Bumbling Dad. Midlife dating tales from London.

I had a first date arranged this evening. Quite low key; a quiet early evening drink on the edge of Soho with Olive, a Tinder match. Olive seemed bright, funny, interesting and attractive. A similar age, with children older than mine and a sense of humour all her own. We've been chatting for a week or two, not intensively, but a few times most days.  I know, deep inside, that I’m not entirely over “The One”, who I’ve loved and lost months ago but still ache for at inopportune moments, like most of the time that I'm awake. But she’s never coming back, so if only to prove to myself that I’m not going to become a complete recluse and spend every evening sitting on the sofa in my pants, spooning lard into my mouth from a giant tub while tears course silently down my cheeks, I’ve arranged this and a couple of other dates. You never know. I might meet someone nice.  It won’t be Olive though. Two hours before the appointed time, I received a text: Now this isn’t the end of the ...

This is actually Part Two of " Five Go to a Bar ", so if you haven't read Part One yet, go there first.  We'll still be here when you get back*.  I've retitled it based on the TwitFam suggestion that anything related to sex in the title gets clicked on.  This also explains the fact that my blog on Dining at the Y has twice the views of anything I've ever written.  Including 3 years worth of student rent cheques that each bounced 4 times. You can find it on this site after you've read this.  And after you've read  Part One.  Because reading ain't free, bitches, as Enid always said. *<SPOILERS>  Except for Timmy, George & Anne.  Oh, and Julian doesn't get a look in, because he's a lanky, posh, ineffectual cock womble who makes David Cameron look like Danny Dyer.  Although DD probably never got a blow job from a pig's head.  Or BD, thankfully.  Plus he's called Julian, which is enough in itself.  Dick, however, w...

Ryan is BumblingD's best friend.  Ryan and BumblingD have been friends since big school.  BumblingD knows Ryan is kind, intelligent, and funny.  Ryan knows BumblingD needs help.  Ryan & Bumbli  look, can we just call him BD, Enid? BD & Ryan are waving goodbye to Rudy.  Rudy is BD's brother, a tall, jolly, boy with smiling eyes and important hair.  Rudy has a special job today.  He's driving the big white lorry home to its warm bed, far enough from London to make him very tired.  He will need a cup of cocoa before tucking in.  He's such a brick.  He is a very helpful boy. The big lorry is empty. It has been unloaded.  It is as empty as BD's ex's heart. Our strong boys have carried many cardboard boxes brimming with BD's paltry world up many, many stairs. Their chatter, in between grunting, has been mainly about ducks and aunts, as far as autocorrect can tell.  But they have completed the job, so that BD didn't h...

It probably is, because look, we barely know each other.  I've only been blogging for a few days. But, if we do somehow end up naked together, there's a chance it could happen, sooner rather than later. Because, er, I like you.  And you like me.  That's how we got here.  And I'm turned on by you, and I want you to be turned on by me.  And the state of awkwardness peculiar only to those who have removed their undergarments in the horn-infested presence of another for the first time is mutual, so why don't I* take a lead here? * Unless you've really got a frisk on and have already set the pace, so to speak.  I'm easy like that.  If we're already en le frottage , then let's be comfortable with each other.  I'll roll with it.  What goes around comes around, etc. Michael Douglas probably wouldn't approve.   But then I worry if I wear a cotton v-neck, in case people think I'm copying his style.  Which of course I may be, sublimina...

The only thing worse than a profile with no picture, apart from  possibly anal herpes or doing up a zip fly a tad too quickly and enthusiastically before being fully tucked away, is a dating site profile with just headshots.  Beautiful, well lit, artfully posed headshots, showing off lustrous hair, luscious lips, and eyes like limpid pools of liquid diamonds.  Rather like an iceberg, a headshot only profile tends to have a little more going on below the surface. Or in this case, a lot more below the neck. I’ve learned this the hard way, and broken my own rule on a number of occasions, none of which has led to anything but disappointment. I love a rounded, curvy figure. There’s something very alluring about the softness of warm flesh, the wobble of a bingo wing. I’m no Adonis myself, and it’s completely natural that women (and men) in their mid years might have an extra few pounds here and there, a sprinkling of cellulite, a slight downgrade in the degree of perky pertnes...

No, not this one, it's a bathroom selfie.  Swipe left Aaaaagh!  She's just plain scary.  Swipe left This one looks OK.  Swipe up for next picture.  Shit!  That's Bumble, this is Tinder.  I've just Super Liked her and I've only seen one picture.  FML. Completely blank profile.  Not even a pic.  Swipe left Not interested in ONS.  Literally every profile says this.  Took me ages to work out what ONS is.  Useless knowledge anyway; nobody's interested "Marisa"  102.  Clearly not her real age.  But looks dead behind the eyes.  Swipe left Blimey, this one has a bio.  Some actual words about herself.  Unfortunately, most of them are about dancing in the rain like nobody's watching.  Swipe left Looks ok.  At least, I think that's her.  First photo has two girls in it (no cup, fortunately).  Second photo is a group shot.  She could be any of them.  Next 3 photos ar...

Talk to my chums I did.  And you know what?  They were the square root of fuck all help.  Mainly because they'd all married twenty-some years ago, and I was the novelty singleton.  Apart from the wealthy mate, who was moving on to his third wife, but he was more helpful from a separation perspective.  His boggle-eyed heat-seeking wife missile thinking wasn't for me, thankfully, particularly in light of how that  marriage turned out.  But everyone else just wanted to swipe through dating apps with me.  Which was occasionally hysterical, but also betrayed the bleak nature of my future - destined to die alone without even a cat, because renting high up. And not a cat owner. Although chum Jim kindly recommended E45 lotion for genital husbandry purposes.  And that helped.  But I now have an aversion to latex.  And the fear that Jim knows exactly what cleanses underneath my foreskin.  Form an orderly queue, ladies.  And don't ...

We'll start at the very beginning.  It's a very good place to start First Tinder date ever.  Alone in a new flat in London after a couple of decades spent falling in and then out of love, with breeding in between.  Ex and I are polite and practical. Kids are fab and undamaged by the split, spend lots of time with me, and neither have any further place in this blog, other than possible future inadvertent cock-blocking.  Time will tell. Alice.  She's my first ever Tinder match.  The massive whoosh of validation.  She's a nurse.  Voice like car wheels on a gravel road in the phone chats we have over the days leading to the date.  Kooky and intense. Petite, bobbed, greets me with a warm hug; chats, drinks and eats with me in the gilded delights of West Hampstead; comes back to my starkly empty flat, spends the night in a variety of warm and friendly gymnastic poses, kisses me goodbye, ghosts me within a week. Is this the real life?  ...

Four years of dating apps and experiences in London.  Enough trauma to have a specialist hospital wing named after me.  The names have been changed to protect the guilty and the innocent. There's some catching up to do here.  I'm planning to bring things up to date - a time when I find I've accidentally turned the wrong side of 50, loved and lost somebody who might have been "the one", and am embarking once again on a round of first dates with lovely ladies, some of whom could win Oscars for use of photographic effects, and many of whom are bizarrely specific about height requirements but flexible in attitude towards the accuracy of the age shown on their profiles. But there's some dating backstory too.  I need to tell you about the woman who married someone else 12 weeks after we broke up, the passionate South American who broke into my flat, the delightful girl with the dreadful hygiene issues, and what I've learned about profiles which only have hea...