Date 164

"Give up education as a bad mistake."

Another date in London to continue my run and l'm at quite a loss to explain why I can't seem to meet anyone in Brighton.

This person was an incessant texter and most of her messages were surreal streams of consciousness, and at times I struggled to comprehend what she was on about. So, we spoke a lot by text before we actually met, and she's a teacher which made me a bit wary as I've got a really bad track record when it comes to dating women from that profession.

We met for drinks, and I think food as well, and it was fine and she was nice. She had a fairly strong Irish accent but a really, really deep voice which threw me initially as I wasn't expecting it at all. She also had a very strange, somewhat quirky dress sense.

I certainly had my doubts but she said she'd come to Brighton to see me as she was very appreciative that I'd met her in London, which was good of her.

In the days before the second date, I have to confess that I wasn't looking forward to it. I wasn't really nervous, but I just wasn't excited. However, it was a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon as we went for a roast, went for a long walk by the sea and had ice cream. There just wasn't any chemistry between us though and I was going to text her to tell her this afterwards but she actually got in before me and said as much on her way home. It was all very mature and amicable, which isn't so common these days.

Date 85

"Spineless swines, cemented minds."

Having had my move to Brighton fall through at the last minute I became bored and thought: I know, I'll go back on to Guardian Soulmates and make the most of London again until I find another house to move to.

Having exchanged a few messages, she seemed pretty cool so I suggested drinks. She lives sort of Islington way and as I'm a gent I asked if she fancied meeting up in Angel. For her that's a few stops on the tube and for me it takes about an hour and 15 minutes door to door. She actually chose the pub and what a great choice it was, although I got lost and had to ask about 4 people along the way how to get there. Miraculously, I was only 5 minutes late.

I  really fancied her and we seemed to have a lot to talk about, including our geek like obsession with Jaws and sharks in general. There was a fancy dress party going on at the same time so I got to high five SuperTed on his way back from the toilets as no-one had guessed who he was apart from me. We had 3 pints each, which I think was good for a school night then she said she had to go, as, being a Primary school teacher, she had to get home at a reasonable hour for class the next day.

I had a good feeling from the night and texted her the next day to see if she wanted to go out again. She never replied, which there really is no excuse for. I just hope that the children she teaches have better manners than her. And I'll be crossing my fingers that the ladies of Brighton don't possess such ignorance...if I ever get there.

Date 58

"I wanna go home, I don't wanna stay."

Perhaps the most well known free dating website is plentyoffish.com, although plentyofchavs.com would be a more apt title.

I decided to create a profile for it, but it soon became very obvious that a date was going to be hard to come by. It reminded me a bit of match.com, although not as cultured or high brow, and a good idea for a search filter would be to have the ability to eliminate anyone who was illiterate, could only write in text speak and solely watched Sex and the City and Disney films.

As it turned out, the few lost souls that I did send messages to either didn't reply or deleted them without reading.

Rather unexpectedly, someone actually sent me a message and we e-mailed for a while then decided to meet for a drink. We hooked up the night after I'd had my first rendezvous with date 57, so I was a bit hungover still. She was a nice enough person, but just didn't really have anything to say, and so I probably over-compensated for the awkward silences by waffling on. This probably led her to believe that I was an ego-maniac, who loved the sound of my own voice, but I didn't really know what else to do as she was just staring at me and saying very little, whilst stealing my cigarettes. We still had 3 or 4 drinks but in the end I called it a night, so maybe her being 8 years younger than me was too big an age gap as she was very dismissive of my music and film tastes and quite patronising in general, which irked me a bit. However, she did amuse me with her middle class Kent accent consistently lapsing into a Lily Allen/Kate Nash-like mockney dialect.

This was my final date of 2010 and I, not long after, deleted my profile.