Dating

Not long ago I was a regular Tinder user. Having heard that gingers were romantically incompatible, I decided to mix work and pleasure and put this controversial claim to the test. I set up a sort of interview-date with a nice young lady called Laura, a former international gymnast who was working as a waitress, but looking for more permanent work. She sported a lovely glossy dark ginger mane. We weren’t getting on too badly, but not much of a story there. Luckily there was scope for deepening the research: we went back to mine, and a bit of horizontal research definitively established that the alleged incompatibility of gingers is utter nonsense, doubtless put about by jealous eugenicists. None of the above is true.

Just before lockdown began, Matt Hancock and Dr Jenny Harries presented the nation’s daters with a stark dilemma. Non-cohabiting couples, they advised, should either move in together for the duration or stay physically apart. Couples who barely knew each other’s surnames were catapulted into levels of intimacy that would normally have evolved over years and the enforced lovebirds were soon living like old-style pensioners, spending every moment in each other’s company, arguing over hand sanitiser brands and giving one another dodgy haircuts. For the large pool of existing singletons, the picture was radically different. Gone was the usual flurry of social engagements, and even the possibility of meeting someone at work.

 Shanghai ‘How old are you, young lady?’ A small, curious crowd starts to surround me. ‘How tall are you? What do you work as?’ The parents camping out in Shanghai’s infamous marriage market have no time for small talk. They come here every weekend, rain or shine, seeking a partner for their grown-up son or daughter. Age, wage, height, education — everyone has a wish list, and they also condense their own child into such a list. Today’s special: me. The so-called Matchmakers’ Corner has seen tens of thousands of Chinese parents, including members of my own family, come to investigate what (or who) is out there. A great many parents worry about their child’s stubborn singledom.

I’ve been meaning to write a Spectator diary since the summer but as a Gemini with Aries rising I find I have the annoying trait (just the one?) of being too easily distracted. Not by social media as so many are — Twittering and Instagramming only grab my attention for a couple of minutes each day. No, what entrances me are movies, and the wonderful cornucopia of films available on Sky, Netflix, Amazon, iTunes and so many platforms proffering my preferred pastime on my big-screen TV. I refuse to be hunched over a tiny screen downloading the latest blockbuster from Disney or DreamWorks.

Lothario, Don Juan, philanderer, ‘naughty’, ‘plays away’ — all terms for men who have an overwhelming drive to seduce scores of women, take no responsibility, and often get away with it. In the recent allegations about Harvey Weinstein’s predatory sexual attacks on more than 30 females, mainly actresses, whose careers seem to have depended on them being compliant, most of his victims now complain too of his physical unattractiveness. One, the Italian actor and director Asia Argento, who went on to have ‘consensual sex’ with Weinstein on and off for five years, says she was ‘a fool’. Those who have come forward with their stories and condemned Weinstein, often several years later, are being heaped with praise for their courage.

What advice would you give to this modern moral question posed by my friend’s younger sister? A boy at school had asked her to send him a selfie. Nude, naturally. She was dithering. She liked the boy, a sixth-form crush, and was keen to endear herself. But she knew that if she sent a naked picture he’d pass it on to his friends. She had thought of compromises: just her breasts, or her bottom coyly reflected in a mirror. It hadn’t crossed her mind to say ‘get lost’. Then, she explained, he’d tell his friends she was a prude. That, to her, was far worse than the First XI seeing her in the nuddy.

It was the third time in a row that she had cancelled our date for drinks. The first time she’d forgotten. The second time she remembered a previous engagement and the third time she claimed she’d got the dates mixed up. The next day I got the text she always sends: ‘Sorry darling, I’m such a flake!’ I used to have friends. Now I have flakes — people who are always screwing up arrangements to meet. Flake has become the catch-all explanation and excuse for the bad manners or bad behaviour of friends and loved ones. Cosmo Landesman and Freya Wood discuss the modern affliction of flakiness: We all know about ladies who lunch. But what about the ones who forget you were even having lunch?