Sunday 23 July 2017

Guest article: 'Country Loving' - it's not rocket science


Oh God, this is awkward. Possibly...

I’ve just become aware of a feature in a magazine called ‘Country Living’ in which a woman is documenting her search for love among the hay bales and slurry of Somerset – or Wiltshire. Can’t be sure. Names may have been changed to protect the identities of persons living – and counties.

Like me, she’s lost a spouse, so of course, I am sympathetic, but the poor creature just doesn’t seem to be able to read the messages she’s getting from this chap she’s pursuing, and it’s been reminding me of a situation I’ve found myself jousting with recently.

It was my daughter who first alerted me to this column. She’d started reading it while she waited at our local GP surgery.

Bloke in this seems a lot like you, Dad” she had said. So much so, in fact, that she’d asked the Receptionist if she could take the mag home to show me.

As I reluctantly read through the August episode of riotous romantic antics, I began to wonder if the bloke in fact WAS me.

Just like him, I am a widower. Just like him, I am half Spanish, and just like him, I do speak to my animals in my father’s language. They seem to respond well to it. Animal communication is all about meaning after all, rather than words. 
 
Ok, this isn't me, but I definitely look like him...

Also, just like him, and at the insistence of my daughter, I have dipped my toes into the internet dating pool, but didn’t really like the sensation of eager little fish nibbling at my flesh. Just like him, one in particular has ended up becoming something of an irritation.

As I read on, I became extremely uncomfortable remembering how we had finally met up – in a bookshop. How I had been immediately horrified to find that the woman with whom I had been corresponding had turned out to be a neighbour of mine, how I had continued with the ‘date’ so as not to be rude, and how I had even followed-up with an invitation to a show – because I had felt to leave it there would not have been sporting. After all our to-ing and fro-ing on messenger, just to dump her due to a lack of chemistry seemed churlish, and I figured that as she was a neighbour, I might at least make a friend.

She didn’t answer. Not for a while, anyway. I remember I was rather relieved, but when she eventually told me that a plague of mice or termites, or locusts (whatever it was) in her post box had eaten my note, I think I felt about the same as my Housemaster must have done when I explained my shoddy Physics prep by blaming my dog, claiming he’d ingested my notes when I was at home for Easter one year: unconvinced.

The only thing I was convinced about was that I didn’t want to get it on with this lady. She was nice enough in a sort of desperate post-menopausal hobby farmer’s wife way, but the rather affected dippy ‘scatterbrain’ persona she adopted to mask the smell of desperation came across rather like the pervasive pong of one of those air-fresheners colleagues use in the office lav.

I went online to read more of these ‘stories’. Dating back some months, I started recognising ‘scenes’ in which I had found myself with my neighbour. The most recent documented a situation at a local wedding where this ‘Imogen’ had got plastered, and done a Theresa May: running girlishly through some poor sod’s crops in the moonlight, ending up in a waterlogged ditch. In mounting horror, I remembered how my neighbour had done something similar. I had watched in some irritation as she and a group of younger people had gone crashing through a field of young maize. She couldn't keep up with them and inevitably came a cropper in a ditch. Fighting the urge to leave her there and simply call the farmer so he could utilise his digger and give her the telling off she deserved, I had pulled her out. I helped her back to her gate, then ran off as quickly as I could before she could try to drunk kiss me. In the story, 'Matthew' had helped ‘Imogen’ back to the host's house, and she had taken this as him caring about her.

In fact, reading back through the series, it seemed that every attempt this chap ‘Matthew Antiza’ had made to get ‘Imogen’ off his back, even the most basic courtesies he had shown towards her, had been interpreted as him wrestling with his true (romantic) feelings towards her.

I found myself wondering if every time I had brushed off my neighbour, she had been reading this as me burning with a passion for her I simply did not recognise as such...Yet. I also found myself wondering if she wrote a secret column for a ‘country’ lifestyle magazine…

Of course, I can’t prove anything, but just to be helpful, I have a few words of advice for any other ‘bewildered countrywomen’ who are labouring under similar delusions: ladies, men don’t do subtlety very well. If we are interested, you won’t be able to mistake it. We will call you, text you, ask you out. If we want you, we want to see you. You don’t have to make excuses to ‘bump’ into us at the Garden Centre or the vet’s office. We’ll be bumping into you first.

And ‘Imogen’, leave him alone. He’s not interested.

Sincerely,

Antonio Banderas (not my real name)