33, Single and giving up.

It’s been ages since I last posted. There is a reason for that. See I’m touting this blog as some sort of guide to dating, and I’m starting to feel like a bit of a fraud. Sure, I’ve been on dates, I’ve been on loads, that’s not really the issue. It’s more of a timescale thing. The last time I went on a date was now over a year ago.

It’s not that there haven’t been opportunities but for some reason I can never fix a place or a time and eventually the possibility just vanishes into the ether. I’d try to make a clever joke about it, but it’s all actually quite awkward. I feel awful striking up conversations with prospective dates that just lead to nowhere.

What’s my problem? For lack of a better explanation, I just don’t feel like it. There’s something that makes me think I should be dating, a cross between an internal mechanism and an external pressure. That every waking hour of my life should be spent seeking out a potential mate and that every day I am still single is a failure. Frankly, the world doesn’t make you feel very good about being single.

The weird thing is, it does feel good. Doing things for yourself, living your own existence, living in your own space can actually be quite nice, as long as you remember to let others in every so often. It’s not weird, in fact it’s something we should all do at some point.

I don’t want to go on random dates, because actually, I do have feelings for a specific person and that’s just not happening right now. Why should I feel bad about that? Why should I cling to another person just for sake of appearance?

Well, I’m not going to any more. I’m done with dating. I’m done with worrying and I’m done caring what other people think. Who knows what is going to happen in the future, but there is little doubt in my mind that something will come along one day, whether I’m looking for it or not.

5 Books for Hopeless Romantics # 1 – Oryx & Crake (Margaret Atwood)

“Toast cannot be explained by an rational means

Toast is me.

I am Toast.”

-Margaret Atwood, Oryx & Crake

 

 

 

It’s actually been a while since I read this particular novel, but I still describe it as one of the greatest love stories ever told.

Oryx, Crake and Jimmy have a complex set of relationships that are constantly changing. While Crake lives the perfect life he sees everything around him as imperfect, Oryx finds perfection in what she can, her own life being so volatile. Jimmy lives somewhere in between, perfectly average, but at the same time an outsider.

Set in a post apocalyptic world and the dystopia that preceded, it has everything that a modern love story needs, most importantly: dysfunction.

Margaret Atwood’s writing is always interesting, witty and full of insight. She gets people in a way that only a few authors seem to. Most of all, despite all it’s gravity, her writing is as exciting and faced-paced as a good Stephen King.

All the books on this list do the same thing. They portray difficult relationships. The truth is, most relationships are difficult, that’s not a bad thing. These books remind the Hopeless Romantic that, despite their own perception, everyone else is not having an amazing time in Disney styled relationships.

Spoiler alert! Nothing turns out well in Oryx & Crake. There’s no happy ending. It will not make you feel like you’re not alone, just that you’re not the only one who is.

33, Single and don’t be creepy.

It’s been over a month since I last posted. Where the Hell have I been? You’re probably not asking that, but that’s what this post is about, so you’re going to find out.

To cut to the chase, I finally gave the girl in the bookshop my number. To say it went well would be an overstatement and saying that, is an understatement.

I have several issues when I’m nervous. Eye contact, not uncommon. Mumbling, also not horrendous. Sweating profusely, oh dear, although this didn’t actually happen to my massive relief. And, last but not least, shaking. I shake like a leaf at the best of times, I’m a trembly person. So following a bit of small talk over a transaction, I mumbled a vague question about going out.I asked for a piece of paper, I wrote down my number and I bid farewell. I figured that giving her my number was the best way to not put any pressure on her, smooth!

These are things I think might have gone wrong. My writing was illegible, I may have written the wrong number and I’m pretty sure that after handing it to her I left without looking at her, though I did say goodbye, at least I’m 99% sure I did.  Needless to say, I’ve not heard from her, that was about, a month ago, actually a little bit longer. Maybe 95% sure.

I considered going back, just in case something had actually gone wrong. Or just to see what the reaction was. In the end I didn’t and I am very glad that I didn’t. I’ll tell you why.

A man walks into the bank and after conducting his business he asks the staff member for her number, she politely declines, fair enough. The man makes an appointment at the bank, with the same staff member. When he arrives he confesses that he doesn’t have an issue with his account and just wants her number. Pretty cool huh? Just like the movies, persistence is key! Except it’s not, the woman in this case is actually scared, and rightly so as this continues to escalate until it ends up in court. He hasn’t physically hurt anyone thankfully, but he’s pretty much terrorising this poor woman. That was in the paper.

I’m glad that I didn’t go back. I haven’t actually needed a book so there’s not much point. Maybe something did go wrong, but it’s a small city, I’m sure we’ll bump in to each other at some point. Until then it’s business as usual. If you like someone you can form a sort of relationship with them in your head. Not in a creepy Cape Fear kind of way, it’s just that you’re thinking about them, but they’re probably not thinking about you. Not because there’s anything wrong with you, just because you’re a stranger. It’s worth remembering that.

So lessons learned , be prepared, write your number down beforehand and never return to the scene of the crime! As for me, I’m taking it on the chin, it’s not the first time I’ve been turned down and it certainly wont be the last. I’m still glad I did it. Next time will be easier.

 

5 Books for Hopeless Romantics #2 – Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Haruki Murakami)

“I have been seeing the Librarian daily, but the void in me remains. I have read the old dreams in the Library. She has sat beside me. We have supped together. I have walked her home. We have talked of many things. Unreasonably, my sorrow seems to grow, to deepen. Whatever is the loss becomes so great each time we meet. It is a well that will never be filled. It is dark, unbearably so.”

Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World – My favourite quote from any book ever.

 

The first time I read this book, I placed my heart inside it and have kept it there ever since.  It is a world where nobody has a name. Drab and free of any notion of what we might think of as love, it might not seem the likely setting for a heart-rending love story, but it truly is.

It is beautifully written, as you have already seen. Again some credit should go to a translator, in this case Alfred Birnbaum, who manages to craft English as beautifully as the original Japanese.

When, I first read this book I had the notion that I may one day become a fiction writer. After reading the first few pages I had decided that any book I would ever write was always going to start in a lift. That never came to fruition, but the impact of that first scene remains. Murakami creates a tension and atmosphere that you could cut with a knife. It’s palpable and from the moment you start reading it will weigh you down wherever you go.

If you know Murakami you will already be aware of his ability to effortlessly weave tales of magical realism. Where the world we see collides with the one we might imagine or hope is there. He sees the things we might not see and thus creates a fairly tale world so neatly tucked inside our own. There is no other author who manages this quite like him.

Most importantly this story is about a very important choice. We all come to a crossroads where we must choose between a perfect fantasy and grim reality and it’s a choice the rattles us to our core. This book is all about this choice. It could be the most important one you ever make.

Finally, I can’t mention Murakami without commenting on the travesty that he is yet to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Many argue that he is too popular and author and never will. However, I and many others have always felt that every year he continues to be overlooked is a massive oversight.

 

(Correction: I originally stated that is was Jay Rubin who translated the book. It was one of the few that wasn’t him and was, in fact, translated by Alfred Birnbaum. His translating is just as wonderful and apologies for the mistake.)

 

33, Single and pretty sure that Cosmic Ordering is rubbish.

If you don’t know what Cosmic Ordering is then, very basically, it involves writing everything you want in life down and waiting for it to happen. Actually that’s what it is at its most complicated.

There’s a lot of stuff like it. It’s positive thinking and we all know that’s good stuff. The idea that positive thinking can make good things happen in your life is not particularly new or unique, it’s what half of the Self Help industry is based on. Noel Edmonds credits his job on ‘Deal or No Deal’ with it. That’s already proof that there’s no God, so perhaps it could be proof of something else. I’m not convinced. (Noel Edmonds is pretty much the leading Cosmic Ordering figure in the UK, if you want to know more about that, Google it.)

See, I’ve been practicing quite a lot of it recently, in various forms. Sitting around willing my life to improve. Beaming positively into empty space because the phone might ring and Wikipedia will offer me a job reading articles to make sure they are interesting enough. Don’t laugh it might happen if I just … smile … wide … enough. Grinning maniacally at people doesn’t make them go out with you, it makes them take out a restraining order. Oddly enough, employers are much more receptive to CVs and letters of recommendation as opposed to a list that you have at home and your intense positivity.

Everyone is trying to sell you snake oil. The simple fact is that everyone who ever got anything they really wanted went out and got it. They all have one thing in common that allows them to do that and that thing is confidence. Not everyone has it in such abundance. Confidence is something that can be hard to develop and even harder to maintain. To some people it can feel like they’ve never had it and never will, but that’s not true. Confidence is just how comfortable you feel in any given situation. Put yourself in a place you don’t like, when your confidence reserves are low, and you’ll struggle. People spend and awful lot of time making life harder for themselves.

Go where you want to be, talk to the people you want to talk to and sure, if you want to, write a list of all the things you want to achieve, but then go out and achieve them because if you don’t, who’s going to do it for you, Noel Edmonds? Pah!

 

N.B. Please don’t sue me Noel, I never missed a House Party.

33, Single and things have gotten weird with Danny Wallace.

First, let me just point out, that I’ve never met Danny Wallace and I’m not insane. Good start. If you don’t know who he is, he’s a writer and broadcaster and all round good egg sort of bloke, or at least that’s how he seems to me. Look him up.

Secondly, let me just point out, that Danny Wallace wouldn’t know me if I fell on him from a tree.

In conversation with a friend this week, he came up, and it turned out that my friend knows him on Facebook. My friend, let’s call him Dave, that’s not his name, is the sort of person that genuinely has thousands of friends and is very hard not to like. He knows everyone. So the fact that he’s hobnobbing with minor celebrities on social media wasn’t really a surprise. I awesomed a bit and that was the end of it.

Until I saw these words. ‘He’ll probably ignore it but … Done!’

And this image.

 

Remember point 1? I don’t know Danny Wallace. To suggest that I do is a barefaced lie. I’ve only ever really read his column in ShortList. And through his self-deprecating mateyness, I’ve felt like I’ve gotten to know him, but not in an insane way, point 1. He’s just the sort of guy that I could have a beer with. Most importantly, he’s called Daniel, just like me and he’s from Dundee, where I’m sort of from. I’m here now at least. It is possible that he could vaguely be convinced that we’ve met, but I doubt it. Dave has turned me into Danny Wallace’s stalker.

My initial reaction was less than positive, although I kept this under my hat. Dave, was only trying to help. However, now he’d created an incident. He’d also scuppered my chances of a bromance with my favourite columnist, but such is life.

As I ponder my humiliation something happens.

Suddenly, my friend request icon lit up. It was him, he wants to be friends! I was amazed, aghast. What should I do? Should I accept? Was that too fast? It was like he was a girl!

‘Just accept it!’ Dave’s opinion.

I go to and, as strange as it is to admit this, my heart sank. It was just the suggestion from Dave. Did I want to send a friend request to Danny Wallace? No, because that would be weird.

A couple of days have passed, he wasn’t inspired to get to know me further and the crisis is over for now. While I’ve learned what a good friend and enthusiastic publicist Dave is, I think I might just keep my mouth shut in future.  I bet Danny doesn’t have these problems with Colin. Oh wait, he does! Maybe we’ll exchange weird mate stories over a pint one day. Although, that’s looking increasingly unlikely.

Good one Dave!

5 Books for Hopeless Romantics #3 – Laughter in the Dark (Vladimir Nabokov)

Hurley (From TV’s Lost) reads Laughter in the Dark. He was my favourite.

The problem with being a Hopeless Romantic is that you are often guided by a romanticised and slightly unrealistic view of love. This can cause you problems as life is much more gritty these days than Austen or Disney will teach you.

Laughter in the Dark tells the story of a middle-aged man who becomes infatuated with a teenage girl. The result is a mutually destructive relationship that ends in tragedy. Not really holiday reading.

Nabokov’s writing is fantastic and vivid, even in translation. He fills your imagination with a clear picture of Europe in the first half of the twentieth-century. Whether walking down a Berlin street or winding through the mountains in a convertible you can see every colour and smell every smell, summoned so perfectly by Nabakov’s seamless flow of story.

It’s not a happy tale and it isn’t supposed to be. There are those relationships, that while they might indulge, they don’t fulfill and slowly they tear us apart. This book is about those relationships. It is a reminder that while we might want to love with our hearts, it is often more sensible to love with our heads.

Not that reading it has ever stopped me.

33, Single and dispensing sage (and schmaltzy) wisdom

By now you’re probably wondering if there’s going to be any good dating advice here, or if it’s just me moaning. Well I told you there wasn’t going to be any good advice, so you shouldn’t be disappointed. Here however, rather unexpectedly younglings, is some advice, it may not be good though.

There’s quite a lot of dating advice out there, after all, nobody wants to be alone! The thing I’m finding with it is that it’s all a little bit samey and a little bit, for lack of a better expression, American. That’s not a bad thing. For example, I read one blog about being social. Go out to a club on your own and chat to the first person next to you, smile, be outgoing, that sort of thing. You know it’s good advice, because we’ve all seen ‘that guy’ and he looks like he’s having a great time. I’m not ‘that guy’. I’m British, I’m charmingly befuddled and have bad teeth.

The problem with not being ‘that guy’, is that if I go to a popular night spot, alone, and start to make conversation with random people I either come across as awkward and a bit strange or as really, really drunk. I’m going to bet that’s the same for a lot of people. If you feel like you’re capable of completely changing into a super-confident and ultra-charismatic individual through hard work and personal growth then that’s great. That just isn’t going to happen with me, I’m always going to be slightly awkward and strange and that’s fine. It’s not just fine, it’s great!

See I haven’t actually been doing much dating recently, or any for that matter. I had a bit of a flurry a few months ago, but it just really wasn’t working out. I felt really uncomfortable, I felt like I just didn’t want to be there. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but I think I know now. It was because I wasn’t comfortable with myself. After just getting out of a relationship, I thought I had missed things from my life, like going out and meeting people in clubs and places like that. I had grown up in the intervening years, I had changed. The things I wanted and the way I wanted my life to unfold were totally different.

It doesn’t have to be like that though. It doesn’t have to be nervously standing in clubs on your own or operating with your friend to try to chat someone up on a night out. That’s all very sweaty and complicated and there’s no harm if you don’t feel like you fit in there. Sometimes it can be like a Wes Anderson movie. The girl you’re going to marry might be the one that you’ve seen every day at the coffee shop for the last 6 months and tomorrow will be the day you finally make eye contact, or the place will be crowded and she’ll sit at your table and asks what your reading. Life happens like that too, it’s just not very fast paced. It’s all rather slow and, well, European. If you’re like me though, that’s where you belong.

So what’s my point? Be yourself? You’ve possibly heard that before and yet you, like me, are still single. That’s because it’s only half the story. You’re not going to meet as many girls as ‘that guy’. You’re not going to have crazy one-night stands like ‘that guy’, but that’s probably not what you want anyway. If you’re shy it can take a lot of time, you may even need a little prompting. It’ll still happen, because there are shy girls in cafe’s waiting to make eye contact too. Figure out who you are and own it. Don’t be distracted by what seems to be working for other people, because that doesn’t mean it will work for you. Most of all, be patient, it takes time. But, when you meet the shy girl in the coffee shop, or the comic book store or the library or wherever, it’s much more likely that she’ll turn out to be the girl of your dreams.

On an unrelated note, I haven’t seen the bookseller in a while. I hope she hasn’t got a new job, I was almost ready to ask her out … possibly.

5 Books for Hopeless Romantics #4 – Jules et Jim (Henri-Pierre Roché)

At first, the books on this list may not seem ‘romantic’, but the idea of ‘boy meets girl’ is so boring and outdated. Relationships are complicated, they always have been.

This is something that Jules et Jim captures truthfully, but lovingly. It is beautifully written (and translated by Patrick Evans) and yet a tale of such bohemian inhibition and freedom. The characters fall in and out of love, drifting between each other, in and out of each others lives, their stories artfully woven over time. It is simply a wonderful book to read.

And what is it to the Hopeless Romantic? It’s an honest tale that deals frankly with how relationships can evolve. How feelings can change. It’s not always happy. When there are winners, there tend also, to be losers, but that’s how life is anyway. It doesn’t really pull any punches.

From the fleeting desires of youth to the nudging desire to settle down, Roché carefully captures life. Initially it focuses on the slightly hedonistic lifestyles lived by Jules and Jim as they embark on their journey to explore life’s pleasures. When they meet Kate their hearts are stolen in turn, leading to a love triangle where no-one can ever truly be happy. J

ust like life, things aren’t always perfect. I don’t really know what this book will do for you, or where it would end up on your pantheon of romantic literature. It will probably leave you feeling slightly depressed, if a little wiser. It’s hard to explain, just read it and you’ll see. If you’re lazy, there’s even a film … but it’s in French. Enjoy!

33, Single and scrobbling without a care.

You may already be aware that I recently acquired a new teapot. Today I also bought a lamp and a lampshade for the living room light: it isn’t a paper ball. I have come of age. And it hasn’t only been a spiraling hypochondria and an interest in interior design that has drawn my attention to this fact.

If you don’t know what ‘scrobbling’ is, it’s when you hook all your music player things up to a website and it tells the world, or the people who follow you, what you’re listening to. It’s another way to pretend that you’re cool when you’re not. I swear an ex refused to go out with me until I replaced Tenacious D as my number one band a few years back.

After that point I was quite meticulous at scrobbling, as anyone who does it is. You don’t want people to know all the rubbish that you listen to, so you listen to that on the one programme that isn’t connected. Or putting cool playlists on repeat and going away for the weekend, that kind of thing. Internet propaganda.

For some time now I’ve been listening to the Frozen soundtrack, actually just three songs from it, and frankly I don’t care who knows it. My neighbours already look at me oddly for having mastered ‘Let it Go’ on the ukulele at which, I think, I’m pretty awesome. So why shouldn’t everyone else judge? I’m just too old to care anymore.

The thing is, as I’ve discovered, nobody cares. That could be because nobody is really paying attention to what I listen to. I, however, choose to believe that I’m not the only person listening to those three songs over and over.

I’m just the only one man enough to admit it!