Online dating

Online dating? Ooh, controversial...

Online dating. What are your thoughts? A great way to meet people in a technological world? Or just for desperate freaks who lack social skills? A quick way to separate the wheat from the chaff? Or yet another measure to ensure that by 2030 nobody will actually have to talk to anyone else? The possibilities are endless …

But whatever your opinion online dating is live, and it’s big. New sites seem to spring up daily and it’s no longer taboo to mention you’re going for a drink with someone you met on screen. So I decided to give it a go.

I dabbled in a few sites before I committed for a month and created my profile.

Then I waited excitedly, with my laptop perched on my knees, for the man of my dreams to click that button and start the romance of the century. I sat for three days before accepting that my love life had hit a whole new low.

So I set myself two challenges. I was to contact at least five blokes per day,

and I had get my subscription fee back in the guise of meals and drinks. Then I could deem the experience a ‘success’. And if none of those 150 guys got back to me? Well, I’d happily regress into teenage mode and declare them all losers.

My index finger took over and started clicking and a few days later I began to reap my rewards. I told myself to avoid unfair dismissal, but it’s not easy when you’re receiving messages such as ‘I have a big fantasy for girls like you, we could have lots of fun … let’s meet ... ’ or ‘You are JUST the girl my mum would love! Come to my weekly family lunch this Sunday, 12 Copse Hill for 1.30,’ or ‘I think we could have something really special. Here is my mobile number xxx, and my land line xxx, and my office number xxx, and my parent’s, in case you can’t get hold of me xxx, and my home e-mail is xxx, work xxx, and private xxx.’ Private? What’s private? In the world as I know it ‘private e-mail’ and ‘home e-mail’ would fall into the same category.

I trailed through every message to find the one that held promise and right at the end (of course) I hit gold! CityMan483 presented as a nice guy with a good job, a sense of fun and an intriguing glint to his gaze. He introduced himself and suggested meeting up for a drink, which I agreed to readily. Then came his reply. ‘Great, I’ll look forward to it. Can you bring a bobble hat?’ Sticking with the open-mindedness I responded by saying that I felt it wasn’t really bobble hat season but would wear a distinctive royal blue top so I would stand out. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘It’s just that I have a thing about girls in bobble hats and I think you’d look great in one. Don’t worry if you don’t have one, I have a hot pink number that would really suit you. I’ll bring it with me.’

And that, as I’m sure you can imagine, was the end of that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to my ‘refresh’ button. I’m sure that at this very moment Mr Right is steeling himself up to click that link, and I wouldn’t want to miss that magical moment for the world …