It was Spring 2005 and I was living alone in South Western France. After the day at work I would travel back to the great big farmhouse that I was renting and try and understand French TV. There was a dial up connection available at the property. I soon got fed up of French TV and started using the internet as my entertainment. It wasn't long before I started to investigate online dating.
Even though I had been around the internet for seven or eight years I was still cautious about using internet dating sites. I was aware of the stigma attached to them. I certainly wasn't going to tell any of my friends anything about my secret online life!
At first I would put some scant details about myself, mostly truthful, but never a photo and I would never pay, just relying on the features of the sites that were given to non-paying members. In those days there were two UK sites that stood out - Match.com and DatingDirect. I was a non-paying member of both. After several weeks of nosing around I eventually started to 'wink' at some of the women I liked. Nothing. Then more nothing. Ok, I thought, let's take the bull by the horns and get on with it, so I subscribed to Match.com.
I kept on looking at profiles and, since I hadn't dated for around a decade, didn't really know the correct form for approaching women. I got it wrong so many times. In the end I thought 'I'm in France, very few people know me here, what have I got to lose?'.
Months of nothing happening passed by and I was just about to throw in the towel, when out of the blue, Olga dropped me an email. It was a very long letter-type email. Still, it was the only bite I had had to date, so I thought about how I was going to answer. She was working in Paris, a place I passed through a couple of times a month and also went to London frequently, again a place I went to often.
We corresponded a lot, maybe even as much as 50 'letters' backwards and forwards. We had taken so long to do this that I felt like I knew every detail about her life and she about mine. It was time to move in for the kill and get that first internet date! I suggested we speak on the phone, we were both in France, after all. She tried to call me a few times and couldn't get through. I put it down to the telephone exchange in the local area, which was in a very remote part of the French countryside. I suggested that I call her. Then she went very quite all of a sudden, no emails, nothing.
A week or so later I received an email from her saying that she had had to return to Moscow at short notice and that she would like to talk again. So, taking this at face value, I arranged to call her in Moscow. The line was very bad and we kept getting cut off. We finally had enough conversation pieced together and we agreed to meet. We started talking about where and when. She offered London and I said that sounded good to me, but then she had problems with her visa.
I had been running international development for the French company I had been working for, so I had accumulated tens of thousands of air miles with Air France. I used these to buy my ticket.
I then had to travel to London to get my visa. I remember it was Easter Monday 2005. The reason I remember the date so clearly is that virtually all of London was closed, except for the Russian Consulate, which was open as Russians don't celebrate religious festivals.
I thought I had all the paperwork I needed on arrival at the consulate. I presented the bundle of documents (including my pre-paid five star hotel accommodation voucher). The brusque man behind the desk passed the documents back to me 'you need two photo, not one'. Damn it, I was running out of time, the fastest the consulate will process an application is an hour and it was 11.30, the consulate was closing at 1.00. I ran down the road and found a convenience store owner who gladly gave me the photos in return for £10 - bargain!
I went back to the consulate, there was a sliding scale of charges, based upon how quickly you needed the visa. Two weeks and it costs £10, then half day around £100, but if you want it in an hour, then it way £200. Ah well, she was a very pretty girl and I was getting a holiday out of it, besides I'd already spent the money on the hotel and used my airmiles on my plane ticket, so £200 was nothing at this point in time.
At 11:55 the man behind the counter said, 'ok, we issue you visa, now you go to counter 4 to pay'. I looked at counter four (I was at counter one). Counter 4 was closed. Anyway, not wanting to point out the obvious, I wandered over to Counter 4. As I did, the man from Counter 1 got off his seat and made his way over to Counter 4. We went through the process of me handing over the money, my passport and all the stamped documents were then sent down a chute. I was informed to go downstairs to collect my visa.
On arrival downstairs I was met by a stern looking woman. I said 'hello there, I think that's my visa, any chance I could take it?'. She replied 'What service you did pay forrrr?', I told her about the one hour service, she replied 'you wait', so wait I did for 55 minutes!
No comments:
Post a Comment