Try not to ruin everything by being you . .

I thought I would do a follow-up post to my previous critique of internet dating. I used one of my favourite quotes from As Good as it Gets as the title for that post. You can read my thoughts on e-romance here. The title of this post is also from the same film.

My last blog was about Rochester. You may recall Rochester was the subject of my primary New Year's resolution: the one where I vowed never to utter or write the sounderal's name again. His name was to be to the blogger.com community what the name Macbeth is to tight-wearing thespians: never to be spoken out-loud. (Maybe I should start referring to Rochester euphemistically as 'The Scottish Cunt'?) Well, I have obviously failed the Rochester resolution already, he is popping up all over my blog at the moment. There hasn't been so much blatant name-dropping since Paul Burrell last appeared on This Morning, ('I worked for The Princess you know, but no, I don't like to talk about it.')

Here's the thing. In my last blog I wrote of how Rochester just seemed to 'get me', and that I never had to edit out the slightly more kooky and eccentric bits of myself. We just seemed to fit: like Morecambe and Wise . . .Bogey and Bacall . . .Renee and Renata. Well, I forced myself to reply to 3 internet dating rogues, hoping for a similar connection. I selected ones who showed some basic literacy skills and who did not have a juvenile, pseudo-sexual user-name (hornydevil69 and ass.man were avoided like the plague). I also chose ones who did not look like Fred West's younger, less-personable brother. In my replies I tried to be as frothy and charming as I know how to be. I don't think I said anything too offensive or morbid. But that is the last I heard from all 3 of them! It does appear, despite the coves' claims that I was the most ravishing creature since Aphrodite, that the minute I actually spoke, I ruined everything by being me!!!

I do recall, in my first reply to Rochester's virtual-romancing, I made some highly inappropriate jokes about Anne Frank. This was because he'd mentioned he'd been pottering around in his attic. He then went on to try to win me over with the platitude 'school teachers really do the most important job in the world'. Hardly original, many have tried that saccharin bullshit before - but Rochester went on to add 'obviously, that is just secondary school teachers though.' I went on to say he looked like Ted Hughes - which led to many offensive 'head in gas cooker' remarks on both sides. I do miss such banter, you know. In my recent dating replies I did manage to steer clear of suicide and the holocaust as subject matter (I wanted to keep those up my sleeve as arousing, first date small-talk topics)!

Ah well. We shall see how things develop with the whole internet dating thing.

Now, I must welcome Eeeee Hun to Parma Violet Tea. Eeeee Hun works at the School of Hard Knocks (we used to work in the same class, back in the good-old-days, before Pompous tore us asunder). Eeeee Hun has had a couple of mentions on the blog already. Bless her, she has been trying to track down my blog for MONTHS. Turns out, she didn't know how to spell 'parma', so was unable to locate me in cyber-space! I know what you're all thinking, a teaching assistant who can't spell a 5 letter word, it's a Daily Mail headline in the making!

Oh, and thank you Eeeee Hun, for saying I looked so young in my pic!