All I Want For (Before) Christmas

As of Friday 13th (oh fortuitous day) I am single. I actually did the lamb dance from court all the way back to the car park as soon as the Judge smacked her gavel down. This is not to say I was happy about being divorced, because the word I am looking for is closer to ecstatic. And it's not to say I don't have regret, because I do. My ex is a lovely bloke but we were just not lovely for each other. Heaven knows we tried hard, through two marriages in fact, but we were like anti-marriage for each other and the more time that passed, the more horrible we became to ourselves and each other. And now, after a year of separation, I am me again, and he is himself again, and we can both, with grace, move onto new chapters. So I did the lamb dance.

And move on I have. I am dipping my toes in the dating pool. Some may feel going from divorce court directly to a coffee date is a little extreme, but at 43, I don't have a whole lot of respect for standing on ceremony. I am emotionally intact, not in need of rescue spiritually or financially and what the hell. Problem is that I live in the arse end of beyond where the local entertainment is limited to one very dodgy pub called "Pistol's Saloon and Wild West Museum" that attracts the kind of clientele best avoided. And all my friends are heavily married and very very much younger than me so a fix up will brand me as a Cougar and that is so just not my style. Which leaves dating, in the old fashioned sense of the word, with limited scope. In fact, none at all.

The thought of dragging myself through another freezing, wet, Natal winter on my own is just abhorrent. Not that I want to be someones girlfriend, but a companion would be fabulous. Companion, did I actually just say that? But that's precisely what I want. Someone with enough oomph and intellect to have funny, interesting, thought provoking but not exhaustive conversations and to share life's special pleasures with would be marvellous. And that can eat with a knife and fork and get on with my friends. With his own home to go back to. So how to get this right when the night life here is limited to the wailing of feral cats and the rutting of the over population of wild pig in the forest over the road.

Since my internet connection has been fully restored, the answer is simple. Internet date. What could be easier than filling in a little questionnaire about likes and preferences and waiting for a clever computer to filter out the dross and provide a list of potential companions for winter? Despite being brutally honest in my profile, and using really big difficult words like eloquence, capability, chivalry, courage, raconteur and bon vivant (yes, my dream man is a cross between James Bond, McGiver and Bruce Willis, sort of like Robert Redford's character in Story of an African Farm), I attract peaches from Pongola who "want 2 kiss and hug U stukkend". For my limited international audience, "stukkend" is Afrikaans for "broken". There are odd bods from Limpopo Province who would like to be showing me their tractors and various other bits of machinery and yet more, closer to home alarmingly, who are bold enough to admit their marital status (married) who suggest discreet hook ups in local hotels. This in a town where even the petrol pump attendants know every customer by name. Discreet? I think not. And to crown it, a call from my ex to say that one of his friends (and a very married one at that with a lovely wife) had called him to tell him he had seen me on the dating website. The mind boggles.

But date I did, straight out of court and nearly collapsed at the hilarity of it all. Two forty somethings completely inept and incapacitated by nerves. The Date almost fell in his swimming pool so anxious was he; he could not sit still, and I could not stop laughing. And we get on really really well, except he thinks he isn't ready for a relationship and I know I am not in need of a relationship, and like a pair of idiots, we have flip flopped into a friendship of sorts that has its cornerstone clearly marked with big writing "SELF DENIAL". His, not mine. It's a bitter irony.

Wading through the detritus of what constitutes a single South African man has lost its comedic appeal and has actually become a little alarming. Consequently, my profile is now permanently disabled. So short of moving a few hundred kilometres north, I am afraid I may have to take up knitting and start rescuing cats. I haven't, however, completely given up hope - watch this space.