To Date or Not to Date

To date or not to date, that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of various relatives looking at me in sympathy (it’s her hair you know)

Or to take arms against a sea of unsuitable men,

And via a dating website, date them? To date: to sleep (with them);

No more sympathetic relative’s looks, they may end

But what of the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks (Queen really should NOT be your favourite band)

That flesh is heir to, that’s not a consummation

I’d devoutly wish. To date, to sleep (with them);

To sleep: perchance to dream (please God stop snoring): ay, there’s the rub;

For between the snores, and fighting over the duvet what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this singleton’s conveyor belt,

Those relatives might give us pause: there’s the respect

We’ve been waiting for;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of smug relatives

Those oppressor’s who seek to see us in a Barratt starter home (somewhere near Milton Keynes)

But swiftly follows the pangs of despised love (this is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife)

The office romance commences and you are once again spurned (in favour of an unsuitably dressed younger model)

Patiently, you remove the unworthy,

Whilst he himself might have least had the grace to pack up his own crap

Bare-faced cheek? Who could be arsed,

To grunt and sweat under such a weight of cheap Ikea furniture (bin it love)

But for the dread of being alone

The sympathetic looks, the smiles (well she always was difficult)

Will the traveller return, puzzle through the dating website once again

Or would she rather bear the single ills she knows

Than fly to others that she knows not of?

Thus fear of the starter home makes cowards of us all;

And thus this new year’s resolution

Is thought, and thought and over-thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment (yes, I really am funny - look at my witty profile)

But perhaps my endeavours have turned awry

I’ve lost the will to take action. - Soft (I know)!

Her friends will smile, her relatives scorn (or worse worry)

But in all my datelessness remember’d.