A ‘Eureka!’ moment probably heralds my ideal start to a day, not due to the fact that I want to be hurled at lightning pace into consciousness from the depths of my sleepy wallow but more often because it is indicative of me finally making sense of the nonsensical. All too often I’ve felt I’m drifting through life, jumping from one emotional ice-flow to the next and never really making any headway but this morning at 3.45a.m. I sat bolt upright in bed and that very word escaped albeit somewhat lazily from my lips.

“Eureka ….!”

This weekend I like many went to see the new Tim Burton blockbuster “Alice in Wonderland” and again like many, I found myself critiquing it’s visual highs and lows as is my tendency in the rather annoying style of a “sudden expert” when the mood takes me. I have opinions, you see, and sometimes .. nay, most of the time people are not interested in those opinions but I enjoy the charade of pretending I know what I’m talking about.

No; the inestimable value which I have to admit was lost on me at the time of watching is how uncannily close to my life the plot line is, was …. and will almost certainly continue to be. As an entree to this far-fetched theory let me open with the fact that Hamish, the ridiculously foppish suitor to Alice in the opening scenes, bore an uncanny resemblance to an ex of mine; apart from the vivid red hair I’d say he was identical in every way to Mr Distant Cynic. With my wide-eyed amazement barely noticeable behind my 3D specs, I breathed a sigh of relief as Alice dashed away in curious search of the white rabbit.

And down the rabbit-hole she fell, to face her various challenges in pursuance of what she knew to be right and just.

I wonder how many of us have likened ourselves to Alice? To the girl whose stubborn inquisitiveness was so strong that she would knock back anything marked “drink me” just to get her to the next stage? I’ve already referred to my own challenges as emotional ice-flows but maybe I would have enjoyed the process more had I taken on the mantle of adventurer much in the way that she does.

And the well-know and documented characters .. how many of them bear a resemblance along with the newly-added Hamish to people I have known?

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum I could cast several times over, from both my current life production and previous versions to boot.

I’ve known too many Red Queens, not nearly enough Mad Hatters and only one or two White Queens. However the truth is, dear reader, that I could easily cast myself in all three roles. Not just the  one .. it needs to be the full set.

My occasionally sarcastic and bitingly cruel tongue is indicative of the Red one and whilst I strive to imbibe those around me with White gracious perfection day-to-day, I have to admit the former comes with far more ease than I’ve ever been entirely comfortable with. My personal favourite will always be the Mad Hatter. Johnny Depp described his character as “A mood ring, his emotions are very close to the surface”. Oh yes. The mood ring.

This story for me is about the preservation of hopes, dreams and aspirations. Finishing off the Jabberwocky who belittles in an attempt to get me to sit to heel seems to have become an everyday occurrence. He takes on many guises of course; some are classically obvious and some are closer to home. From yawning boredom to laughing disdain and from unreasonable demands to insensitive expectations, it’s good to keep your sword to hand.

And so in an attempt to reconnect with the here and now I’m going to drink from the cup of my imaginative restoration (let’s just give it the working title of “tea” for now ..) and reassure myself that nobody should be left with their dreams in tatters simply because they chose to take on the Jabberwocky.

Only the currency of self-belief will purchase a ticket to see your hopes come alive.

My book will be written.

Occasionally I make decisions that in the scheme of things are small and insignificant but the prospect of seeing them through fills me with much glee. Today I made such a decision.

I pledged to buy a cocktail shaker, a set of various shaped glasses to contain such refreshments and a book of recipes extraordinaire.

The truth is I’ve been talking of creating cocktails for a good few months now, but a big life chapter is coming to a close and it is therefore entirely appropriate to don the walls of my experience with new hues of enlightenment and mastering the perfect dry martini seems a good place to start.

Cocktails and the making thereof are just the start, you see.

And with a plop of an olive into a martini glass I move with the swiftest of keyboard manoeuvres to a subject very close to my heart.

Writing.

It must be down to the fact that I’ve been suffering from an ongoing bloggage (my term for “blogger’s block”) that I feel such a sense of relief. You see, I love writing. I love words, I love playing with them, re-shaping them and even making them up. My current favourite is “biscuital” which could be used thus …. “it was a tremendous biscuital arrangement” to describe a magnificent display of bourbons and custard creams.

Let’s face it, this blog is never going to win the Nobel prize for literature. It’s never going to provide any revolutionary business advice to help you secure the top position at BP and I don’t envisage Stephen Fry commenting on any of the posts anytime soon. But it’s an outlet for my angst (which can be severe at times when biscuital supplies have dwindled) and it gives me a bit of a giggle. It soothes the fevered brow of my various challenges and allows me to process the crazy stuff. Most of it of course isn’t crazy at all, it’s just normal when compared to other’s experience but when it knocked on my door, it was crazy alright.

Another milestone of the day has cutting one or two people out of my stream. Now I know that means sweet Jack to anyone who doesn’t use Twitter so let me explain .. when using Twitter you can create separate streams of people you ‘follow’ to make life a little easier in the monitoring of such. Occasionally certain people end up in there that well, frankly shouldn’t be there at all. They show themselves to be false, incongruous and pretentious; all the things in fact that I was raised to abhor.

This afternoon that was rectified after which I proclaimed to my pal “I am FREE!!!” which is, on the face of it, a bit pathetic. That I have felt hemmed in by a Twitter stream is no-one’s fault but my own but there we have it. Anyone can find themselves up a one-way version of Deadend Alley anytime at all. Take heed of this cautionary tale and create your streams vigilantly, pruning wherever and whenever necessary. People that manage to irritate the very air that passes through your nostrils via Tweetdeck really shouldn’t be allowed to linger for too long.

And so I can greet the end of the day with a wry smile on my face in recognition of the fact that I re-engaged with my free spirit before it was too late. I cast off the shackles of conformity that despite my resistance have found their creeping way around my limbs from time to time and I said in a defiant and definite tone .. “martini, anyone?”

It is not my habit to quote song lyrics but I have to dip into Billy Joel’s catalogue and pull out the following ..

“And it seems such a waste of time,
If that’s what it’s all about.
Mama, If that’s movin’ up then I’m movin’ out.”

So …. martini, anyone?

They say if you want to meet someone then you should stop looking, don’t they?

I have to hold my hands up and admit that I thought that was a vicious rumour put about by people who get sick of listening to their single friends bemoaning their relationship lot (or lack of, as the case may be). And who could blame them? Being single but wanting to be in a relationship can be a miserable existence .. I should know, I was that soldier. You can picture marrieds everywhere emptying wine glasses, rubbing their eyes and stifling sighs as their single friends lament the passing of their latest crush-fest, over and over and over …

Of course it’s not socially advisable to go public about your longing to be one half of a pair and so I donned a cheery facade and battled on. But there can be no doubt that I bent more than a few ears of friends with the in-depth analyses and second-guessing that goes hand-in-hand with newly-established dating patterns.

Being single is far from the worst condition you can find yourself in, but there is only so many nights in front of Greys Anatomy painting your toenails you can take before said toes start a-tapping in restless acknowledgement that you’re .. well, a bit lonely.

Now I have made no secret of dabbling in the dark world of online dating. To me it was the dating equivalent of an unpleasant medical procedure .. you had to go through with it to get over to the other side .. the side that was a lasting relationship with someone special. I failed miserably. I went through the unpleasant procedure many times and the result was always inconclusive. So I decided to administer treatment myself by deleting my profile and retreating back to base.

And in the middle of all this I joined Twitter which some may know as the social networking site on which people discuss their sandwiches all day; in reality it’s a global forum that gives you immediate access to like-minded individuals and to unlimited information on any topic you could think of. And for me it laid the path very quickly that led to J.

I remember the very first time I saw his profile photograph (or as we in “the know” call it, his avatar). In fact his photograph was and is very obscured offering up no visual clues to help you pick him out in a crowd, but something registered. I was interested. He was unassuming, lovely and charming. He was all the things you can’t ascertain from an online blueprint.

Now I’d like to say I knew we would end up dating but I didn’t. I do suppose however that my interest, which developed into intrigue kept me focussed on maintaining a steady progress in the direction of that first coffee date.

If that counts as scheming then I’m guilty as charged, and quite happy to take the rap I might add.

And so the point to my rather rambling account this evening is this .. if J and I had been profiles floating aimlessly on 2beekum1.com then I think it’s fair to say we wouldn’t have met, and that’s because we almost certainly wouldn’t have matched each other’s blueprints. So .. before you could have uttered “I’ll have a skinny latte please” the concept that was the first coffee date would have evaporated into thin air. We would have eliminated each other from the running.

And at the depression of the delete key I would have missed out on the feeling of excitement I get at the prospect of seeing him each week, of the instant smile that creeps across my face when he messages me and that lovely warm glow inside because life feels a lot better these days.

OK .. I know all this is a tad on the schmaltzy side compared to my earlier posts on this blog but I needed to make a point today having read the appalling account of how a dating site has expelled 5,000 of it’s members for putting weight on since they created and posted their profiles.

Seriously .. would you be interested in dating anyone who even hinted they were concerned that you weren’t quite as physically perfect as they’d hoped?

Lots of people are making pots of money by implying they can connect single people on these sites using logic and calculating means.

And I know for one it doesn’t work like that.

There’s nothing logical about finding happiness, which makes it even more prized.

It’s fair to say that this blog has become more efficient than any therapy I could have entered into. On occasion I’ve had comments within minutes of posting a heartfelt rant that have both supported and challenged me. Without a shadow of doubt airing my views and experiences has been both progressive and comforting at the same time. We all sing from similar hymn sheets it seems … some are a little further ahead than others and some merely prefer a different tempo.

One question has been omnipresent since the conception of “This is how I see it ..” however, and that was … what if my circumstances were to change? What if I met someone who caused me to view relationships in a different light? What if I had to soften the tone, drop the cackling humour and surrender to the fact that I may need to alter the course, rethink the content and consider new material?

When you’ve experienced a succession of bad relationships you soon learn to embrace being single, but for me it wasn’t too difficult given that I’ve been extremely fortunate in other areas of life. Yes, of course a lifelong, happy coupling would have been the icing on the cake but it’s been a good few years since I sobbed into my duvet over that little conundrum.

So .. penning a blog that charted the various hilarious and incredible dating disasters of Debsylee brought a smile to my face and hopefully others to. Being a social soloist was the inevitable consequence but heck, we could all have a good laugh about it.

Now, it’s important I clear up one important fact because I think to date I haven’t ever made reference to what went wrong in my significant relationships prior to this most recent self-imposed period of singledom. So the truth is this .. I was lied to. Every time. And not tiny little white lies .. nasty gut-wrenching black untruths, none of which involved other women (that I know of) but life-altering all the same.

So venturing forth across the wilderness that is emotional solitary confinement I held my ideal of an honest, completely open and true relationship close to my heart. And time after time I felt let down until I started to come to terms with the fact that I may never find that ideal in anyone.

I retired to the sidelines and started penning previous entries, resigning myself to accepting that maybe what I was looking for didn’t exist. I abandoned my search. The game was over in a tournament that I wasn’t sure I wanted to participate in any longer.

Secretly I rather fancied myself as a latter day tragic heroine whose only mistake was that she stuck to rigidly to her ideals. I mused that the weary epic trail across the desolate sands of my solitude would make great reading one day in the form of a best-selling novel.

This was until I met a man who embodies all the ideals I had etched onto my rather principled little raison d’être.

Suddenly I’m struggling for words I can assemble and arrange that do justice to the course of recent events. He is, you see, really rather special.

Rather uncharacteristically I feel I don’t want to become overly verbose on the subject of our relationship which I suppose should be viewed as progress.

My friend Rachael commented today that I should start future posts with “when I was on the [dating] circuit ..”

Well, I can safely say I never thought I’d be penning a post like this … when I was on the circuit.

Do I sound smug? I’m really not; I’m simply enjoying being wrong.

So in effect I have done just that. I kicked off my heels, cracked open the gin and took a blogging holiday. And that has to all intents and purposes been fine, except for the fact that I’ve felt the urge to blog about a couple of incidents but couldn’t for two rather pertinent facts. The first is that I must now have one of the most public personal lives that doesn’t belong to a celebrity (of my own making, granted) and the second being that a friend informed me recently that my candid approach to recording my take on the opposite sex could have a detrimental effect on my search for a meaningful relationship.

And that, ladies and gentleman, has been the sum total of my month away from these blogging shores. I now know what I’m looking for.

A meaningful relationship. A relationship that means something. Not marriage. Not co-habitation even. It just needs to “mean” something.

People oft think I’m a bit of a flibbertigibbet on the one hand and a ruthless user of men on the other. I never worked out how those two married up  but apparently it is possible; after three or four Babychams laughing at ridiculous jokes I can turn into the female Don Corleone of the dating world. I take no prisoners you see. All wrongdoers are exposed with a mere tap-tap-tap on my rather slinky Mac keyboard.

And so they should be! I’m not entirely sure that I’ve been specific about the criteria by which I judge my dating experiences in terms of suitability for “outing” them Debsy-style, but it’s really quite simple. Men that act like arses will have their arses exposed, and to clarify, “act like arses” means at some point they have treated me (and probably many like me) pretty shoddily.

I never use real names, but if they were to read the post, they would know to whom I’m referring. Job done.

My friend (of the candid approach comment) informed me that a man would need to have “balls of steel” to get into a relationship with me, knowing about this blog and my tendency to whip out an exposé quicker than you could say “second date”. For my part I found that a bit harsh ….. but then we always do see onlooker’s views through sterile binoculars don’t we? In essence I found his “balls of steel” comment quite funny … or was I merely pleased with the fact that I was starting to appear formidable in the dating arena? In retrospect I’m not sure either interpretation is desirable.

The unfortunate fact is that recording my experiences in this blog have become my way of laying them to rest. Every time someone has told me how funny they thought a particular entry about a disastrous date was, I’ve jumped up and down on the grave of the memory of said incident, knocked back an imaginary martini, thrown the glass at the wall and screamed “next!”

We all need to review, investigate, understand and conclude. My conclusions just happen to involve sharing my findings with about seven thousand others on Twitter and Facebook. What the heck’s formidable about that?

So. Meaningful. That’s the sum of it. And by meaningful, I mean just that.

Welcome back friend.

I was joking about the Babychams by the way.

It did lead me to thinking about the point at which a reader goes from being satisfyingly entertained to yawning and flipping back onto Facebook, Twitter or whatever their particular addiction is. Or perhaps they keep on reading in the hope that it’s going to get better, a little bit like the film I watched on Saturday night (which didn’t, incidentally …. “The Illusionist” with Edward Norton … ejected after thirty minutes)

So, clearly the knack is to seize the imagination quickly, decisively and without mercy. A bit like circling romantic prey. A lot like it, actually.

I’m not talking about the meandering little foray you both take initially, where furtive glances are exchanged and mildly suggestive language is toyed with; it’s the point at which you see the green light well and truly illuminated. It’s time to strike. Going back over this passage I’m more than a little concerned that I’m using hunting and war-like metaphors in association with relationships; this is something I need to address with professional help at some point, I fear.

I suspect a seasoned and skilled journalist will tell you a good headline will grab quicker than anything, so with my usual limited ability to get beyond the obvious I go with something provocative or suggestive (ideally both); it’s cheap and it works (unlike our parliamentary system, it seems).

Who is great at maintaining an audience? Well, I’d have to say none surpass Barack Obama at the moment. Even black and white images of the man mesmerise me. He dresses well, he has an air of composed self-belief, and as soon as he ventures to open his mouth to speak you know you will be tuned in until he desists. He is, I believe, the greatest orator of my lifetime. Even my mother can forgive the fact that he smokes ….. and that is no mean feat, I assure you.

It appears it’s not the initial gripping that’s the real challenge here, but the maintenance of said grip.

Like I said … just like relationships.