Love in a (tick) box

Posted by Lucy Robinson at 09:22 on 11 Dec 2009

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Well now. I am at a loss. After all of the heartfelt and touching replies to my last blog it feels rather disrespectful to just start rabbiting on about mentals that I've met from the internet. Equally, though, I don't want to insult you by coming over all self-helpy and trying to fix the heartbroken amongst you. Because, after all, what do I know? I am just a bumpkin from the West Country with holes in her socks and a cold part of my bed where once was a man.

So all I will say is thank you very much your thoughts. And, if you're going through it now, I look forward to the day when you wake up and remember once more that you're awesome. Because, oh man, that day rules!

But anyway, I suppose I should revert to form; i.e. garrulous rubbish.

So. I have been reading a lot recently about Leonardo da Vinci. And, good heavens, he is the most amazing bloke ever to walk the planet! It's safe to say that I have a massive crush on him. I have wondered a couple of times what it would be like if we went on a date, but concluded that it would be quite crap what with him speaking only 15th century Italian and being gay.

There was nothing that dude couldn't do. Army tanks and underwater breathing contraptions hundreds of years before anyone else thought of them? A piece o' cake, I tell you! Astonishing anatomical discoveries still central to medicine in the 21st century? Pah. Easy. Oh, and there's the small matter of painting the world's most exquisite and priceless paintings. I'll say it again; this guy was unbelievable. If he was alive now he'd be filling stadiums all over the world and pocketing billions.

Anyway, this Leonardo frenzy has been making me think (somewhat improbably) about Paula Yates. Yates once announced that only a man who could fill a stadium was good enough for her. And when I was a wee young Lucy Robinson, I thought this was the best thing I'd ever heard. I would get me one of those uber-men too! For a long time I used to go around quoting her, bragging about how I would never settle for anything less than a stadium-filler myself.

In a way, that still stands. I know I'll never settle for a non-perfect man. I'd rather just have dogs. But stadium fillers?! What utter guff! Who the hell did I think I was? Essentially, I'm coming to realise, in my crusty old age, that my idea of perfect is a lot more flexible than it was when I was younger. I've given up hankering after Leonardo-style stadium-fillers of transcendent intelligence, exquisite beauty and jaw-dropping talent. They don't exist. And if they do, they 1) do not move in my circles and 2) have their heads up their arses anyway. These days I'm far more likely to have the hots for a man with a great big belly or for an cringing geek who can make me laugh.

I think I've finally abandoned the tick-box approach to love that has governed my man-hunting activities over the years. And, well, phew. Thank God for that.

What's more, this seems to be a popular trend. More and more of my friends are ending up with the most unlikely of men. And by this I do not mean - by any stretch of the imagination - that they're 'making do.' Au contraire. It's like they've had their eyes opened; they've stopped arsing around waiting for something conventionally brilliant to come along and have embraced something experimental. With cracking results.

Take Marge. This time two years ago she was madly in love with Jim, who was a successful, good-looking banker with a pimpin' flat in the city, a fine wine habit and an income sufficient to fill her Christmas stocking with Chanel jewellery. She's by no means high-maintenance - the two of us used to live in what looked like a crack den at university and bought our clothes from market stalls - but he was in many ways the thing she'd always been looking for. Every one of her tick-boxes was ticked and she was in heaven.

Then they split up and he disappeared off out of her life. The day it all ended she asked me how she was ever going to find another man who was so ‘right.'
 
Well, she has now found someone, and is he ‘right' according to her tick list? Pish and twaddle is he! Rather improbably, she has fallen madly in love with a glam rock-loving vegetarian from the West Country. He is tattood up to the max and his hairstyle is conspicuously non-banker. He doesn't have a high-powered job and he doesn't go skiing three times a year. And guess what? She's in the easiest, loveliest relationship of her life. It gets better every day.

This guy is a legend. Is he any less suitable because he's not a high-earning banker with shirts from Thomas Pink? Hell no. He's much better. He's a real individual and he's made young Marge very happy indeed. (Brilliantly, he is taking us to a heavy metal tribute to the Bee Gees next week.)

I don't know where any of this musing leaves me though. We've established that I'm happy to wave goodbye to the tick-list approach to dating that I operated in my teens and 20s. But that still leaves me with... er... no choices. It's not like this decision is opening up the possibility of thousands of unconventional men who've been banging on my door waiting for me to change my mind for years. Far from it! I have no-one! Even the bloody internet's gone silent!

Hopes of a Christmas snog are fading fast.

Elsewhere in my life, I have just met Terry Wogan who is the most awesome man in the world and I have welcomed a Christmas Tree called Colin to my flat. He is an 8' Norway Spruce of exceptional charm and aesthetic appeal. Also I have discovered that low-key gigs are the best place to eye up fitties. Have a nice weekend, friends.

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