Dating MR DARCY
He’s well-known, extremely handsome, and lived in Hollywood, rubbing shoulders with A-listers for years. But now he’s home, this single dad proves finding love second-time around isn’t much easier for men…
Okay, so I re-thought not seeing an old flame again on account of her having a cat… and have found myself enjoying a few dates of late. Not quite a Christmas miracle, more of a happy accident while I was out shopping for groceries in a posh shop, but still.
We’ve been carol singing, mulled wine drinking, and as I’ve walked past numerous Christmas trees dotted around our capital city, I swear people are in a slightly better mood – or maybe they are simply more drunk than normal. Either way, it’s safe to say that this season is my favourite time of the year. I have festive sensory overload. Don’t start me on fresh mince pies with brandy butter, let’s just agree it would be rude not to eat two at each sitting, wouldn’t it?
And these experiences feel more special because I can now share of some them with a date. In fact, on our third date we bonded over a hate of a mass of noisy shoppers – so much so, we gave up and because she lived nearby, she invited me to hers.
This was the firsttime I had been invited to her home. How was it? Nice decor, real Christmas tree and she didn’t ask me to take me shoes off when entering.
Positive signs in my dating world!
She opened some vino collapso, and we settled down on a huge comfy sofa to watch TV, lamenting how young George Michael looked, how sad he was no longer with us, and how old we now both felt.
When she popped out of the room, I noticed there were two presents under the tree – alongside a cat – staring judgingly at me. But as I leaned forward to stroke it, it hissed at me.
Not very Christmassy, I thought. Thankfully, my date came back with mince pies (no brandy butter), but as she sat the pies on the table and I put an arm around her, we were interrupted by a mechanical noise from the kitchen.
My first thought was that her fridge had broken, but no.
‘Oh don’t worry about that, it’s my electronic automatic pooper scooper enclosed cat tray,’ my date explained.
I will be honest. Knowing that one of her cats had chosen to do a poo while I moved in for a kiss slightly put me off my stride, but I was not to be deterred.
Let’s just say, an ensuing game of ‘hunt the mistletoe’ led to this Christmas elf staying overnight. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this elf has not quite lost all his charms.
The next morning, I woke up very early with a headache and snippets of the conversation from the night before came back to me. In essence, it had been made quite clear that she had some unresolved anger issues about the fact we had split up in the firstplace – and, as ever – it was all my fault.
I decided to extricate myself before she woke up, giving me time to clear my head and not deal with any awkward early morning after the late night before conversations. So just like a film, I peeled her arm off my arm in the bed, quietly picked up all my clothes off the floor so as notto wake her and crept out of the bedroom, silently getting dressed in the corridor to make a quick escape.
As I reached the door, I heard a noise in the kitchen, the cat machine was whirring away cleaning up the cat’s latest Yuletide log. The cat made it clear, he wasn’t going to miss me…