My favourite hobby is matchmaking. It's a lot easier to do it in the movies than in real life because in real life, people don't do what I tell them to do.
- Susanne Bier
Do you know what I think must be a nice job?
Matchmaker. I don’t mean being a web
developer who creates apps for romance on the basis of whether you swipe left
or right on your phone, nor the kind in John B. Keane’s “Sive”, where a young
girl is sold to some old farmer for extremely nefarious purposes. I mean the marriage bureau type of
matchmaking. The kind that doesn’t exist
anymore. Where you sit in an office, and
someone comes in to see you, and says they’d like to meet somebody, and you ask
them a list of nosey questions, and make up a file that you can read through
later and judge at your leisure. Then
you take the file of another complete stranger, and with nothing to assist you except a selection of their likes and dislikes and hobbies and food preferences, you try to
guess whether the two strangers should marry each other.
It goes without saying that the reason I think this would be
a nice job is that I am a nosey parker who is fascinated with people and their
lives.
The ideal scenario is that you introduce two people to each other
and before you know where you are you’re wearing a big hat and telling all the
other wedding guests that it’s all thanks to you, and you end up being
godmother to endless first-born children.
The thing about a long-term relationship like ours is that
dates become very predictable, if dates are still a thing at all. So I must live vicariously through others,
and this job would help. A lot of my
friends are settled down now. Nobody
ever tells me about bad dates anymore, which I miss.
I think that there is something to be said for going back to
the days of proper dating agencies. I’m
told that if you make a date with someone on Tinder or similar apps, that you don’t
get to hear the potential date’s voice before you find yourself at a table for
two. Imagine the heartbreak,
if you saw a lovely ridey man, and arranged to meet him, but when you got there
he sounded like Donald Duck. Wouldn’t
that be awful? Nobody wants Donald Duck
talking dirty to them. That wouldn’t
happen through this agency I have in mind.
I’d have met and interrogated the man and could warn all potential
dates. If I like the potential
dates. If they were horrible, I’m
probably childish enough to set them up with Donald Duck man just for my own
amusement. So this job would give me
power as well. An unexpected bonus.
Imagine what a bad day at the office would be like at a
marriage bureau. I see myself putting on
the kettle for a coffee when someone arrives to complain about the match I made
for them. The client would be invited to
take a seat, and would be provided with coffee, and possibly cake, if the
business is doing well.
The misfortunate client would then regale me with the tale
of their bad match or hideous date. Maybe
she hates his mother, or he kicked her puppy, or she likes Black Sabbath and he
likes Daniel O’Donnell. (In my fantasy
marriage bureau, nobody ever takes hard drugs or assaults their partner). I would look sorrowful and drink my coffee
while I am endlessly entertained.
I can’t help comparing how interesting a bad day at this
office would be, with a bad day in the office where I am currently employed. I suppose it could be awkward if someone was
complaining about their date being “disappointing”, if you know what I mean.
(You know what I mean. Don’t act
innocent). But I’d get over it.
You’ll note I say that I think it would be a nice job to
have. In theory, that is. In reality, I’m afraid it’s not the job for
me. There is absolutely no evidence that
I would be remotely good at this job. In
fact, all evidence is to the contrary. I
recently decided that two people I know would be an excellent match. I based this assumption entirely on the fact
that they’re both single, and they only live a short distance apart. So I
thought it would be handy for them. Of
course, I took into consideration the fact that they’re both lovely
people. What could be simpler? Two lovely
people, no big treks to every date.
In my defence I haven’t been on a first date in almost twenty-five
years. I had utterly failed to take into account the fact that people expect a
bit of chemistry in their romances.
These people, whose lives I decided to meddle in without invitation, know
each other. I’ve seen them both, in the
same place, at the same time. Not once
have I noticed their eyes meet or one catch their breath at the sight of the
other. There isn’t a sign of sexual
tension, not a hint of a spark between them. But I completely ignored that.
I informed my dear friend, the female of the proposed
couple, of my decision about her future.
That I had the perfect man for her.
That everlasting happiness will now doubtless be hers, because I’d found
her a nice peaceful man, who only lives around the corner.
She told me to feck off for myself. She admits that the man is perfectly pleasant
and lovely, but pointed out that so is Santa Claus, and she doesn’t fancy him
either. She informed me that she’d
rather travel for half the day to a date that gives her butterflies than pop
around the corner for a date that gives her the snores. So that was a bad start
to my potential new career.
Another problem that would probably arise very quickly is
that I’m not a very patient sort of person.
If anybody reported back to me that their date did anything
unreasonable, like for instance taking out a calculator when the bill came, I’d
probably start roaring at them to delete the person from their contact list
immediately. I have no patience for
nonsense. Another effect of long term
monogamy. It took donkey’s years for His
Nibs and I to get to a stage where we can finally live, generally speaking, in
peace and harmony. I can’t go back to a
world where one person is doing things that I’m not okay with. I’ve spent half my life trying to talk His
Nibs out of that sort of behaviour. And
the other half trying to talk myself into not going completely mental when he
takes no notice. I don’t think I’d be great at counselling
people to work out their problems. It’s possible that one
person’s “I think we should talk about this” is my “Don’t ever try to contact
me again”. So probably not the best
person to guide people to matrimony.
And of course we have to consider that I’m completely out of
touch with the dating world, and that I’d be hopeless if I was sent out into
it. In fact, if I’m honest I wasn’t very
good when I was out there, when my finger should have been on the pulse of pairing
up and falling in and out of love at the drop of a hat. I was young and full of
fun, and still absolutely useless.
Flirting was a minefield. I
always either had no idea that I was being flirted with, or insisted on
continuing to flirt with men who had made it painfully and embarrassingly
obvious that they wanted me to stop. Possibly
worst of all, I never had the ability to tell men that I wanted them to stop
flirting with me. I had a tendency to
over formalise the situation, and was more likely to say “Please cease and
desist immediately” than “I don’t want to ruin our friendship” or even “feck
off for yourself”. A right eejit, in
other words.
His Nibs thinks I’d be a great matchmaker. He thinks I’m a great judge of character. It's possible that he assumes this on the basis that I like him
very much. I tried telling him that he’s
wrong, I’d be hopeless. I tried
explaining what happened with the two friends of mine that I mentioned earlier,
and that I might be too lazy to be a decent matchmaker.
But he has another idea.
He thinks there must be other people like us. People who would be happy to meet up with
strangers for dates, or a takeaway, without having to save up for weeks for the
taxi fare, or go and get a curly blow-dry every time the phone rings. His
Nibs doesn’t accept that we’re as odd as I think we must be. He is confident that there’s other people
like us. People who like to enjoy
themselves but can’t be bothered their barneys making a big effort. Lazy people, in other words. A dating agency for the chronically lazy. He thinks this might be my market.
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