WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR
A tall, clever, funny, loyal, lovely man. (Not much to ask, is it?) Ideally, someone to grow old with. Someone bookish, good-humoured, sociable, kind. (You should probably have written: ‘Happiness; not interested in flings’. That’s probably enough.) I have a bit of a thing for big sturdy academics who rock a linen jacket. (Oh no.)
MUSIC
My music likes are catholic, as in wide-ranging and not as in Vatican City. (You’ve just offended somebody.) Jimi Hendrix, Kathleen Ferrier, Pat Metheny, Philip Glass, Rolling Stones, Talking Heads and all the usual classical. Not really an opera person. Fond of seventies and eighties tracks that remind me of being a student. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Glen Campbell, Velvet Underground, John Martyn, Blue Nile, Marvin Gaye, Blondie, Pretenders, The Cure, David Bowie. Very fond of wordless film scores and ambient. Favourite guilty secret: Fleetwood Mac. (Accurate enough, though you’ve completely omitted the jazz you listen to all day. And I’m not really sure why you’ve written all this.)
BOOKS
Usually have a book stuck to my face. British and American nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the usual retinue of greatness: Dickens, Austen, Brontë, Wharton, James. Oh, and those Russian chaps, and those French chaps (that you don’t read much. Plus, your cuteness is already annoying). Currently on the bedside: Michel Faber, Richard Ford, Kazuo Ishiguro, Fitzgerald, Franzen, Forster, Iris Murdoch. Larkin and Eliot. Art books. A.N. Wilson’s The Victorians. (This is true but you might be trying too hard. Perfectly nice men who read only 99p Kindle thrillers will be deterred. It doesn’t matter what you read or what other people read.)
FILMS
Twelve random Desert Island films: Local Hero, Some Like It Hot, Philadelphia Story, Annie Hall, Hero, Blazing Saddles, Two Days in Paris, Stranger than Fiction, Rocky Horror, Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, A Night at the Opera, All About My Mother, Blade Runner. (Except that’s thirteen.) I’m a big fan of world cinema of all sorts. Guilty pleasures: The Bourne franchise, popcorn thrillers.
FOOD
Basically Nigella. (You are embarrassing.) Very greedy and eat almost anything (you’re saying you’re fat). Cooking and eating are important, as you will see immediately you meet me. (You keep telling the boys that you’re fat, you know.) World food rather than just traditional British, though in reality there’s a lot of chicken. In summer, fish and chips out of the paper while sitting on a sea wall. Restaurant pick for a blowout dinner – mussels to start, venison or duck, lots of cheese, a clever chocolate pudding. And wine. Lots of wine. Garlic with everything except custard. Death Row meal: steak and sweet potato fries. (Really not clear why you’ve written down any of this.)
ART
I’m an art nut and go to galleries a lot. I have trouble with some of the conceptual stuff but am not completely ungroovy. (Oh God.) I’ve even admired the occasional video installation. I like primitive art, Renaissance art, nineteenth-century art, early/mid twentieth-century modernism. I like abstraction, colour, some expressive work. Howard Hodgkin. (At this point you’ve probably deterred people who think this is a spec, rather than just your own ramblings.)
HOME
Home means a lot, physically and as an idea. I like to decorate, in different senses of the word. (No, me neither.) Having said that, heading off with a rucksack and being forced to be a world citizen would probably be good for me. At home I feel the pull between sleek functionality and a more cluttered, wildly coloured nineteenth-century approach with some Moroccan-boho touches. (A chap might wonder if you’re asking to be housed and to be given a furnishing budget, at this point.)
TV AND RADIO
Radio 3 and 4. Not a live-TV watcher, in general. Low tolerance for commercials. No tolerance for reality television, of any sort. I like thrillers, crime, suspense, psychological. Quite partial to the occasional bonnet drama (I don’t mean cars). Culture and science docs. (You sound like a media snob. But that is accurate enough.)
PLACES
I haven’t been to enough places. I know bits of Europe well and tend to return to them. Ideal holiday: a place with swimming plus exploring opportunities, interleaving history/travel days with relaxing days. Wild swimming fan: lakes and rivers often preferred to beaches. No interest in the Caribbean or tanning. I want to see more of the world. (Add that trekking in Nepal and Machu Picchu are not on the list.) I want to see ‘Arabia’ as the nineteenth-century explorers saw it. (Do not say this – people will delight in misunderstanding it.)
POLITICS
Sensible-compassionate left-middle. (Don’t use the word compassionate about yourself. Or charismatic, come to that.)
SPORT
No. Unless you count walking the dog. Or watching Wimbledon and Six Nations rugby. On the television. On the couch. (This is brave, perhaps, but necessary. Too many midlife men are gym-oriented.) I cycle, but rarely uphill.
WEEKENDS
An ideal weekend: eating, reading, going out for a mooch and a coffee, dipping into a museum, going to the cinema, making dinner and drinking wine. Or: off to a wild green place for walking and the pub. Or: gardens and NT houses with tearooms. Weekends away in B&Bs. Walks on the beach in winter. (Beaches in winter are a total dating cliché.)
What I think when I read this over now is: I wonder how many people thought they wouldn’t fit the bill, because they watched, read or did the wrong things, and because they interpreted a detailed account of myself as an equally detailed wish list. In a way this can’t be helped: the whole point is to give an idea of what you’re like and how you tick. It’s very difficult to get it right. Some of the reactions I had to this first attempt were, ‘Well, you’re not expecting a lot, are you?’ (sarcasm) and, ‘You come over as a smug middle-class bitch.’ But, you see, I wasn’t interested in the sort of men who would write to women to tell them that. So, perhaps, although some of the above is cringe-worthy, it’s on the right tack, in being personal, at least. Smugly middle class and with high expectations, maybe – but personal, at least.
SPRING, YEAR ONE
So, the plan was to make a man fall a little bit in love with me by email before we met. The idea was that this would make me feel less nervous about meeting a stranger.
The project didn’t start well. The first attempt was utterly doomed, because the man in question wasn’t a communicator. To Ralph, texting was for making social arrangements, and emailing was for making more long-winded social arrangements, and he didn’t grasp that both could be used as a form of foreplay. I’m not saying this was a bad thing, per se. Each to their own. But yes, Ralph and I were a mismatch, in this and in other ways. I persisted, though, for five weeks and seven dates, because he was an incredible kisser. We’re talking world-class osculation. It was the kind of kissing that could turn a person’s head and make them conclude, totally wrongly, that a lifetime of bliss lay ahead. Sex (sixth and seventh dates) was a complete disaster, though. I don’t mean that the mechanics of it were a failure, despite the fact that I was undoubtedly a nervous wreck. It was just unsexy: weirdly, profoundly unsexy for both of us. It was odd. The kissing was our sex. The kissing was as erotic as hell. The sex, however, was more like shaking hands with your bottom.
I did wonder if Ralph had an aversion to body hair. There were men, in this story, who were enthusiastic about ‘a seventies vibe’ and there were men who had to stifle a shriek. There was a man who asked, flat out (via the messaging system) if I shaved, and who was angered by my response; my having pubic hair of any kind was rude to him, he thought, like being unshowered. The best sort of men are those who don’t give a shit how much hair you have, or where. (Listen, chaps – try having your