Yellow Mama E zine

Loves Children and Animals

 

by Paul Radcliffe

 

 

          Fate is the ultimate dating app, and the only one that is honest.

          In a digital world, Fate is decidedly analogue and happy to be so. It looks across a room, for example, and catches someone's eye when it shouldn't. But it does. The poor souls who go on dating apps have their reasons, I suppose, but you can't order Significant Others from Uber Eats, despite the convenience. But some at least try.

          And I rather doubt if anyone tells the truth—they look through their past and present, reveal the flattering parts, their current pastimes and work, and as an aside their unwillingness to end up in a shallow grave through a spelling error in their profile, or somehow not having mentioned their demons (special demons, who encourage drunken violence and sexual assault on people they meet on dating sites).

           There is also the possibility of the administration of amnesic drugs while discussing your mutual stated preference for Sauvignon over Chardonnay, and the dreadful hangovers—laughingly discussed—of over-consumption of red wine in their colourful—well, we’ve all been there, haven’t we? —and dreadful consequences.

           And think about the profiles—there are sites which pander to the mainstream sexuality variations and no doubt, to the better informed, to those who have their own preferences but keep them to a select group of the like-minded. The proverbial target audience.

           I can't be sure, but I imagine a photograph, perhaps to illustrate your stated interests—a child's football team, bottle feeding an ill-treated kitten, collecting for a Third World Charity in a Hi-Vis Vest . . . that sort of thing—and a list of your virtues and your complete absence of vices.

          Who would say they have an unhealthy obsession with workplace gossip, have embarked on doomed relationships which would never have happened had it not been for alcohol, and your subsequent vulnerability? NO, NO, NO. Won't do. Stress your liking for country walks in the rain, and your love of romantic comedies. Maybe with Hugh Grant stumbling endearingly about the feelings he has always felt. This may help. Bitter arguments about forgetting to buy tomatoes and/or Greek yogurt in the weekly decimation of finances that is the visit to the supermarket. Leave all that out.

           Men should also be aware of creating a bad impression. Nothing about nights out with your half-pissed overweight group of tragics, collectively termed the boys. Don’t mention your gym membership or—if you do—the fact that you hardly use it and the confronting fact that checking your phone is not an exercise, well, quietly omit it. Stress your listening nature, your belief in women's equality, and that you like a drink but not to excess. You are sensitive, but you tell it how it is. And you value honesty, that there is more to a woman than the sum of their looks.

           I am a heretic and glad to be so, a believer in the dying Church of the Analogue. I believe in fate because it is beyond our influences. It glances at us on railway stations and across the years. Fate answers to no one. It remembers a glance. It made us look in that direction and it takes away our ability to forget. You can't order love, you can't enforce it, you can't bully Fate into making yourself loved. Fate makes its own mind up. And sits back, looks across the miles and the years, and smiles to itself.

        As I am smiling now.

 

   

      Paul Radcliffe is an Emergency RN. In the past, he worked in an area where children were sometimes afflicted with sickness of Gothic proportions. Some are ghosts now. As a child he visited an aunt in a haunted farmhouse. This explains a lot. Paul has worked in a variety of noisy places unlikely to be on anyone’s list of holiday destinations. He is also a highly suggestible subject for any cat requiring feeding and practicing hypnosis.

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      If Charles Addams, Edgar Allan Poe, and Willy Wonka sired a bastard child it would be the fat asthmatic by the name of Michael D. Davis. He has been called warped by dear friends and a freak by passing strangers. Michael started drawing cartoons when he was ten, and his skill has improved with his humor, which isn’t saying much. He is for the most part self-taught, only ever crediting the help of one great high school art teacher. His art has been shown at his local library for multiple years only during October due to its macabre nature. If you want to see more of Michael’s strange, odd, weird, cartoons you can follow him on Instagram at mad_hatters_mania.

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