERY afraid!"
from the lesbian and gay community: "Actually, women are great but be afraid anyway."

All of which leaves me none the wiser but considerably more frightened of women.
Thanks, guys.
My problem is that it's been so long since I experienced whatever it is I'm supposed to be afraid of that I can't remember what a "relationship" is like at all.
And I would kinda like to try another one before I die - if only so I can say "Aha! NOW I remember why I should be afraid."

Some of you very kindly gave me some not-exactly-helpful advice on this problem a couple of years ago but due to the fact that I'm too ugly to get close enough to a woman to try any of it out, things have not exactly developed, romance-wise.
Although on the plus side I have become a world-renowned authority on whining self-pity and onanism so I suppose I shouldn't really complain.

So … Old Dive's miserable about being alone again. When you've finished pointing and laughing I'd appreciate some "Let's get the old bastard dating again" tips, please.

I'll give you a hand by listing my good points and bad points:

Good points …
I have a great job, a nice house in a beautiful village and a cool car that's less than a week old.
I'm a pretty good cook.
I like housework.
I can iron like a demon.
I don't have an inconvenient wife and kids.
I love shopping.
I'm well educated, a decent musician and artist and I've never smoked.
I am allegedly funny, smart and good company.
I can take no for an answer.

Bad Points …
I'm forty-nine years old.
I'm slightly less sexually attractive than the stuff you clean out of your plughole.

No matter how many items I cram into the "Good" category, it's those two little "Bad"s that outweigh them a million times over and guarantee me a lifetime of heartache, misery, loneliness and grubby masturbation.

The trouble with being Ug is, as I've said before, that an Ug guy is as "safe" as a gay guy; pretty girls love to have us as friends, to shop and gossip with (and to moan endlessly to us about their relationships), but the prospect of actually dating one of us would induce an amusing combination of screaming and vomiting in every single one of 'em.
Being everybody's best friend is wonderful, but being everybody's best friend and nobody's lover kinda grates; at least it does after the first few decades.

Dating is real ordeal for an Ug.
We ugs are the people who put the "N" in "hello" … We say "Hello" to a woman and she takes one look at us and her mind crams that "N" in there, transforming "Hello" into "Hell No".

And while living alone has its plus points - unhindered access to a bathroom that's free of industrial quantities of stinky gunk and being able to do, think, eat and drink whatever I please when I feel like it - it would be nice if that was something I chose to do. But a cold empty house and a cold empty bed are compulsory upon achieving Ug-dom.

So … It's been a couple of years since the "dating advice" fiasco and we've got some new folk here in Blogville. Does anyone out there have any useful advice that might help Old Dive get a date and rediscover just why I should be so afraid of weemen?

Invectile Dysfunction

I have received a complaint.
Our Rich writes from the lovely city of Boston, Mass. over the pond in the US of A:

"I don't know what's happened to you, Dive. You seem to be getting like an old softy. NOT the Dive of old who used to be cynical and amuse us all with your bitching and ranting. No wonder old knudsen doesn't read your blog anymore.

jeez!!"

To which I can only concur …
Sorry, Rich, I don't know what's wrong with me, either. Try as I might, I just cannot seem to get it up these days. I've been sitting here all morning, desperately straining to work up a rant and there's nothing there.
I'm so ashamed.
This has never happened before … Honest!
I've always been able to get a rant up at a moment's notice, but just lately it appears that I have become rant-impotent.

Invectile dysfunction: The inability to produce invective, spleen, vitriol, or even a plain and simple fit of incoherent rage.

Bummer!

The closest I can get today is to rail pathetically against myself and my total inability to chat up weemen.

Let's go back to last Saturday and the Festival of Cultures (cue wibbly "flashback" music).

I am setting out all the food when this stunningly pretty girl walks up and looks lost.
I turn on my smile and reach for my not inconsiderable reservoir of wit and charm and …
… and I manage to have a long and detailed conversation with her about scones.
After which she - understandably - keeps at least ten yards away from me all afternoon.

A little later and one of the most truly beautiful women I can ever remember seeing approaches me, smiling and starts up a conversation.
Woah! Result!
Yeah, right …
What happens?
Mister intelligent, funny, charming, confident Dive returns the smile and …
Bang!
My brain totally seizes …
She is talking to me and asking me personal things and the only word in my brain is "Duh" … and I cannot even articulate that as my mouth is flapping like a fish in the bottom of a boat and I hear myself stutter and freeze.
After a while, she wanders off, looking confused.

Joy introduces us later in the day and leaves us together and exactly the same thing happens again.

Pathetic.
Shoot me now.
If I believed in God I could go join a monastery, but I don't, so fuck it.

Hey, ho … Back to masturbation.

Cold Pizza And Scotch

Good morning, groovy chicks and hep cats (and variations thereon, dependent upon gender / sexual orientation).

Don't worry; I'm not happy, merely sarcastic.

I had a weird nightmare last night. John Foster Dulles was still alive.
Brrrrr … I'm still shaking. If I ever visit Arlington I'm gonna stamp on that fucker's grave and make sure there's no soft earth where his nasty, grippy zombie fingers can claw their way free.
And stay the fuck out of my nightmares, you creepy shit! Get back to where you belong and burn.
Okay, so cold pizza and scotch was probably not the best recipe for a late supper …

However, this post is not about that.
This post is about scary witch-woman J…….
I put it off as long as possible but if I'm going to build the new junior school it's going to need Building Regulations approval.
Which means going back into the building where J…… now works as receptionist.
And where she hit on me a couple of weeks back.
And where I put her off with a jolly agreement to call her and meet for coffee.
And where, yesterday as I walked in the door every single line I was going to fob her off with fled screaming from my brain, leaving just the word "duh."

And after all that, she wasn't there.
So I stood in reception, grinning like a fool at her empty chair and suppressing the desire to giggle at my sheer dumb luck.
As quickly as decently possible I checked in the application with her colleague and sprinted back out of the door to the safety of the car park.
Where (you knew it) I bumped right into J…… coming the other way.

So … there I stood with my jaw flapping up and down and there stood J…… eyes shining; smiling fit to bust.

Did I take any of your sage advice?
Ha!
Did I buggery!
Instead, pathetic and craven dickwad that I am, I stammered and blurted out something about having to dash off to a meeting and escaped with no more damage than a quick hug and a peck on the cheek and a reminder to call her.

What the fuck is wrong with me?
I can run jobs worth millions of pounds; I can play on stage in front of thousands of people; I'm pretty good at this stupid "life" business …
And yet when it comes to telling a girl I'm not interested in anything more than coffee and gossip all I can do is blather and faff.

I'm forty-eight years old and terrified of dumping a girl.
What a twat!

Lovely Personality

Poor Sassy had to endure the bane of the single adult, a family wedding at the weekend.
That brought so many horrors to mind, not least the fact that I have a wedding to attend in the Village of the Damned later this summer. Brrrr.

These days, at family gatherings I find it too much of a hassle to constantly go through the:
"Yes I do have a girlfriend, thank you."
"Well where is she?"
"Actually she's not from the Norfolk end of my commute and things are more than a tad complicated at the moment, so …"
"Huh! Aren't we good enough for her?"
So - like Sassy - I get the "whispers". Mad little Aunts' heads get conspiratorially close together when they see me across the room and the fact that I'm "not seeing anybody" gets tutted over.
Then I either get labelled as gay or paired off with a Morlok.

I don't mind the "gay" thing so much. After all, I'm a middle aged man living alone and anyone walking into my house is confronted with some of the gayest rooms imaginable, full of lovely books and paintings and Tiffany lamps and colours and textures and furnishings arranged with such exquisite taste that macho men run screaming out the door.
The sad fact is that I just don't fancy the bum sex. I like kissing girls. Hey ho.

It's the "Morlok" thing that pisses me off about family.
Ever since the end of my sixteen year purgatorial sentence living with Ming The Menstrual, family and friends have been charitably pairing me off with X's daughter or Y's sister.
These women are invariably described as having a "lovely personality".

Hokay, having met some of these - let's generously call them "females" - I find that some of them do indeed have a lovely personality. And they certainly need it.
As Mum said when trying to set me up with one of them, "She's a little bit chubby but she does have a lovely personality".
Mum, she's fat! And I mean fat like an American!
I'm not the world's biggest fan of fat … or facial hair or acne or personal hygeine problems, especially not in combination and definitely not on a date. Some people may find these things erotic but that pleasure has sadly passed me by.
And when it comes down to it, these women do NOT have a lovely personality; they are bitter and vindictive and are single for very good reasons.
So please stop trying to force me to breed with fucking Morloks!

Which brings me back to the Village of the Damned.
Every time I go to a party there (and I go quite often, to remind myself why people should never breed) it's as if I'm wearing a large neon hat that reads: "New Genetic Material".
The village of ---- is at first glance full of stunningly beautiful young girls and yet I know from watching them over the years (like Jane Goodall only with less intelligent subjects) that by the time they hit twenty they will have ballooned to sumo size, married within the family and developed the personal habits of a particularly vicious sloth.
These hideously inbred creatures loom out of the murk of the dancefloor with horrid graspy hands and reeking, toxic fag-breath laced with enough booze to fell a moose. A nightmare vision of yellow fingers and yellow teeth, plastic boots and mousy roots. Ick! If you follow the link you'll discover why I describe these evenings as "Dawn of the Dead with party dresses on".

Weddings are even worse.

At least I have a lovely personality to help me to cope with all this crap.

Up Yours, Winter

I wake this morning to the sounds of desperate arborial grunting and squelching and giggling.
The plum trees outside my bedroom window are at it like rabbits.
Stamens and anthers all over the place. I quickly close the window to avoid being hit by flying pollen.
I do believe spring is in the air.


Bugger!
Another year of watching everything else in the world have sex but getting none myself …

Roll on next winter …

Not Pregnant

Scary news for womenkind:
Old Dive has decided to get back into shape.

The first part of my new gym arrived last night; a spiffy excercise bike, with lots of heart-monitory stuff and a computer I will never bother to programme. The rest is on its way. I foresee aching muscles, back pain, heart attacks and severe chafing up ahead.

What has brought on this madness?
A couple of weeks back I catch sight of my flabby, middle-aged body in the mirror and reel back in horror!
All of my once fit muscles appear to have sneaked out while I wasn't looking.
My six pack has melted into a bowl of wobbly goo.
I can sense the onset of man-boobs … Man-Boobs! Yikes!
And what's that? … That "thing" sticking out in front?
It can't be! No!
Am I pregnant?
There's a definite bump developing.
Holy crap (as Robyn would say)!
I panic …
No! NOOOO! I can't be pregnant! Not at my age!

And then it all comes flooding back …

That drunken night with Knudsen … The infamous "cock ring" episode …
Oh, fuck!
That awful moment; standing naked in front of the bathroom mirror, holding my 'bump' as the realisation hit me …
Had we taken precautions?
Shit, we'd been sniffing petrol and amyl nitrate all night and watching the Krankies' Honeymoon Video. Anything could have happened!

A quick visit to the lovely Doctor Amanda lays my fears to rest.
It's okay, Knudsen. The Child Support Agency isn't about to come a-knockin'.
Apparently I am suffering from a medical condition known as "fat bastard".
Doctor Amanda advises me that it was indeed me who ate all the pies.
She also says to whip my fat ass back into shape.
Actually, my ass is pretty cute; it's the rest of me that has … er … "relaxed".

So, look out, weemenkind.
Dive is getting back into shape, ready to hunt down the girl of my - admittedly disturbing - dreams.

Tune in again in six weeks, when I sell all my gym equipment and buy a pie shop.

Swearfest

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The Lynn Experiment

Okay, so it didn't work this time, but I've decided to give it a go.

For those who can't be arsed to read the comments (always the best bits of my blog … at least until I post a photo of my bottom), Lynn has been - I hesitate to say "nagging " - but I will anyway; Lynn has been nagging me to go out to our lovely Norfolk country pubs and look for a woman.

Today I finally cracked under the pressure of a particularly powerful nagging spell and headed off to Ranworth, to the Maltsters; one of the loveliest pubs on the broads and right opposite Ranworth broad. Beautiful views, good beer and food, picturesque village. Only about five or six miles away, so no real hassle.

So. Dive's "dating rating" for the Maltsters:
Contents: One barman. Two blokes playing darts.
Potential for Luurve: Er … Didn't really fancy any of 'em.
Outside, admiring the broad: A small bunch of ducks (Bunch? Herd? Flock? Quack? … I'll call them a "niggle" of ducks).
Dating rating: A big fat zilch.
The coffee wasn't that good, either.
I know for a fact the beer and food are excellent but it was the middle of the afternoon and I was driving, so coffee it was.

I suppose to save myself from more of the 'n' word, I shall have to continue this experiment.
If anyone knows of any pubs on the broads where single, attractive, bookish, academic, artsy women (with poor eyesight and low self-esteem) are likely to hang out, please let me know.
Oh … and "slim" … I forgot to mention "slim". Anybody remotely cuddly can breathe a big sigh of relief now.

Drive In Saturday

Sigh … Why do I go into Norwich every saturday morning?
It's always the same …

"The city is where the women are at!" I hear you cry.

Well, that's as maybe. But other than a smile from a lady in the coffee shop when I gave her my Guardian Review (she had been ogling it covetously, but hey, I've got a great ass; why wasn't she ogling that?), the place was pretty much a date-free zone.
As usual, I met Phil, caffeinated myself, soaked it up with a croissant and hit the bookshops. What a sad fucking excuse for a life.
Two hefty bags of books and a DVD later and I'm coming home, dateless as always, to start the weekend's housework.

I even tried a different coffee shop.
Coffee: Very good indeed.
Croissant: Middling and slightly greasy to the touch.
Free Paper: Today's Guardian already split into parts so I could nick the Review without scattering paper everywhere (Why do they always put that poxy "Family" section inside the Review? Literary Review readers don't have families. Is it just to rub that fact in our faces)?
Seats: Good selection; we chose "comfy" for our old arses.
Air con: too cold for Phil, just right for me.
Women: Mostly couples; one or two frumpy thirty-somethings (including the smiley one). No bookish looking literary/arty types for poor old Dive.
Overall: Probably go there again, but not regularly.

Unusually, the bookshops were totty-free. All the girls must still be frantically buying shoes in the New Year sales.

So … Coloureds in the washing machine; drag the hoover out of the understairs cupboard; here comes my drudgy old weekend.
I think I'll stop using the label: "Dating" and use "Not Dating instead".

Roll on monday.

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.