While he was droning on about his work commitments, I zoned in and out, trying to work out how I was going to get through this first date. I had expected to meet an eligible bachelor, but he had turned out to be so boring that he made me want to stick asparagus up my nostrils. I thought it would be a higher calibre of human. Credit:Shutterstock A couple of years ago, I too joined an expensive matchmaking agency. I had just come out of a seven-year relationship and was on the wrong side of 50. I soon tired of online dating and receiving messages from overweight baldies who peppered their emails with childish emojis. I hankered to find Mr Right-for-me, a man who was suitably educated and a successful professional. And so this is how I found myself throwing money at an upmarket matchmaking agency in central London. I imagined my handsome date: cashmere polo neck, a bit academic and kind. We'd eat steak tartare and swap notes on our latest box-set find and favourite novels. The reality was an array of terrible matches, a growing sense of alarm and a flaming row in a flash restaurant in Chelsea. We chatted about holidays in Spain, men with bad haircuts and my ideal date. I told her how I loved folk music, my favourite film was The Deer Hunter and I enjoyed weekends in the countryside. So far, so banal. When I met him at a pub in Richmond, I was shocked. I was expecting a cultured and dynamic man, instead I got a man in a pair of jeans, a moth-eaten jumper and the table manners of a modern-day Baldrick. And therein lies the rub. These agencies trade on their exclusivity, yet the men I met were far from the super-elite they promised. The thing I found most unnerving, though, was not being allowed to see what my date looked like, let alone have a pre-date chat with them before we met. All so important if you are to get a feel of someone. It wasn't too much of a surprise, then, that they rarely got it right. There was the 65-year-old American with a stunning property portfolio, who broke the rules and googled me, only to inform me that I was too old for him; the barrister who invited me to his St James's club, and turned out to be prickly and aggressive; and a man who sold jumpers, who took me to dinner in Fulham and told me I should have worn a clingier dress. I was about to call it a day and demand my money back, when my matchmaker sent through the details of a publisher from Oxford. We met at a pub near his home. On date two, he said he really liked me and whisked me away to the Cotswolds. Not wanting to appear presumptuous, he booked two rooms. I was quietly hopeful. But very quickly the debonair man who had seemed laid-back in London morphed into a raging chauvinist in the countryside. When I started to chat to a waiter in Italian, it became clear that my date was not happy. I tried to laugh it off, but clocked this was a man with a fragile ego. It is a tough time for midlife dating today, and there are a lot vulnerable, educated women like me who are so desperate for love they are willing to try and pay anything. Yet, the quality of men was, I found, no different to those on online dating sites. My advice when it comes to dating is: trust your instinct and meet through friends of friends. It is bound to be more accurate. Oh, and it is free.
