I think my cat has slipped the hard laws of this mortal realm. Twice now, while I’ve been in the house alone, I’ve locked the house for the night with both cats inside, and then come down in the morning to find one of them staring at me balefully from outside. How. How is this possible?! Doors and windows shut and locked. There’s no cat flap. I have to conclude that one of three, equally terrible things must be happening:
I am sleepwalking, roaming my own house in my pants at 3am with the sole goal of unlocking the front door to eject one cat. This seem unlikely. Possible, granted. But unlikely.
Someone ELSE is roaming my house (in or not in my pants) at 3am and has unlocked the door to let the cat out. This is simply too terrible a thought to even look at head on. Did you not watch The Fall?
My cat Diesel (and it’s been him both times) has found a gap in the space time continuum and now knows all manner of things he will never be able to communicate with me.
All very strange.
But onto jollier mishaps, by which I do mean my new career in online dating. I wrote last time about the need to protect my privacy here, but balls to privacy (for one week only!). I’ve got some amusing things to show you. These specific horrors have come about because I’ve now joined a dating site where strangers can actually message you, regardless of whether you have matched with them or not.
So lets take a look at whether or not humanity is likely to survive if this is what we’re relying on for the propagation of the species...
First up, we have Tom.
It’s short. It’s to the point. But the answer is – no. No, Tom, I do not want to ‘have some fun’. So that doesn’t really leave us anywhere to go does it? Next!
James has taken a bold, ‘all or bust’ approach here. I’m not sure what kind of response he was expecting from me with this as his opener though:
He’s right, of course. I am, indeed, amazing. However, this becomes less genuine when we consider that he’s come to that conclusion from five grainy pictures of me and a list of my hobbies. It’s a bit more ‘insincere review of an ebay seller’ than genuine conversation opener. It also has the whiff of copy and paste about it. Imagine if he came and said this to me in a bar? I’d just nod, grimace, down my vodka and then stride back to the dancefloor without a backwards glance. So I do the same here. And delete him.
By way of contrast however, our next gentleman caller – Colin – is taking no chances:
Nothing like sending the same, blunt and pointless message FOUR TIMES to get a lady’s attention eh?! What’s that? You want to know ‘how I am’? Well I wasn’t going to tell you the first time but now you’ve sent the same identical message on the hour every hour I will of course relent and bonk you senseless! Is this what goes through a man’s mind? A war of attrition? Is the intention to exhaust me into dating him? Is he just glitching? Should someone hit him from the side, get the wheels turning again? Colin needs a factory reset.
A longer form approach from the next man. I should say at this point, all 78 of these messages arrived with absolutely no prompting or enticement from me. All I’d done was exist, online. His message is quite sweet. He at least writes in full sentences, which as we’ve seen, already sets him some way above his competition. He wants to buy me a drink. So far, so nice. But then – he’s also ‘confident the hour wouldn’t be wasted’. Well Danny, that’s a bit presumptuous no?
I dutifully completely ignore this request, which as we can see, then actually breaks the poor mans heart. Truly, I am a callous, internet bitch. Ever hopeful, he’s given me his number in case this rejection is down to some technical error. But I note with interest how he’s now signing off as Dan, not Danny. I have crushed his hopes and dreams and even his jaunty nickname with my cold, unfeeling silence. Sorry Dan. Onwards…
Next, Sammy:
N O P E.
Next we have...Umer. Now Umer does a nice line over the course of about twelve hours in how to escalate a situation from reasonably normal to possibly appearing on a register.
He hopes I’m having a nice evening! Lovely. He thinks I’m pretty! So far so good.
Losing me slightly an hour later with bad grammar and a bit of a reach with ‘your smile shine bright like the most beautiful stars in the sky’, but ok, ok. But then, he finally seals his fate later that evening after my enormous non-response to any of this with the threat of what I can only presume would be a close up of his erect penis:
No thank you Umer. No thank you. I have never hit block so fast.
So. In case all you happily coupled up readers were contemplating what might be on the other side of your vows, feast your eyes on these horrors and then consider how badly you really want to murder your partner for never shutting the kitchen drawer. Weigh up that delicate balance between spending the next forty years screaming into a pillow every time they ask ‘have we bought my parents a Christmas card?’ versus the indiscriminate sex-pesting you’ll be forced to endure to find their replacement. It’s all rather awful.
That said, I think there are still some gems to be found among them. More next time...
All of that good good
Well, isn’t this nice? I’ve found quite a lot of things pleasing recently, so here are some twinkling distractions from your own misery to lighten your mood.
First up, this good sign.
Next, who the fark knows what on earth is going on here, but it’s sufficiently bonkers to start your day off in all the right ways… Please enjoy, well, whatever this is.
I used to live in Canada, and was OBSESSED with how brilliant the gang of racoons were who used to congregate near the bins by the entrance to my building. All the Canadians I knew thought this was unhinged and that they were (probably, quite accurately) just filthy little trash pandas. But LOOK HOW CUTE THEY ARE ASLEEEP THOUGH!
Finally, I just wanted to share with you the funniest photo I have ever seen from my trip to Ibiza last year, which resurfaced in the group chat this week. For context, Carol was lying on the car park floor trying to take an arty shot of our outfits before our night out. There was a mad breeze. Carol could have just got up, but she stayed like this for several full minutes screaming ‘LOOK WHAT’S HAPPENED!!!’ while we all stood around CONVULSING crying with laughter. Please, enjoy Carol’s majestic arse:
Thank you and goodnight!
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