Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 7 July 2012

In her profile photo she was curtseying prettily in a floral dress. In her written profile she described herself as a ‘nice lady, with a nice and open soul, and with common sense’. Not what I was looking for at all, but she lived quite near, and, with petrol the price it is, I was willing to overlook things. I also admired her advice to any chaps contemplating sending her a message. Our profiles should not tell her that we like good food ‘as if you are living to eat’. Nor should we say that we liked to laugh, because ‘everybody does this’. Finally, we shouldn’t claim to be happy, because ‘all serious profiles from dating sites are sad’. 

The five things she couldn’t do without were fresh air, freedom, health, nature and hope. I sent her a message agreeing vehemently about the eating business. I’d read so many profiles that were merely expressions of boredom plus lists of food and drink preferences. I’d rather breathe than eat, I told her. She agreed to meet for a coffee. Her name was Narcissus, she said. I said I’d drive over and pick her up.

Narcissus was living in a village called Hope. It’s a fishing village at the end of a long country lane. Twenty years ago, I used to empty the people of Hope’s dustbins. A mile inland of Hope is a hamlet called Galmpton. A dry local proverb goes: ‘Live in Hope — and die in Galmpton’. I was ten minutes early and she was already waiting in the village square. She was every bit as attractive as she’d looked in her photo, and she ducked into the passenger seat with grace and something approaching alacrity. 

We shook hands. My initial impression was of a calm, kind, self-sufficient person.

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