Nothing to be sniffed at

It was six days after I sent an email to the Press & Journal newspaper complaining about their use of a Google Maps image of Combie Street where my flat is clearly visible alongside a headline reporting “Drugs seized following police raid in Oban” that they removed the picture from the online article and replaced it with a shot of the actual pub involved.  By then it felt as if it was too late, of course.  Everyone would have already seen the story and concluded that there is a drug operation being run from the block of flats where I live.  Word travels fast in this town.  

All I could think was how the newspaper’s misrepresentation is going to make it even more difficult for me to meet a woman who would be willing to date me; while inviting someone back to my flat at the end of the night will become practically impossible.  People will either be reluctant to go for a nightcap in a reputed drug den, or they will be sorely disappointed when all I have to offer my guests is Jameson and ginger ale.

The truth is that it could hardly be any more arduous to find a woman who wants to spend time with me, even without all of this Press & Journal business.  This much was evident on a recent evening when I took a cursory swipe through the dating apps whilst waiting for a batch of plant-based chilli nuggets to heat in the air fryer.  Nothing was doing on Tinder or Bumble, but Sally* – an Oban-based sailor – appeared on Hinge.  Unlike other dating apps, Hinge gives users a series of prompts selected by the person and allows them the opportunity to leave a comment on one.  While Tinder and Bumble rely on two people liking one another’s profile, on Hinge you can really let your personality shine with the right message.  

Sally was another outdoors type whose profile was filled with sailboat pictures.  We had nothing in common, but nobody living in Oban ever shows up on Hinge, and her page at least had the popular prompt where she lists “two truths and a lie” and it is up to prospective dates to decide which of her three statements is untrue.

“I’m a vicar’s daughter, I used to be cabin crew and I can play 6 musical instruments” the little box read. There wasn’t a lot to go on in terms of using the prompt to show Sally who I am, but a good answer here was most likely my best shot at impressing her. Adopting the traits of a detective seems necessary to have any chance of success in the world of online dating, so I channelled my inner Columbo to scrutinise each of the statements for holes, as if Sally were a criminal under suspicion of murdering my hopes of romance. Immediately it stood out that nobody would lie about being a vicar’s daughter. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Church of England has a rule against it.

Any good detective’s senses are pricked when a suspect offers more information than is essential, which is why I was drawn to the line on musical instruments.  That anyone can play an instrument at all blows my mind, so to claim that you can play six was really stretching credibility.  To my mind, it would be like someone who worked as cabin crew insisting that they can fly an aircraft.  It was obvious to me that Sally was lying about her musical ability, but even a doofus like me knows that I can’t flirt with a woman by outright brandishing her a liar, so I sought to soften it a little by suggesting that she wasn’t being truthful about her musical accomplishments “because you can actually only play 5 instruments.”

Sally immediately matched with me and replied to my comment.  “Have we matched before?  As that answer is correct.”

Unlike Sally with her brazen lies, I thought that honesty was the best policy.  “Mostly I responded with 5 because I don’t think that I could name 6 instruments.”

“Fair enough!  Well done for getting it right.”

“I would have responded to your voice prompt, but initially I was hearing some Irish and Australian in your accent and I realised that didn’t make any sense.”

Silence.  The timer on my air fryer pinged and in the time it had taken to cook a portion of plant-based chilli nuggets, I had made and lost a match on Hinge.  I opened the door and found that there was green jalapeño goop splattered all over the wire rack.  This is going to be a nightmare to clean, I thought to myself.  Such is the reality of online dating.

With the inevitable exception of my romantic exploits, it would be hard to say that January 2024 has been anything but a good month so far. I have fully booked up my next trip to Bosnia in February and my friend Medina has even generously invited me to have dinner with her family when I visit her home town of Sanski Most. Nothing excites me more than knowing that I will be back in my favourite place in a matter of weeks, even if the weather is likely to be even more frigid than it has been in Oban. Here the temperature has barely scraped above zero in the last fortnight. Every morning has seen varying degrees of frost, ice, or snow on the pavements, meaning that I have had to adopt a different walking technique each day. Each step is a potential calamity. I don’t know how people do it. Remarkably the dread of falling on ice isn’t the worst thing about this weather. That would be the hat hair, which I imagine must give casual observers the impression that I have made no effort at all on my hair before leaving the flat, when in fact there has been a minimal attempt at styling it.

My daily yoga routine gave me a great deal of focus in the early weeks of the new year, while even after just a couple of days of stretching I was feeling an energy I hadn’t experienced in months.  I was walking with a real spring in my step, not that anyone would have known it from my penguin-like shuffle down George Street.  I was willing to do just about anything to maintain the positivity that was coursing through me.  This extended to spending an extra forty pence on a tin of chopped tomatoes from Lidl just because the deluxe brand has a ring pull and the regular cheap tins no longer do.  It seemed extravagant at the time, but it was worthwhile to avoid the frustration of trying to operate my terrible tin opener.  I just couldn’t put myself through that this early in the year when things are going well and I’m brimming with positive energy.  It’s the same reason why I bought the chopped tomatoes at all rather than go through with my original midweek meal plan of spaghetti carbonara.  I can never stir in the eggs quickly enough.

As well as the renewal of some healthy habits, the new year usually tends to bring a fresh scent in the form of the traditional Christmas haul of Lynx gift sets.  It’s always easy to turn one’s nose up at the Lynx gift set at the time, but once you’re into January it’s welcome to not have to spend money on yet more shower gel or deodorant for a while.  Of the two boxes I received for Christmas the first one I broke open was the Lynx Gold, which promises 48-hour freshness and an oud wood and dark vanilla fragrance.  It’s hard to deny that the stuff smells good, though the trouble with it is that it is far stronger than the bodyspray I am used to and it seems to make my nose run.  Who knows why that is, an allergy of some sort I guess.  That notwithstanding, free deodorant is not to be sniffed at, even if it is the cause of quite a lot of sniffling.

I was hopeful that walking into Aulay’s on a Friday night with my positive posture and a brand-new scent would prove to be irresistible like the official Lynx Gold website promises, but I think that other than us there were maybe only another two or three people in at any one time.  At least apart from the brief 20 minutes when a large group of youths turned up.  One of the boys had a lump under his eye the size of a plum, while another asked the new Australian barmaid if she could put his empty quarter bottle of Glen’s Vodka in the bin.  She dispatched of the contraband with the same ease she had snuffed out some of our delicate attacking play when she joined our game of indoor football earlier in the week.  Not only was she a formidable defender, but some of her footwork could open a can of chopped tomatoes.  At one point as she dribbled past me I was left feeling the same way I do when I am walking on an icy pavement.

For most of the night, it looked as if the installation of a new television set above the corner of the bar in the lounge was going to be the height of our excitement.  To be fair, a second screen in the lounge bar is something we have often dreamed about.  The space has always been perfect for it, and it would put a stop to those occasions when someone wants to watch the rugby and we are unable to see the Partick Thistle game we have negligible interest in but would quite like to have on in the background.

My brother, the nut tax man and I were huddled beneath the new screen as if it was a vision of some great deity, which in a way it was. There was some mid-level Spanish or Italian football being shown on the TV – or it could have been Portuguese, we weren’t giving it much notice. Our discussion was around making plans to go to an upcoming Glasgow Clan ice hockey game when I noticed the numbers in the bar swell by one when a woman entered from the public side and took a stool at the opposite side of the bar, close to the original television. She was around my age, give or take a couple of years out of politeness, and wore a hairband on the top of her head that sat up and gave the appearance of tiny bunny ears. The woman attempted to engage Doc in conversation, but he wasn’t having any of it, perhaps due to being in the unfamiliar surroundings of the lounge. I could see her occasionally looking over at the three of us as if she was trying to catch our eye and enter herself into our discussion. We were so caught up in our vital planning meeting that we never allowed an opening for her to join us, and the woman eventually left the bar without any fanfare, presumably disgruntled that she couldn’t get the attention of any of the four men who were in there.

Lately, it has been the case that most of the people in my social circle have other things to be doing on the weekend rather than just hanging around Aulay’s until closing time, and so it was that they departed and I found myself alone in the lounge with one of the stalwarts who by this point I’ve become convinced only has the wherewithal to recognise his own name and drink order.  It’s times like these where it’s almost tempting to wish that I actually did live in a drug den if only for the thrill of it.  The night was hurtling towards indifference until the lone woman from earlier returned.  I fancied my chances considering that it was either me or the old drunk dude, and I felt that I had the advantage by virtue of the fact that the woman and I were both wearing glasses.  Everybody knows that spectacle wearers stick together.  That wasn’t going to be enough to get me talking to her, though.  I needed something more and kept looking over the woman’s shoulder to the original TV which was showing WWE wrestling.  I was watching two oiled-up men trying to get to grips with one another as I grappled with the best way of striking up a conversation with this woman.  I knew that I just had to get her talking to me and the Lynx Gold would do the rest.

Eventually I played it straight and asked how her night had been going.  She told me that it had been fine and she was visiting Oban for a short holiday to see her dad who had taken ill in hospital.  I considered my response to be the natural question anyone in my shoes would ask, but seemingly it struck a nerve and I had put my big feet in it.

“I’m sorry to hear about your dad,” I said.  “How long are you in Oban for?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Fair enough,” I whimpered, suitably chastised.  I returned to considering the bubbles atop the head of my Tennent’s Lager, resigned to the fact that I was out of the reckoning and the coast was clear for the drunk regular in the corner.

A heavy silence hung over the bar, higher even than the brand-new television screen, until it was broken by the woman entering into a rant about how people from Oban are far too interested in what others are doing.  I agreed that this is always the way in a small town, but pleaded my case that I was just making casual conversation.  She claimed that she has found it far worse here than in Islay where she is from, and it was all I could do to resist the urge to tell her that I hadn’t been so nosey as to ask about where she lives.  I was content knowing that I had the moral victory.

Over the next five minutes or so as the woman rolled a cigarette on the bar, I could hardly get a word in as she blurted out all sorts of information that I hadn’t asked for.  She proceeded to tell me who her sister living in Oban is as well as the local business she manages, about another family member who is soon travelling to Israel, that she works for the NHS, and that she is tired of her taxes being spent on funding paedophiles at the BBC.  It was like interacting with a walking, talking Twitter profile.  I didn’t want to be too hard on the woman, especially after she had bought me a whiskey, but boy was she hard work.  Ordinarily, the sound of last orders being called causes the heart to sink, faced with the comedown of tomorrow’s return to reality, but on this occasion, it was most welcome.  I looked forward to going home and getting into bed alone, just me and my sniffling nose with the irresistible lingering fragrance of oud wood and dark vanilla.

*Sally’s name has been altered.