50 SHADES OF ICK

Adventures in the world of over 60s internet dating. TW: not for the faint of heart.

After spending the last 15 months healing from a 17 year on/off toxic relationship, I woke up one morning thinking I was ready to venture once more into the murky waters of online dating.

My Mr Darcy must be out there somewhere?

One of my dearest friends - who has been happily married to a gorgeous man for nearly 40 years and deems anything digital to be on a par with satanism - declared there are far easier ways than this to find a decent man. Just go and have lunch at the local golf club with your girlfriends. There, she confidently predicted, I would be able to take my pick from a range of solvent men who were divorced, widowed or had never married (in their 60s?) and were happily pursuing a healthy hobby in the great outdoors.

It must be said this same friend thinks holding hands with a new acquaintance would be 2nd or 3rd date territory. It should come as no surprise to you that her favourite author is Jane Austen. How she ever came to have four children is a complete mystery to all concerned.

Anyway, I digress.

I duly chose an app aimed at the over 55s market and set about selecting a group of photos that were deliberately #nofilter in order to avoid any accusation of false advertising.

I needn’t have bothered as I quickly discovered that my male counterparts had taken no such trouble and their photos ranged from the cringe-worthy topless variety to ones where you would need the Hubble Telescope to identify any sign of human life.

Others were clearly passport photos which give even the most attractive fizzog all the appeal of a criminal mugshot - and to be clear these fizzogs were not attractive in the first place.

I will spare you the badly cropped ones where strands of their ex- (or perhaps current) wife’s hair is obscuring half their face.

Or those who jauntily decide to pull a grimace à la Ricky Gervais, in order to convince you of their GSH (great sense of humour).

NAGL (not a good look)

Finally we’ll draw a veil over the most disconcerting of all - those profiles where each photo is most definitely that of a different person. What?

Separating the wheat from the chaff became almost a full-time job. If I had been looking for something to distract me from the current apocalyptic times, this was most definitely it.

At last a candidate only two years older than me made the first move with a witty ‘Hello Elaine how are you?’ I replied ‘Hello Tom (not his real name) are you a man of few words?’ He replied ‘far from it’ and proceeded to chat away in a most engaging fashion. Eventually, after much amusing banter plus a couple of hilarious phone calls, a morning coffee date was arranged.

When he arrived he looked exactly like his photo. Bingo.

We proceeded to have coffee, then a light lunch, then a walk in a gale force wind after which he offered me a lift home. By this time I had convinced myself he wasn’t an axe murderer so I accepted.

I introduced him to my son Bertie, my nine year old Cavachon, and gave him a cup of tea before he set off on the 1.5 hour drive home.

As promised, he texted me on arrival. We agreed to a 2nd date.

And then… da da da..

Twenty minutes later he sent this:

‘I am slightly disappointed we never had intercourse though :)’

Reader, I blocked him.

Stay tuned for the next instalment of 50 Shades of Ick.

Just kidding, I am now living in a convent in the South West of France where I am to be found in daily meditation on whatever the hell possessed me to think it was safe to venture back into those shark-infested waters.