A very late "Post."

   This has been sitting in the edit department for a while now. Work has kind of got in the way of things but it has it's place in my history. So here it is.
   Mad girl and I split up after our holiday in Febuary. All very amicably. We chat on the phone often and I've been over to finish some tiling and stuff. There are a couple of small things we don't seem to manage to get right and we'd much prefer to be friends than bounce along like we have been.
   I've been getting on with work and looking after myself quite nicely since. That helped move things on. Unexpectedly  a couple of months later an ad appeared with my emails for an online dating site. I did this once before. Then it wasn't the right time for me. I was a bit needy.ow I'm in a much better place. So I filled in the required boxes, wrote an amusing profile that highlighted all my faults. There's nothing worse than someone pointing out your faults, so I got in there first and added a few more for good measure. A couple of profile pictures and hey presto.
   There's a few things to be aware of. Anybody who doesn't have a profile picture, anybody seriously younger than you and anybody who can't spell or know the basics of grammer. It's usually a scam of some kind.
   So I did a search of the local area. Lots of diabolical selfies and profiles that were more a shopping list of things required and not required from any potential suitor. Soulmates are very high on most lists. Now if you didn't manage to find your soulmate first time around, when the market was full of young free and single people. Do they really think there's much chance now? Given that most in the market will be second hand and carrying more baggage than your average holiday jet.
   There's also something called "dating diaries" where you can read comments left by the opposite sex. These are mostly in the form of long moans and instructions to follow. Our pictures and profiles are rubbish, lieing about our their age (more on that later) and not reading the diarest's profile properly. Durrrrr we're talking about men here. We don't read instructions or the information on medicine bottles when we're ill. Once we've seen your picture and worked out you don't live miles away, we've all the information we need. The diarist are shooting themselves in the foot here. We may not read their whole profile but we've homed in on the moaning and have crossed them off the "possibles" list straight away.
   I'm really enjoying the absurdity of it all. Profile pictures fall into several categories. Some good selfies and some very bad ones. Or the pictures with the ex cut out and just his arm hanging over their shoulder like a weird hallowen scarf. Then there are the pictures taken from several miles away or pictures of the person with her friend/sister etc and you're not sure who's who. Or and this is very strange. A picture of a cat/dog/horse. Is that some kind of strange secret code?
   Then there are the profiles.  Where every women around my age proclaims they like nothing better than walking along an empty beach. I'd love to know which beach, because it sure as hell isn't the one at the end of my road (pictured above). Somewhere in this country is a stretch of coastline, knee deep in single women my age looking for Mr Right.
    I have met one woman. She sent me a message primarily because I didn't look the same as the other men (I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing) and my profile was "funny". We sent messages back and forth and I looked her up on Facebook. On the dating site she said she was two years younger than me. On Facebook she was a year older than me and when we met I'd say she was probably a couple of years older than that. Still no problem, she was interesting, chatty and we had a great afternoon visiting a couple of exhibitions and shared a beer afterwards then both headed off separately for home. No sparks but a nice day. I couldn't really get the lying about the age thing out of my head. I appreciate nobody likes to get old but what if we'd hit it off. When would the right time be, to own up??? I guess when she realised I didn't own a Ferrari or live in a mansion.

Onwards and upwards. In search of fulfillment :-)))