The parking near the bar was £4.50 for 90 minutes – he rang me to tell me this as I was waiting for him at the arranged bar.

The ‘expensive’ parking was relatively normal for the town centre I thought.

Eli (‘e probably did :-D), originally from Ghana, was actually very nice and knew his meat- a subject on which we talked at length.

Then: “How did the babysitting go last night?”he asked,

Er- that wasn’t me….awkward!

We drank a few drinks and I tried to fancy him, but even the cocktail spectacles didn’t help and I ended the evening longing for my Nigerian (who is much prettier).

PS, the grimacing has now stopped when he is using his tongue on my nether regions – success!

Back to Mr Ghanaian: “I really like you but more as friends”, I What’s Apped him.

He replied: “Likewise here too, friends is what I want too.”

Me: “OK, cool, but I mean friends without ‘those’ benefits (hell, look, I had no interest in ever seeing him again!).”

Him: “Lol (oh no….), you up for another drink – as friends without benefits lol (aaaargh!)?  That chuckled me lol (again, not kidding).”

Me: “I think it’s best we leave it for now.”

Like he wanted to be just mates!

I had something in my box – something too short – 5ft 9.

I’m 5ft 8 and love my heels.

But he was stocky, wrote intelligently and was, well, average-looking.

I was just about to reply when, three quarters of the way down his profile, I saw it.

Amid his loooong list of specifications for a date-worthy woman, he had listed: “average or smaller than average feet.”

WTF??!! Did he have a preferred areola diameter as well?!

And they wonder why they don’t get replies!Good job I’ve got the Nigerian old flame to keep the wheels oiled, shall we say.

Mr Nigerian announced over dinner that he did not eat ‘bark’, a rather unnecessary assertion, I thought – then it transpired he meant the skin on his baked potato. Rahahaha!

After dinner, he disrobed to reveal bright red jockey shorts with the word WEED emblazoned in big, black letters across the waistband – was this a warning, I wondered – was he one of those adult babies? Did I need to change his nappy?

Driven back online, I happened across pictures of a motorcycle enthusiast.

The lead profile photo was of a twenty something, naked, tattooed man lying down, a motorbike abed with him.

The second, third and fourth photos were of various motorbikes and the fifth was of someone’s grandad with his daughter – go figure….

They came together, so to speak.

On the Friday I arranged a date on the dating site with Daithi.

Yes- a datey with Daithi (actually pronounced Dohi).

And next morning at 00.53am Milli Vanilli What’s Apped me.

The photo was of an attractive black man, a little girl playing with his dreads.

It looked like a man I’d met on the same dating site years ago but never actually ‘met’.

“Hello gorgeous, how are you?” the message read.

“It’s Mario love.”

Ah, Rio, a Nigerian I’d slept with a few times 5 years ago.

So, against all my better judgement, I dated ‘Datey’, as I prefer to call him, got very drunk and then booty called my Nigerian.

Datey had been lovely, the perfect Dublin gentleman, but I couldn’t have fancied him in a million years and he said the Living Room bar was ‘a bit well-to-do’ – yep, that’s why I liked it…

So the drunken dial happened, he came to pick me up and we went back to his (my request) and, well, settled back into the old (short-lived) routine.

I liked the new dreads, his tight body and his foreignness and now find myself somewhat adDICKted.

Oh dear, mum must NEVER know. 1.He’s Nigerian, ie, from a very different culture, 2.He lives on the set of ‘Shameless’ in Middleton and is, of course, as poor as a churchmouse.

3. He has 3 kids by another white woman.

I will end this in a month. But his parents were both murdered in Nigeria when he was 19 and he hasn’t seen his sisters for ten years…. I will end this in one month.

Meanwhile, back to the dating site to look for a sensible long-term partner with English as a first language.

It’s Sunday night. I’m watching X Factor while scrolling through my inbox on a dating site.

Here’s what pops up:   From: Fingers0001: “Wow! Beautiful eyes,

I ignored the slightly cringy feeling his text: ‘just pottering around’, gave me, and proceeded – into the sales presentation.

He’d visited Botswana, Mozambique and a host of other ‘Effrican’ places with Rob and Kale – you know, Rob and Kale – er, no….

Who were this bloody Rob’n’ Kale, or was it a strangely elaborate pet name for his penis??

He was tall, dark and attractive, which I rewarded by posing pertinent questions about his potterings around the globe.

I couldn’t help but find it strange though that a person as talkative as myself had barely managed to sputter out a couple of sentences during the whole three hour ish date.

But, I reasoned (as women are wont to do), it was obviously just his way of selling himself as a potential partner- either that or he was a sociopath, but having found him on a free dating site, I was sure it wasn’t that….

Anyway, I forgave him the PR stunt. What I was less inclined to forgive was the  great hesitation to put his hand in his pocket.

We went up to the bar. Now, here’s the thing – it’s always nice for the man to buy the first drink, even if you end up buying the same number of drinks.

But he paused, then said he may not have enough cash on him, revealing a wallet containing a Barclaycard as he did so.

“Use your card”, I said, incredulous he had fallen at the first, and simplest, of hurdles.

“Oh yeah, I could use my card couldn’t I?”

He hesitated again.

“I’ll get them”, I said, the bartender’s waiting  becoming embarrassing now.

But he finally took the plunge.

Strangely, there was no hesitation at all when I offered to get the next drink – beer for him, orange juice for myself- so as to space the alcohol out a bit.

My OJ finished, him still drinking his pint, it began again.

“I feel bad, you without a drink”, he said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind a small white wine”, I ventured.

He blanched.

“Oh,  are you sure you’ll be okay?” he faltered.

“Yes, of course!” I said firmly.

FFS!

Either this bedroom furniture company of his was in deep shit or he was incorrigibly mean – either way, not good.

I’d been there (more than once) and bought the T-shirt (myself).

He gave me a lift almost to home – I know, foolish, but at least I didn’t let him see exactly where I lived.

We said goodbye, me muttering something about us having each other’s numbers, and around 10 minutes after I’d walked through my flat door, he texted : “Thanks for a lovely night.”

I replied (lied) that I’d had a lovely night too – well, he was fit and next time might be better…and readers, we never saw each other or communicated again.

I really wanted to know why he hadn’t asked me for a second date – was it my expensive tastes in orange juice and small, white wines?

I remained staunchly passive aggressive though and didn’t ask.

Onwards and downwards!

Well, it was a bit more like kiss diarrhoea – you know, the four kisses when they’ve never met you thing.

‘Limited edition romantic’, his profile read. Surely he was just being facetious, but I rapidly realised he wouldn’t even be able to spell that, let alone know what it meant.

He also listed ‘fine dinning’ as one of his interests and had the increasingly common affliction of lol-orhoea.

But he was fit – quite, and half Maltese- he did look it and everyone who knows me knows I love my Mediterranean men.

So he started off telling me I was ‘hermosa’. Uh, that was Spanish. Ah, but that was because he was in his mum and dad’s villa in Spain, where he was just about to cook some tapas. He was a good cook, he said (I tried again to avert my eyes from his love of ‘fine dinning’). Mm, well that was a big tick, and it seemed we shared a love of Spain and of food.

After exchanging a few messages, we agreed to meet for a drink.

He was ‘excited’ about it, he said, a reaction which rang alarm bells, which I chose to ignore of course.

To cut a long story short, we What’s Apped each other to the point of blindness and then, then came the dick video – I should’ve seen it coming – ah, he’d taken care of that too….

Well readers, it was there, so I viewed it, and frankly, it was disappointing.

And to make matters worse, he got annoyed when two days passed with no equivalent fannycam.

Back on the dating site on the Sunday after Wanking Wednesday, a, mercifully dick free, message popped up :

“Sorry, you’re not horny enough for me.”

Ha!

I messaged him back: “You know, for a tall man (he said he was 6ft 4 which probably meant about 5 ft 10), your dick’s  not very big, is it?

“I mean it’s not tiny, but smaller than I imagined.”

I omitted to mention I preferred a circumcised one, I didn’t think that was fair.

I finished off: “So, you appear unable to have any kind of conversation so I’ll leave you to exercise your modest penis.”

He might not have been circumcised, but I think I’d cut his dick down to size…..

As first date conversations go, I think I can safely say I never expected to be sipping my Sauvignon Blanc to tales of a well-built Kenyan man (not the man sitting opposite me) ejaculating all over my date’s hand when he pressed on his hernia  to ‘push it back in’.

His ‘cock’ was ‘huge’, apparently, and his aim ‘impressive’, so much so that Doctor Dick, as I had now silently christened my freelance GP date, had to rinse his entire arm before seeing to his next patient – the lady with scabies – in her mouth….

“I mean, why would you suck someone off who had scabies?”

I swallowed (my Sauvignon Blanc). “Er, I don’t know, why would you…”

Fresh on the dating market again at 40 after a four year marriage and, let’s say, several experiences before that, I thought nothing could surprise me. How wrong I was.

“Everyone thinks I’m really conservative but I’m not, it’s just my job – I have to be”, he said, for the second time that evening, while glancing nervously at my (only second) glass of white wine.

Well, first of all, I would hardly refer to his conversation as ‘conservative’ – the ‘cock’ count alone saw to that, although there was more, in the form of lurid tales of gay men who wore their love on their sleeves – literally, when visiting Dr Dick in his London days after a night of love on the common.

And secondly, yes, I was ‘sure’ I’d be okay with a second glass – I wasn’t driving.

“What do you mean, they think you’re conservative?” I ventured.

“Well, that I don’t get drunk and stuff”, he said, looking pointedly at my glass again.

FFS! He’d had a gin and tonic himself and he WAS driving!

ACH! I didn’t fancy him at all anyway – he was too short for me and that mustard sweater made his Irish complexion look wan.

I also had the distinct impression throughout our date that he suspected me of having a dirty fanny…

“Oh, I used to do gynaecology”, he said.

“You’d see some women, honestly….., dressed all nice like you but down below, ugh!”

Davide, a cancer (either into star signs or unflinchingly honest) from Liverpool was ‘a creative, manly man ‘ looking for a ‘very feminine’ woman, according to his ‘About Me’.

“I prefer a loving, creative, feminine, tactile woman. I’m very manly and loving. Let us get together!”

Hmm, otherwise read as ‘Highly toxic foreign bachelor seeks shag from woman who won’t call the police when he gets ‘creative’ between the sheets/down an alleyway’.

I think not….

Meathead – not his moniker but should be, from a meathead kind of place, would like to meat me…- ‘can be loving, but don’t take no shit from no-one’.

Lovely. Next!

Ah! A plastic surgeon has just messaged me, prompting visions of myself naked, covered in red marker pen – noooo!

Ah well, there was always Pete – “As long as I’ve got a hole in my arse I won’t reply to weird messages from lunatics!”

Maybe I’m weird, but I don’t really want to think about his arsehole before we’ve even met!

But little did I know I would hit 40 and things would get even more medical…..

I scrutinized his photo- no hair but nice right bicep (or was that ominous?) and it looked like there was a chance words instead of dribble might come out when he opened his mouth.

Ach, this was like shopping when you needed a killer dress for a party and buying one you’ve looked at, tried on and rejected before, because it’s better than going home empty-handed, right?

But no, I separated finger from keyboard – my friend was right- I should be raising my standards when internet dating, not lowering them.

Vikram from Devon was looking for a ‘leady’ – Kim Jong-Un in stilettos anyone?

And I’d lost count of the number of men looking for a nice ‘women’.

‘What makes me unique is my style’, wrote Ben, from London, in his four-line profile.

Yes, and what doesn’t is your depressing as hell inability to say anything remotely interesting!

Steve was a ‘directer’ – well, he could be a dyslexic director, one that also posed in front of his own top of the range black Jaguar car, with a car showroom lurking in the background.

He obviously hadn’t, or couldn’t, read the dealbreaker I’d recently added to my profile: ‘I like men who make some attempt to spell basic words correctly and to punctuate their sentences. If you don’t know the difference between ‘there’ and ‘their’, ‘to’ and ‘too’, ‘ your’ and ‘you’re’ and don’t use full stops, please direct your stream of consciousness at someone else!

Harsh? Maybe, but what’s the point of hiding what I can’t stand?

I’m sick of these inane conversations that go on forever with not even a mention of a meeting, not that I’d want to meet the vast majority of them.

How is it that in the UK we think we’re so equal, so emancipated, as women, when we persist in giving all these losers-for-life a chance?

In Saudi Arabia, which is, safe to say, an unemancipated country, if a man starts to flirt with you and doesn’t propose within three months, he’s toast!

And women there don’t have to sleep with men on the second date to keep their attention either (although the very real fear of having your head lopped off could be a more likely reason that doesn’t go on).

But seriously, whose strategy is better here?

Talk to men at the gym (or was that the GUM – the clinic?)! That’s what all the advice said. Hands up everyone who met their man there? Thought not.

Another source of frustration for the more sophisticated (ie, older) daters among us is the proliferation of twenty something bloggers bemoaning the fact that only three dates out of four were any good as date number four only took them to their second favourite wine bar…

Dating in your thirties is the decade dating doomed!

It’s OK in your forties as people are getting divorced then.

In your thirties everyone has young kids, which makes even the unhappiest of couples stick it out, at least for a while.

And then there’s you, in your make-up like a hussy while your coupled-up friends deal with real problems, like nappy rash and  locating muslin squares for babies to puke on.

Time to check my box, where I find a guy with a leer rubbing his chin: “Pleased to watch your profile, you are simply nice!”

He then goes on to say he’s ‘worse than millions but better than billions’….

Is that really what it’s come to? I think not. Viva Bridget Jones!

“But you must meet loads of people singing in your Arabic band.” Rob, 35, managing director from Wilmslow wasn’t fanciable at all but at least he was tall.

Well, yes, I did meet men when singing and if my type was enormous Saudi Arabian truck drivers who ripped the heads of elegant bouquets, followed me round all night booming: ‘Just ONE kiss, and cornered me informing me: “I’ve got my eyes on you!”, I was sorted.

Then: “I used to be a HEROIN ADDICT!” Rob announced. WTF??!!

“Yes, my best friend’s a PROSTITUTE and she’s a really nice PERSON!” he screeched. Note to self: my local is not the best place to meet internet dates….

“Er, would you like another drink?” I offered, needing a breather.

“Yeah, arrrghh!Round of applause, round of applause!”The pint glass, along with my reputation, had shattered into a thousand pieces.

“Haha, excellent! Daaaave!” He beckoned to the nervous looking barman. “Pint of MILK please!”

Milk??? He’d be asking me for cuddles next and telling me he had ‘a poorly tummy’.

“Yeah, my friends all warned me about dating a singer!”he laughed.

Er, on what planet was ‘singer’ worse than prostitute or heroin addict?! Oh yes, Planet Section Me!

I began singing and he continued to roar as though at a lap dancing bar throughout my entire performance.

“I’m a prospective suitor of Danielle!” he roared, just as the music stopped.

Great- another bar I could no longer visit!

And he’d seemed so normal in his messages, and on the phone too. Had there ever been a greater madman magnet than me?!

Back to square one!

Oh, Paul from Barnsley had pubic hair – that was a relief, and Borat’s brother reassured me: “I really do like rite something good for lady. I interested and like it.”

I scrolled down a further 500 photos of lobotomised men – note, taking a selfie does not result in a high IQ face

“Hi, listen, I’m really sorry, I won’t be able to make it tomorrow, I told Matt, from Stockport. “I’ll be washing my hair in cow’s urine, Goodnight! “