I am beginning to realize that neither the Guardian, nor jdate or matchnet are places to find what I am looking for.
        There is one last date pending on jdate with a distinctly unexciting IT guy.
        He suggests the Oxo Tower bar. I look it up on the map but only get a vague idea where to go. I figure it is a tall building and must be easy to find from anywhere around Waterloo. I leave home early just in case.
        It is a dark and rainy night. I get lost. Running through the rain in circles, getting sweaty and sticky, alone after 27 dates I cry a few tears of self-pity. The water blinds my eyes. The wind flips over my umbrella. Life sucks.
        I ask a cabdriver for directions and am still right on time.
        Up on the roof I receive a txt: ‘Hiya, stuck in traffic. Will be another twenty minutes.’
        I go to the toilet and restore my face. The bar is noisy and smoky and so crowded I don’t find a seat but wait standing squeezed in a corner clutching a drink I had to buy myself.
        I cannot remember what he looks like, just that he has a face I want to smack when he arrives forty-five minutes later.
        ‚London traffic,’ he grins.
        Oh, fuck off.
        We agree to find a quieter place. He knows an Italian restaurant up river. It is still raining.
        ‘Walk here,’ he says. ‘This is a short-cut.’
        He disappears between some trees. I follow. There is no asphalt, just lawn soaked in rainwater. Then there is no lawn, just mud and suddenly a sharp slope downwards. His shadow in front of me is struggling to remain upright. I feel my feet slipping, my arms move like windmills on low battery. I lose my balance, fall on my ass and slide down. My left foot gets stuck and I lose my shoe.
        ‘Blimey,’ he says.
        He finds my shoe, hands it to me and helps me get up.
        ‘Blimey,’ he says again.
        I glance down myself. I look like a perfectly battered Wiener Schnitzel.
        He takes out a handkerchief and starts rubbing mud into the fabric of my coat.
        ‘It’s ok,’ I say through clenched teeth and push him away. ‘Now we have managed the short cut, where is the bloody restaurant?’
        We order pizza and wine and he tells me about his job as a computer programmer. Something about an army of spiders carrying information through a net which he designs and in which he decides where which spider drops and picks up what piece of information to bring to another spider.
        ‘I create an entire universe.’ he says.
        ‘I see.’ I say and chew my pizza.
        He wants to know all about my grandparents.
        ‘You know of course that I could never marry a woman who is only partly Jewish.’
        I am heartbroken.
        He hesitates when the bill arrives. I feel obliged to take out my wallet but have the presence of mind to murmur: ‘And I will send you half the cleaning bill for my coat too’.
        He pays uttering: ‘Your treat next time.’
        Can fools be dangerous? It is still raining so I dare to find out by doing the absolute no-no on a first date. I get into his car and let him drive me to Victoria. We part with non-committal handshakes and cheek-pecks.
        When he asks me out again I forward the message I got from 27.
        ‘You are very nice but I don’t see this going anywhere.’
        And herewith endeth my life on matchnet and jdate.