Love @ First Site Page 8

  On the far side of the room is a vast wall covered in Polaroid photographs, each with a plastic wallet attached to one side.

  "Smile!" A balding man steps out of the shadows and fires a camera flash in my face, causing me to screw up my eyes in alarm.

  Those few vital seconds of my discomfort are enough warning for Madeleine to compose herself and strike a supermodel pose when it's her go. Turning her best side to the camera, she gives a pout that makes Posh Spice's mouth look like a rip in a paper bag. Still scowling from shock, I turn to look at the rest of the rogue's gallery. "So what's this then?" I ask Madeleine.

  "It's our Wonderwall," says a member of staff lurking nearby with a smile. "Take a look, and if you see anyone you fancy, just put one of your calling cards in the plastic wallet alongside."

  "Hmmmm, suspect your wallet might be empty at the end of the night," says Madeleine, peering at a Polaroid the photographer has just pinned on the patch of wall in front of her.

  "What?" Scowling, I take a couple of steps to the side to take a look, then recoil in horror. "Oh my God, I look like the Queen Mum."

  "On a bad day," says Madeleine, relentlessly grinding coarse sea salt into my wound.

  "Can you take another one please?" I turn to the photographer and smile in what I hope is an endearing way.

  "Sorry," he sniffs. "They cost a lot of money, and if I did it for you, everyone would want another go."

  "I'll pay you the extra."

  "Sorry, haven't got time," he says over his shoulder, on his way to destroy the self-esteem of some other poor, unexpecting sod.

  "Your parents are brother and sister, right?" I shout at his retreating back.

  "Don't worry, you might get the sympathy vote," adds Madeleine, smiling with satisfaction at the Polaroid of herself looking gorgeous. "Come on, you'll just have to wow them all in person."

  She grabs hold of my arm and pulls me towards a set of double doors off to the right. Pushing them open, a wall of noise hits us as we walk through into a vast room the size of four tennis courts. At one end, there are several long, refectory-style tables with pink and blue benches alongside, but the three hundred or so people already here are standing in the empty section of the room. The room reverberates with the hum of nervous small talk, and they're all clutching a drink, wearing their badge, and smiling as if their love lives depended on it.

  "Let's work that room, baby!" Madeleine squeezes my arm, her eyes dancing with pure excitement. I simply feel terrified as I trail pathetically behind her, ever the reluctant bridesmaid.

  "Hi fellas!" Bold as you like, Madeleine breezes up to two men huddled together on the edge of the crowd. Both are clutching half pints of lager.

  I smile nervously at them both, and quickly establish that neither rock my boat. One--"Tom"--is too squat and shifty looking, and the other--"Gareth"--is clearly a rugby freak. My idea of hell. A rather swift conclusion considering neither of them has yet uttered anything other than their name, but hey, dating is a brutal business.

  My hasty dismissal sets me thinking that maybe this speed-dating lark does have its appeal. After all, the squatness of Tom Thumb, as I am now silently referring to him, wouldn't have come across on a photo, and I may have wasted yet more of my life meeting him for lunch. Here, I can establish immediately that I don't find him in the slightest bit attractive.

  Madeleine, however, has other ideas and hands him one of her calling cards.

  "Pleasure meeting you!" she trills, placing a hand in the small of my back and steering me away from them. "One down, twenty-four cards to go," she shouts in my ear.

  I pull a face. "Madeleine, he's so short he's in danger of scraping his chin on the floor."

  "Darling, we're all the same size lying down," she replies, pushing me towards a handsome waiter with a full tray of drinks.

  Grabbing two full glasses and replacing them with our empties, Madeleine hands me one and smiles seductively at the waiter. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch her hand withdrawing from his back pocket.

  "What were you doing?" I hiss, as we walk away.

  "Giving him one of my cards. He's one of the most handsome men in here," she says matter-of-factly.

  "Aren't you peaking a little early?" I say testily. "The cards are supposed to last us all night."

  "Oh bore bore, snore snore." She makes a little snorting noise. "You can be Little Miss Cautious if you like, but I prefer to be generous with my potential affection."

  "Obviously," I reply sarcastically, but it's lost under the ear-splitting sound of a siren noise that prompts me to wince.

  "Ladies and gentlemen!" A voice crackles over the loudspeaker. "Let's get ready to rumble!"

  A Frisson virgin, I have absolutely no idea what that means. But there are plenty who do and a wave of pressure builds up from behind, propelling us towards the tables. The urge to make a sheep noise is overwhelming.

  The room has filled up more by now, and everyone starts to sit down on the benches in a remarkably orderly fashion. Men sit along the blue benches, whilst we take our place opposite them on the pink ones. No gender stereotyping here then.

  "And remember, no verbal intercourse . . ." the disembodied voice pauses to allow feeble laughter for his unutterably feeble joke ". . . until the siren sounds again."

  A rather mousy young man shuffles into place opposite me and smiles. His badge says "James." We sit there for a few awkward moments, both looking anywhere but at each other, neither daring to speak a word.

  "Right." It's the loudspeaker again. "For those of you who are new to this, here are the rules. This is extreme speed dating, so rather than three minutes you each have ninety seconds to make an impression. If you like what you see and hear, hand over a card. When the siren sounds, the men move one place to their right. The women stay where they are. Let's go!"

  The siren wails into life and, immediately, the sound of animated conversation fills the room.

  James and I sit there for a few moments, verbally impotent and exchanging nervous glances. "I guess it's probably your first time at this too," I say eventually.

  "Yes." He smiles but doesn't elaborate.

  Tick tock, tick tock. It's amazing how long ninety seconds can seem when you're not having fun. Either side of us, couples are exchanging information with Broadband speed, but James is clearly a second-class male.

  "So what do you do for a living?" I lean forward slightly, feigning interest.

  He shifts uncomfortably on the bench. "I'm a student."

  "Of anything in particular?" God he's hard work.

  "IT."

  Says it all really. I'm sitting opposite a man who spends most of his day conversing with a computer. With a keyboard in front of him, he's probably got a lot to say. Without it, he's to witty banter what Simon Cowell is to diplomatic relations. The siren sounds, no longer a hideously invasive noise but sweet music to my ears.

  "Nice to meet you." I smile as he shuffles along to his next unsuspecting victim.

  He's rapidly replaced by a dark-haired, brown-eyed man who, whilst not conventionally handsome, is quite attractive with a warm smile. His badge reads "Carl."

  There's the siren again. "Hi," he says and shakes my hand. "I'm Carl, I'm thirty-five, and I work in advertising. I like the basic things in life like long walks and Sunday lunches, and I hate pretentious foreign films. What about you?"

  Taken aback by this bonsai approach, I widen my eyes slightly and take a deep breath, preparing to rise to the challenge. "I'm Jess." I tap my badge. "I'm thirty-four, work in television, hate long walks, and love foreign films. But I'm with you on the Sunday lunches." He laughs and I find myself feeling quite attracted to him. My spirits rise slightly, heartened that maybe this speed-dating business isn't going to be such a damp squib after all.

  With a sudden bolt of courage I didn't know I could muster, I reach into my pocket and take out one of my calling cards. "So if you fancy sharing a roast one Sunday, here's my card." I hand it over and feel enco
uraged when he quickly accepts it, stuffing it into his shirt pocket.

  He places his elbows on the table and leans forward, a conspiratorial look on his face. "So . . ." His voice is low. "What's your favorite sexual position?"

  At first, I'm not sure if I have heard him correctly above the din. But his leering expression suggests I have.

  Both appalled and angry in equal measures, with one swift flick of my hand I reach into his shirt pocket and retrieve my card. "Forget it," I snap. "You're not my kind of guy."

  Seemingly unperturbed, he leans back and folds his arms, staring at me defiantly. "Look, love, sex is one of the most wonderful experiences money can buy. We're both here because we want a shag, so why not just be honest about it? All this coy Jane Austen bollocks is immensely tiresome."

  Before I could answer, the siren sounded and he was gone, clearly relieved to be moving on to passions new.

  Although indignant at his presumption that I was lurking in the same murky shallows as he, it set me thinking. Why had I come along tonight? And what message was I giving out by doing so?

  I could see the advantages. People with busy lives, maybe lacking small talk skills, could come here in the full knowledge that everyone in the room was amenable to being asked out. It's open season, and no one is in a relationship or married. Not that they're admitting anyway.

  But the downside is that, for me, it strips away the mystique of the sexual arena, of chatting someone up when you're unsure whether they're looking for a relationship. Here, you know that they are. The only mystery is whether they want it to be meaningful or meaningless.

  I crane my neck to peer at Madeleine, sitting about six places up from me. She has her ever-diminishing pile of cards laid out in front of her, an expectant look on her face as her next "date" shuffles into place.

  I turn back to find myself face-to-face with a leering Pee Wee Herman look-alike, a canary yellow sweater slung over his narrow shoulders. My heart sinks.

  The siren sounds and, as far as one can tell in ninety seconds, he turns out to be very pleasant and really rather funny. But I can't get past the sweater and the side parting, so my cards stay firmly in my pocket.

  Two hours later, wearied by disappointment and repetition, I let out a huge sigh of relief when the loudspeaker crackles into life again to announce the end of the speed-dating session.

  "If you'd like to make your way through to the celebrity room, the next part of the evening will commence," it boomed.

  I was by Madeleine's side in a nanosecond. "Celebrity room. What the bloody hell's that?" I'm not sure I can take any more ritual humiliation.

  "We all get given an envelope with a famous name in it, and we have to walk around searching for our other half. Great fun!" says Madeleine.

  "Mine's bound to say Snow White," I mutter. "I've already met every one of the seven bloody dwarves tonight, except Happy."

  Madeleine pulls a face that suggests she's going to ignore my negativity. "Look!" She opens her hand to reveal three cards. "I've handed out twenty-two cards so far. What about you?"

  "Three," I reply meekly. "And I'm not even convinced I want to hear from those again."

  True, I'd handed two out to men I was pretty halfhearted about, but the third I had passed over in undue haste to a devastatingly handsome man called Guy. He was a trainee doctor (mother would be pleased), keen sportsman, and seemingly all-round good catch. Consequently, by the time he reached me, his top pocket was bulging with the cards of available women, including, no doubt, my dear chum Madeleine.

  She links her arm through mine. "Come on, Billy No Dates, let's go see if the celebrity room yields fruit for you."

  A set of stairs in the corner snakes down to yet another spacious room, only slightly smaller than the last. As we and hundreds of others file in, we're each asked to take a folded piece of white paper from either of two wire baskets positioned each side of the door.

  "Only one each . . . only one each . . . only one each," a bored-looking woman drones repetitively as we shuffle past.

  A few steps into the room, Madeleine unfolds hers. "Scooby Doo," she reads aloud. "Which presumably means I'm looking for Shaggy."

  "How appropriate," I drawl, tentatively opening my piece of paper. "Jordan." I look baffled for a moment. "The supermodel?"

  "Yes," replies Madeleine. "Though I'm rather stumped as to who the other half is. God knows, it could be anyone."

  The irony of one of the most flat-chested women in the world picking out one of the most pneumatic is not lost on me, and I fully expect to be the butt of several unoriginal jokes for the rest of the evening.

  "Excuse me?" I approach a perma-smile woman sitting behind a desk just inside the door and show her my piece of paper. "Can you tell me who my other half is?"

  Furtively, as if guarding a state secret, she pulls out a drawer and starts running her finger down the hundreds of names printed on several sheets of paper. "Jordan, Jordan, Jordan . . ." she chants in a singsong voice. "Let's see . . . ah yes, Dwight Yorke! You're looking for Dwight Yorke."

  "Thanks." I smile halfheartedly at her and return to Madeleine's side. "Apparently, I'm looking for a bloke called Dwight Yorke," I repeat, with all the enthusiasm of someone entering the dentist's surgery for root canal work.

  "He's a football player in the States--halfback for the New York Giants," says Madeleine brightly. "Come on, let's start searching."

  I resist her attempt to drag me off, digging my heels into the floor. "Hang on, this could take hours. There are so many people."

  "Yes, but the idea is that you get to meet lots of others whilst asking them if they're your celebrity match or not. We met only about half the men here in that extreme speed-dating session, so this is the ideal chance to check out the rest."

  It takes me forty-five minutes and at least 150 more unsatisfactory encounters until I locate my Dwight Yorke, otherwise known as "Neil." With delicious irony, he's white, about five foot six inches tall, with ginger hair and the physique of a pipe cleaner.

  After a paltry five minutes of small talk for the sake of politeness, I use the age-old girly excuse of wanting the restroom, uttering those three words so often used for dismissal in the dating arena--"See you later"--meaning, of course, "I hope I never clap eyes on you again."

  In the murky half light, it takes me at least another ten minutes to find Madeleine amongst the throng. Not least because she is partially obscured by the man pressing her against a wall and snogging her face off.

  Tapping them both on the shoulder, I wait patiently whilst they extract their tongues from each other's mouth.

  The man, tall, blond, and rugged looking, turns round with an expression of expectancy. "Are you the Queen?" he says.

  "Sorry?"

  "I'm Prince Philip. Are you the Queen?"

  "No, I'm her friend," I say, pointing my finger at Madeleine, who is hastily smoothing down her hair after her passionate encounter. "I just wanted to let you know I'm leaving now."

  "Really?" She looks genuinely surprised. "Didn't you find Dwight Yorke?"

  "Yes, unfortunately I did. That's partly why I'm leaving."

  "Oh. I didn't find Shaggy, but Prince Philip and I are getting along very nicely, aren't we?" She pouts coquettishly at him and I notice she still has her hand tucked inside his jacket.

  "Yeah, well I'll call you tomorrow, OK?" I mumble, turning away from them.

  As I reach the door, I look back over my shoulder to see they have resumed normal service, with Madeleine barely visible behind her bulky conquest.

  A member of the Royal Family copping off with Scooby Doo. Just about sums the whole evening up really.

  Nine

  Am I tall? Yes. Dark? Quite. Handsome? You decide! My name is David and I'm looking for someone with whom to enjoy lazy days, long lunches, and fine wines. I'm pretty easygoing, so the main agenda is to just have fun and see how it goes.

  It's been raining for three days solid now, so I have arranged an indoor rend
ezvous, outside the Gap in the West One shopping center on Oxford Street. It would be so much easier to drag them to a local venue, but my paranoia is still heightened enough that I don't want them knowing where I live within a two-mile radius.

  I live just off Tooting common, but when they ask I simply say Lambeth, the most overpopulated borough of London.

  I reach the Gap just a couple of minutes before 1 p.m. and, as usual, I'm the first there. There's only one other person loitering around with that I'm-meeting-someone expression, but he's about 5' 6'' and squat, with stack heels and the worst comb-over since Donald Trump.

  This time, rather than waste precious Saturday hours on what may turn out to be yet another disastrous encounter, I have slotted it into my lunch hour before returning to the studio to finish off work on tomorrow's program. Not counting the torturous tube journey there and back, it is my very own version of speed dating.

  It's nudging five past one now and there's still no sign. The man opposite smiles tentatively at me and raises his eyes heavenward. He doesn't speak, but the shared viewpoint is clearly, "Bah, latecomers!"

  I decide to give it another five minutes, then bugger off back to work via a quick diversion to my favorite shop, Zara.

  A minute later, I can see from the corner of my eye that Mr. Squat is looking at me intently, clearly wondering whether to make the most of our mutual abandonment and move in on me. Bollocks, he's walking over.

  "Hi." He's standing right next to me, his chin virtually resting on my shoulder.

  "Hi." I smile briskly, clutching my handbag closer to me, about to make my excuses and leave.

  "Are you Jess?"

  His question momentarily winds me. Fuck, this is the so-called tall, dark stranger whose handsomeness is my call? Well, ring ring, it's a nerd alert.

  "Jess?" I repeat. I'm stalling for time, wondering whether to take him to task under the Trade Descriptions Act or to opt for the other plan slowly forming in my head.

  "Yes, I'm waiting for someone called Jess, but I haven't met her before so I'm not completely sure what she looks like." He smiles apologetically. "It's an Internet date."