JUNE 5TH,  AUGUST 9TH, OCTOBER 27TH (The only dating I appear to be good at)
By Diane Messias

It's official. There aren't any men in Nice. You can trust me, I'm a woman. Licensed to kiss. Diane Messias. Double O X.

Only, who is there to plant my X on around here?

Having lived on the Riviera since September and not even kissed one bloody Frog, I've no idea when the handsome princes are going to turn up.

And so, enter the internet...

This is not the first time I've been here in my life, I have to tell you. There weren't any men in London or Brighton, either. (You know that joke that goes 'if they can put one man on the moon, why can't they put all of them on there?' Is that not a joke any more? Something the EU brought in without me noticing it?) And so I'm quite experienced in not kissing men in real life. If it has to be virtual kissing instead of no kissing at all, bring it on.

Actually, here's a confession - I met my last husband on the net. ('Last husband?' I hear you cry? How many has she had? Well, that's for me to know, and you to not find out. They're trying to forget, let me tell you. But as numbers go, it's plainly not enough, is it?) Not sure if having encountered le dernier mari in the ether is actually a recommendation, come to think of it. Seeing as we're now getting divorced. (I always seem to be between divorces, married or not).

Anyway, I've had some good adventures, courtesy of internet dating. Once I even flew over to North Dakota to meet a man (ND has 1 man and millions of buffalo. But at least the buffalo were attractive). It's a medium which allows you to access people (and buffalo) from walks of life you would never come into contact with otherwise. And actually, I never had a bad experience. So why not try now?

Here's why.

I thought it might be a good idea to post my profile on a large, international site, seeing as I'm a woman of the world (remember North Dakota?) So I submitted my rather witty (I thought) description about myself and waited for the 72-hour approval before it appeared online. 72 hours came and went and there was no sign of it. I contacted admin to find out what the delay was, and they kindly wrote back telling me that I didn't meet their 'conditions of usage'. Further, that they were well within their rights to suspend my profile without notice. Even though my profile had never got quite far enough to qualify for suspension. I was thus a suspendee, left swinging in the ether by suspenders who couldn't understand how illogical was the concept of suspending something which hadn't ever been unsuspended in the first place. (Does this sound bitter? No? I'll try harder then).

Much communication ensued. Actually, I use the term 'communication', but nothing more was communicated to me further than that. I would appear to be SO undesirable, they couldn't even discuss the nature of the undesirablility with ME - Ms Undesirable herself! What on earth could the offending information be? That I read the Guardian? Listen to jazz? Don't keep newts? After a week of banging my head against a virtual brick wall (virtual paracetamol is a wonder, isn't it?) I gave up. (Is this a consequence of Data Protection? That people should be protected from their own data because of their Human Rights? Can I challenge my Human Rights to be protected from knowing data about myself as part of my Human Rights to know data about myself? Is there a lawyer in the house? Do you have a good-looking single brother?)

And so I posted a profile (yes, dear reader, I posted it!) on a well-known French site. [SIGH] And I've had lots of offers...from the scariest-looking men I've ever seen in my whole life. Some of them make the mug shots of serial killers on Death Row look like stand-ins for George Clooney. And call me old-fashioned (better than calling me a cab), but there's something rather distasteful about Hannibal Lecture looking at your picture and thinking oo, quite like the look of that one...(don't want to be THAT sort of tasty, thanks).

However, all that's nothing (Monty Python, anyone?) compared to a message one would-be suitor sent me recently, which an online-translation service helped me out with. This chap - who cheerfully opens his missive with the admission that he has lied about his age to the tune of 10 years (my god, how old are the men who advertise themselves as 83, then?) - waxes in what he obviously believes to be lyrical fashion about having had 'a circumcision of the heart'. My face 'moves him to a place I can't imagine'. (Clacton?) ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz (WAKE UP!!! I've nearly finished this column!!! Not too much to ask, is it??? Only another hundred words or so. Get a grip!!!).

As to (supposed) meetings, I was stood up by a cocky 37 year-old. And a 36 year-old was absolutely salivating at the very thought of me - a woman of a mere 53 years (actual age, as on pack) - telling me he'd never been to bed with an old woman before. (He still hasn't). And I was taken to lunch by a man a little older than myself - not really my 'type' - at a Michelin-starred restaurant, where the chef came out to each table at the end of the service to be congratulated on the amuse bouche and salted arugula (Colonel Sanders doesn't do that, now does he?) However, after two hours chatting quite merrily about topics we liberal, arty people chat about, the generous gentleman inexplicably didn't bother contacting me again. (And that was actually a bit of a positive. Dear Reader, I didn't marry him!).

And so the quest goes on. Diane Messias. Licensed to eat Michelin-starred lunches. And then never to be invited out again. The kissing licence obviously needs a few more hours work to be retained.

Watch this space...