Love Boat
July 24, 2013
Love Boat.
I remember a good friend who thought he would join one of those introduction schemes in order to meet a nice and good woman. This was many years ago when meeting someone was still done in real life. Today this is done by the push of a mouse or keyboard in solitary confinement in front of a screen. Women advertise on line in various modes of (un)dress and men inside various vehicles or even behind maritime vessel’s steering wheels. I have yet to see a man in those romantic love advertisements photographed behind a book or hewing away at a piece of marble, or playing outdoor chess. Art is out and rugged maleness is in.
Even so, there seems to be an almost insatiable need for couples still to meet. If you go to ‘face book’ (please note I don’t abbreviate it into FB and I hate the assumption of so many IT people abbreviating everything in a couple of letters) one can’t escape numerously languid looking females enticing the FB fan to meet up.
One advertisement stated Natasha wants ‘B Bs only.
Well, I am more of a T S E boy, so, Natasha can cut me out.
The ads are overwhelmingly by girls with breasts generously splayed over the edges and males splaying over their steering wheels of expensive cars or leaning casually against a yacht.
Anyway, all those many years ago, this good friend of mine, his name was Otto, did the right thing and joined a group of similar minded people wanting to meet others through this introduction agency. A ferry was hired and all would get aboard and each would bring food and drinks. I wasn’t there, but I suppose even before boarding, people would have already been coyly scanning each other on the quay side. There is always so much hope invested in meeting the right one, isn’t it?
Otto told me he had bought a small piece of raw steak and a large bottle of Fanta orange drink. He wasn’t fond of alcohol. I thought he could have packed something a bit more romantic for on the ferry, but that was Otto. He was deadly honest in dealing with people which often came out either hilariously funny or somewhat clumsy. Otto was a good man, and as stated before, he wanted a good woman.
I was curious how it all went. Oh, he said,” it was terribly boring and the worst was I could not get off the bloody ferry.” Yes, but did you meet any nice ladies, I asked? Oh, not too many. I went and offered bits of my steak around, but no one wanted any. They were all eating cubes of cheese and gherkins with ham around it and sipping Cold Duck Champagne. One man had brought a complete chicken in a basket with bread-rolls. No one brought steaks! The chicken in the basket man, ended up with a nice lady and towards the end they were kissing.
Otto remained a bachelor his whole life. He did never seem to meet a ‘nice’ partner, someone who could see past his rather practical and utterly unromantic demeanor. I suppose we all dream of the unattainable, the sexiest, the utterly devastatingly masculine, the supine languidly feminine, the ultimate Eve and apple giver. I reckon, personally, the long lasting relationships are those made in the kitchen of ‘give and take’ with the mortar and pestle of love, grinding it all together into a most delicious and enduring everlasting paste of togetherness. Eternally cooing pigeons springs to mind but that is perhaps overstating it a bit… The readers on this blog are not into purple prose.
The ones wanting the unobtainable and unattainable love potions prove themselves right each time, hence the incursion and flooding of all those ‘meet the right partner’ ads on FB and so many other IT pages.
What do you think?
B B= Big Boys
T S E= Thomas S Eliot
Tags: Cold duck Champagne, Eve, Face Book, Love boat, Mortar and Pestle, Natasha
Posted in Gerard Oosterman |
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
The good ones are snapped up quickly. The not so good are the ones trawling through FB. Many a fascinating widow or widower, divorced victims of marital whiplash of all sexes keep on trying relentlessly searching for a partner that complies with either a fantasy or an overblown ‘ideal’ that does not exist.. The good one are the ones that reside in the kitchen of give and take.
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I enjoyed reading this little piece Gez. Suddenly FB (scuse 😉 ) has a plethora of non-alluring people beaming happily declaiming NO YOUTH HERE or something to that effect, what is it NO ONE YOUNG NEED APPLY and promising love for those over some age I dunno what the age is I haven’t gotten past the warning.
No interest to me. I’m obviously unwanted. (I was driven into denial instantly) 🙂
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Dreadfully disappointed, gerard! Not a single gratuitous insult about the Parthenon, or Greece!
What happened? Lost your lonely planet of Greece? A travel brochure from your local agency would do it.
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Intimidated by all those BIG columns I reckon Atomou, lovey, there is not a column to match them anywhere I wonder although Madonna, I recall, was in a vid. (surprise) where in a gondola (nooo, I’m not lost, just surfing) she glided (or rather her breasts and hips did) like a swan without need of a boat with an occasional glance up the length of a poling chap’s long pole, OK, granted we can suppose that was Venice but I remember there were some BIG (gasp) columns the camera happened on between the breasts, the hips, the pole, the poling chap and the boatless to all intents and purposes Madonna.
Not as big as the ones where you come from. I bet.
Shoes 😉
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Love your swimming, surfing, sailing imagination, shoes!
One of these days you’ll land on my shores and then we’ll… just go for a climb up Mt Olympus. No columns there, but lost of gods!
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Charmed. I’m in. 🙂
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Atomou, I enjoyed your comments on Patrick Stoke’s article. ‘Them rich bastards, gettin’ boats built an’ comin’ to our fair shores!’ (My redneck paraphrase)
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Lovely bloke, Otto, interested in everything and hospitable and generous, he used love spending time in bookshops and when he found a book he thought I might like, he promptly bought it and sent it to me when we lived on the farm. I used to also get plants, and packets of exotic vegetables sent my way…
A happy man too, maybe it was because he never his ideal woman… 🙂
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he never found
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helvityni, what on earth do you mean he was a happy man and maybe that’s why he never found his ideal woman, honestly helvi! why, because women generally need miserable ones?
you’ve lost me…
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…just silly comment, meaning that so many women are so bad, men are better without us…of course I’m only kidding
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helvi, that’s naughty, we are supposed to strumpet … I mean trumpet … that we’re the best. 😉
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Stewart and his wife Barbara go to the county fair every year,
And every year Stewart would say, “Barbara, I’d like to ride in that helicopter”
Barbara always replied,
“I know Stewart, but that helicopter ride is seventy quid, and seventy quid is seventy quid!”
One year later Stewart and Barbara went to the fair, and Stewart said, “Barbara, I’m 75 years old. If I don’t ride that helicopter, I might never get another chance”
To this, Barbara replied,
“Stewart, that helicopter ride is seventy quid, and seventy quid is seventy quid”
The pilot overheard the couple and said, “Folks I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take the both of you for a ride. If you can stay quiet for the entire ride and don’t say a word I won’t charge you a penny! But if you say one word it’s seventy quid. ”
Stewart and Barbara agreed and up they went.
The pilot did all kinds of fancy manoeuvres, but not a word was heard.
He did his daredevil tricks over and over again,
But still not a word…
When they landed, the pilot turned to Stewart and said, “By golly, I did everything I could to get you to yell out, but you didn’t.
…I’m impressed!”
Stewart replied, “Well, to tell you the truth I almost said something when Barbara fell out,
But you know, seventy quid is seventy quid!”
🙂
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hph, I’ll take that with me and think about that. 🙂
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