Recyclable dating

I’m not going to lie, adjusting back to the London way of life has been pretty hard. And I’m not just talking about the weather.

As I touched down on Heathrow’s tarmac and shivered my way home I made a pact with myself that I wouldn’t date until the summer! Sorry, but who dates in the winter? I couldn’t possibly go from dates by the beach and overlooking Sydney Harbour (yes...I know I’m boasting) to dates without the tan I achingly spent a good 50 days perfecting and dates where my hair was so windswept that I looked like a hedgehog on steroids.

But who was I kidding? No dating for a dating enthusiast is bordering on just plain stupidness. So before I knew it I was logging on to a dating site - ‘What’s the harm in just having a quick surf?' (less Bondi, more laptop!).

Now, when someone says to me ‘Oh you’re doing THAT Internet dating thing are you?’ I give a little chuckle.

Because I’m not JUST doing that Internet dating thing, I’m actually a veteran of Internet dating. FACT. If someone could hold a world record for the amount of dating websites they’d signed up to I would probably be the clear winner. I know about winks, nudges, email rejections and the 60 year old men who think it’s acceptable to email 29 year olds and ask for a date. Stop it. I will never say yes.

And because I’ve been Internet dating since I was 12 (well it seems like it!) I think I’m actually now, shamefully, recycling the men on them.

I sent a cheeky email to a guy on a dating website the other day, only to be horrified when he emailed me back saying ‘Didn’t we date before?’ Of course not, you’re thinking. Out of the possible thousands of men on Internet dating sites, how could it humanly be possible for me to stumble across the same guy twice? Believe me it’s actually possible....so possible that I’m sure it will happen again!

And I nearly even dated a friends ‘now’ boyfriend. He recognised me from her facebook pictures recently as the girl that never emailed him back on a dating website. I’m just glad that we never actually dated – now that would be an awkward type of date recycling.

So have I got to the point, where I’ve been single for so long that I’ll just have to start recycling old dates? Should I ring up old boyfriends and tell them it’s their turn to date me again? ‘What, you have a girlfriend? Well as long as she doesn’t mind I suppose!’

And because of my veteran status, does this terrifyingly also mean my judgement about whether a potential date is ‘dateable’ or not is slightly misconstrued now?

I should have really known from his user name (it referred to food) but I was pretty annoyed when I turned up to a date recently and he didn’t quite match his profile photos. Call it what you like - false advertising, lying or just plain skillful with the old photoshop tool, but it doesn’t do you much good when you realise you have to spend the best part of the evening with a ‘different to the Internet’ version of your date.

I tried, I really did try to like him, but as his words came out all I could here was my head saying, ‘Excuse me Mr but I think you may have lied a little bit on your profile.’ And when I did hear him speak most of it was food orientated. Like the time he returned from New York and saved room in his case for a kilos worth of Peanut butter chocolate. And I can’t even describe the expression on his face when I told him that Antony Worrall Thompson cooked me lunch once. I could have fit a whole cheesecake in his open mouth (his favourite food apparently!), that was after he stopped dribbling mind.

I hate people who tell fibs, and fibbing in date land is, well, punishable by no second date I suppose! He was so far off a second date that even if cheesecake was involved I would have said no. Honestly.

And so my London dating resumes.....I suppose it wouldn’t have been a ‘Sarah’ date if it had actually gone well, but please can I stop running into former dates?! Or at this rate there will be no options left and date recycling will be the only way forward.