It'll be lonely this Christmas...

Hi, Mr here.

Miss came up with a good point last Friday. That around this time of year people see all those happy couples buying presents for each other and realise how lonely they are. And when people get lonely they get desperate. And when people get desperate they lower their standards. And when people lower their standards, we swoop in.

With only 30 shopping days left before Christmas we decided now is the time to start a serious plan of action to bag ourselves a 'special someone' to spend the festive season with. It's also the ideal time of year to bag a boy/girl friend because come 3 months down the line Valentine's Day looms large and you pray that this'll be the year where you, for once, don't have to spend the day making tired jokes about 'a truck load of cards being outside the door' to mask your embarrassment. Or staying in and having a wank and drinking flat champagne left over from P's birthday like last year.

The plan of action: spend one night on the computer, grooming potential dates VS one night in reality, grooming potential dates. At the very least we hoped to get a cheeky snog.

So...first stop - Facebook. Cue 3 to 4 hours of poking randoms in the desperate hope that they would see our picture and think 'Oh thank Christ, this is the person I've been waiting for my whole life'. Mr made sure to change his photo to one where is not a) smoking, b) unconscious, c) in drag, d) on the toilet. Miss changed hers to old faithful - the one nice picture she has of herself.

Come 1am, with only a handful of poke-backs between us, we realised that what people would actually be thinking is "Look at those sad, posing fuckers, in on a Friday night, trying desperately to get someone to fancy them. What losers." (Miss has just noticed that the word 'desperate' has already been used quite a lot in this particular blog).

Saturday morning we did have some results, but in the cold light of day they weren't really as attractive as their teeny pictures suggested at 3am in our darkened living room. Miss had a drag queen from Sweden.

So, back to reality. As it happens it was our mate's birthday and she chose us to plan the fun and games for her special night. Her stipulations were 'Cheese is allowed but please for God's sake, can we go somewhere that's not gay. Seriously, it's my birthday.' So being the dutiful friends that we are, we showed up 90 minutes late with absolutely no plan. Well actually that's a lie. We wanted to go to Trash Palace and after we'd plied the birthday girl with enough booze and scared off most of her straight mates, she was in no position to protest.

Why Trash Palace? For the simple fact that it's full of sexually active band geeks, cheap booze, and after a week of having to suffer seeing the Scot walking around with his muscles out, flaunting his rapidly increasing wardrobe of designer gear, we wanted to feel like the belles of the ball.

We didn't.

On arrival, Miss clocked (and immediately claimed) the rather fit doorgirl only to quickly discover (through interrogating the barman) that she has a girlfriend. Fail.

She then got chatting to a less attractive girl in a trilby, only to be told she 'has a fit back, but looks like Liza Minnelli'. Fail.

She then lowered her standards even more and started chatting to a pair of REALLY ugly girls only for them to disappear when she turned her back. Fail.

Mr, on realising that there was absolutely nothing going for him that night, ventured off to the streets of Soho to find one little pill that might fill the emptiness inside. £10 and a trek around Walker's Court later, he had minty fresh breath and a feeling of being absolutely robbed. Fail.

In short, Miss went home with a kebab and Mr went home with a digested tic tac (or it could have been a smint).

FAIL.