Hello, my name is Doris and I'd like to make a complaint.

Single man David was ugly with a well-written profile. I'm very happy with ugly as long as the man is interesting. He had dot pointed his most attractive qualities and in amongst all the stuff he thought was great about himself he had written "I've saved someone's life." I pictured CPR at the shopping centre or pulling a kid out of a pool and giving mouth to mouth. I sent off the kiss. We got to the texting stage. I give my phone number quickly to get off the email, and once I'm at the text stage I want them to be short and sweet. Minimum number of texts before meeting. When and where is all I need to know. Safer that way. Less risk in having to answer the inevitable question - how many children. How about we meet before you ask about my offspring mate?  "Five" is a real turn off for most of them. Except the men who come from large families themselves. The freudian love they feel for their mummy normally makes me ok in those men's eyes for o

Writing about disastrous dates, miserable men and disappointing relationships can get depressing. It's not all bad. I do have a few good memories. Simon was the second man I dated after becoming single again. Milk Man was before him. Probably best not to go into any detail about Milk Man. That one needs a blog entry of his own. Back to Simon. Being new to the dating world was a weird experience initially. I was strangely popular in those early days. After launching my dating profile I received contact from a different man about every 10 minutes for hours. I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, but by the end of my first day I was number 3 in the top 100 women in my age group. I was rather chuffed about that. I guess it was the combination of a rare and flukishly good photo of me taken that day, coupled with the fact that I was fresh meat in the post-marriage online dating world. A world which few leave once they join. Years later and many failed romances and re-launches of

In my last blog I mentioned one particular man with a missing tooth . Check out the PS section at the end of that blog entry. That's Dave. Not David. Just Dave. Second most boring date I've ever been on. A close second to the infamous I've-had-a-fucking-Brad-day Brad. That's another story. I mentioned in my last entry that Dave sent me a text before we met to explain that he'd just been to the dentist and his mouth was vewy vewy sore. He'd need to recoup before he could contact me again and he told me not to expect a text message from him that week. I guessed that he'd just had a tooth pulled. Silent gag. My brother has recently introduced me to the idea that I'm in what he refers to as 'the transition phase'. He sees this as a very healthy and sensible process I'm doomed to go through where I finally warm to the idea that I am in fact better off never dating again. When the pain outweighs the gain and all hope is lost.

I've only dated one man in the last year who hasn't been missing at least one tooth. And I've dated a few. It goes like this. Introductions over, perhaps sit and chat for a bit. You say something worthy of a LOL, or more likely, he says something he thinks is funny, he arches his head back and opens his mouth. Your first magic moment together. And bingo, there it is!  Or rather, there it isn't.  No matter how many times I see that 'space' I'm always shocked. 4th or 5th tooth back from the midline, usually upper mandible. Always obvious. These men have good cars (yes, they tell me), they're reasonably employed, ok clothes and hygiene...but their teeth! When you look at the Australian statistics, it's undoubtedly the poor who are missing teeth - adults without private health insurance, those on lower incomes and those who are eligible for public dental care have more missing teeth ( 1) . The cohort available to me on RSVP. Usually lower socioeco