Internet dating and genetics

One of the strange experiences I have had over the last two years is arranging dates over the internet. Now the Hogga is a resourceful and technologically savvy bloke, and also (if truth be told) somewhat shy about propositioning strange ladies in the pubs. And my frame, while sturdy and square, is not designed to look seductive in body-hugging disco clothing while my dancing has been likened to badly controlled epilepsy. So I took to online romance as a workable alternative.

Now this is indeed a strange thing. Being an impulsive wally, and somewhat peeved at the departure of my wife with a Pom (an insult to all colonials), I wallpapered the Web with my love cv. Specifying clearly (and later more stridently after a deluge of letters from Senegal and Uganda) that I am looking for a Caucasian and younger lady to start a family etc etc. And of course coming up with a list of physical criteria.

And thereby lies the rub. It is possible to set up a structured search for absolutely any kind of person. So for example a younger, short, attractive, childless, Christian redhead with blue eyes could be the search terms used (although I don't dare use those ones after what happened the last time, sadly I ended up marrying her!). Now in statistical terms this is known as restriction of range, and casts doubts on the validity of any generalisations made about women based on this sample. And in fairness to the aforementioned Celtic midgets, my previous long term relationships (LTR's in the dating jargon) have been with women who differ substantially from each other. Looks, intellect, temperament - each was almost the opposite of the others. There is, in short, no ideal Mrs. Hogga - although those who know me well may suggest such traits as tolerance, patience, hypersexuality and a serious interest in travel. I do have some general considerations about race and religion, and the usual wishful male requirements for someone attractive who adores me, but as stated there is no real type or look that appeals to me above others. Apart from a lingering redheadophilia (which I plan to cure by visiting the London Zoo and making ook ook noises at the orangoutangs) I am a tabula rasa, a blank slate waiting for the right author.

So a word to all my many readers - scour the list of your friends and acquaintances and if you can think of anyone who might fit, then drop me a line. If you are Lee Waters in Australia, ignore this instruction and I am very sorry about what happened with your wife's best friend. In mitigation I was coming off almost a year of celibacy and the summer sun in Brisbane played merry hell with my inhibitions.

But seriously, what a noble project! I think I have an evolutionary duty to spread my genes and if you can locate a willing, Caucasian, Celtic looking lady to take on the solemn task of incubating a new brood of Hoggas, posterity will thank you. As will I - being single is not as much fun as advertised...

Off to a job interview now, better put on my work face.

Back to the Autobiography

It occurs to me I may have inadvertently left a lot of my audience hanging. In some cases that is no more than the kind of sentence a competent court could impose, but still I feel a sense of responsibility towards my readers. What with digressions into Kuwait climatology, elimination habits of the Middle and Near East and my patchy career, I have neglected my original story about the life of the young Hogga.

Those of you who have been paying attention will recall I departed from the Hogga biography while still a tender fourteen year old in my 'O' level year at Fort Victoria High School. "Fourteen?" I hear you exclaim. Yes indeed. As I mentioned earlier, Mashaba Primary School was a sort of catch all for kids of the local mine employees and contractors and my ability to read without moving my lips soon brought me to the attention of the teachers. As did my intense curiosity and sense of mischief. I am still not sure if I was moved ahead a year because I was bright or because I was naughty. Anyway, the nett result was that I was 11 on entering Fort Vic High School in 1973, 14 in Form 4 and a mere stripling of 16 when I hit Chaplin High to complete my A levels (and incidentally to escape the wrath of a senior policeman in Fort Victoria, whose daughter and I had been unjustly accused of lewd behaviour while we were both boarders in Les Sharp House - I left at the end of the year but she was expelled immediately).

Chaplin was a bit of a disaster actually. More of the same turgid teaching of science and very little to actually fit me for social competence. In their defence they did at least realise that a diet of physics, chemistry, maths and biology would lack certain trace elements so we were also required to do "General Studies" (usually rudimentary overviews of native languages, basic music or the like) and "Use of English". I was still a miscreant, prone to sneaking out the school hostel and playing table soccer down in the "black" part of Gwelo, smoking, and generally being a nuisance in class. And hopeless at pure maths too. My inability to master calculus, and my penchant for bursting into song in class or mimicking the "Attack of the Man Eating Desk" with full body motions, screams and sound effects were a sore test of the patience of our chainsmoking maths master, Mike Neale (affectionately known as Duck for his weird walk). He was marvellously patient - unlike the ratbag chemistry teacher who developed a fermenting hatred of me from the first day. And in my callow and careless way I saw to it that he was kept well supplied with grievances - a decison which came back to haunt me in 1979 when the selfsame weasel was able to blackball me from receiving school athletics colours, the M level French prize and the A level Chemistry prize, all of which I had earned. Oh how we laughed in our cruel childish way when his wife left him for a Shona gentleman.

Strange how school days have such a profound influence on us, an influence that lingers years later. In fact I went fishing at Chirundu with my dad in 1981 once I got out the Air Force, and this same nameless and wifeless geezer was apparently somewhere close by but I was deliberately not told for fear I'd do him a mischief.

One of the funniest events (one of many, of course) was my ceremonial departure from Chaplin after completing my A levels in 1978. I had just turned 17, was off on an overseas holiday and full of rejoicing at finally leaving the stultifying, khaki-clad environment of a Rhodesian school. I guess smoking in the dining hall and burning my school tie on the steps of the Beit Hall were a little excessive, but as far as I was concerned I was off to the military the next year and cared not a jot what the teachers thought. A sad day indeed when I was rejected for military service for being too young. My Dad, bless his authoritarian hide, decided that what I really needed was to return to school to improve my admittedly putrid A level results. Ah, the shame of it. Creeping back to Chaplin (and we had to pull some strings with the Ministry to allow that), into the tender care of a new neo-Nazi housemaster with a nanoscopic sense of humour and a wicked right arm and under final warning of expulsion from Day One. A sad year for the Hogga, only mitigated by my romantic life livening up and by the advent of some new blood into Chaplin from Plumtree, Guinea Fowl and Que Que High Schools. But more of that later, I need to scan some photos when I get back to Bracknell.

Alea iacta est

The die is cast - returning to Kim's house in Maritzburg after a few beers with Franek Raciborski and Brian Hewitt (old Fort Vic High School mates) I fired off a polite resignation letter to my boss and the HR Director back in Riyadh. It has been interesting and instructive living in one of the most conservative countries in the world but it finally occurred to me that my limited expertise in attracting women centres on my sparkling wit after a few drinks - and being somewhere that beer and dating are both illegal meant the chances of finding the next Mrs. Hogga were vanishingly small. Also the surgeon's acerbic comments on the state of my knees in particular and my health in general have hastened the move to a less stressful lifestyle.

So where to now? Well, as I sit in the smoking lounge in Joburg Airport (a little known fact is that they have free internet connections) the plan is to see out the month of September in Riyadh then head back to the UK and spend October doing some rehab on my knees. I may return to the Gulf and Levant regions for November and December to work on the internal EY rollout of PeopleSoft financials, but as a contractor. January onwards I think I'll be back in the UK doing contract work and relishing the free availability of alcohol and pig products. And by July 2006 I should be a loyal subject of HM the Queen of England, duly kitted out with British passport and the ability to legally cause havoc anywhere in the EU. Then, in true Hogga fashion, with a house and residency in the UK all sorted, I will probably go somewhere else like Oz or back to SA.

It was good to be back with the family in South Africa. But (and those of you who are passionate Afro-optimists should skip this next paragraph), all the reasons I originally left SA are still very much there. The crime level is still horrific, most of the HR work available is restricted to non-white people and as far as I can tell the only culture in Natal was due to an overturned yoghurt tanker on the freeway a couple of days ago. Already the mutterings over land redistribution are getting louder and more strident; the new Deputy President of SA (replacing Jacob Zuma who was fired for corruption) is on record as saying SA can learn from the Zimbabwe methods and the streets are awash with litter and faeces thrown by striking municipal workers. If I won the Lotto I'd acquire some land in Oz and forcibly relocate my family, bribing them wherever necessary. But they are well settled there, and heavily invested too meaning a move will be a great trauma. Of course each brother has not only a wife and kids, but in-laws too and none of them will take kindly to losing their daughters.

So back to the desert it is. Dubai tonight, Kuwait tomorrow morning and (a curse on the inaccessibility of the Saudi capital to external flights) Riyadh tomorrow evening. Ah well, spare shirts in my bag and a load of books and I should survive. It will be interesting on Saturday morning when I return to the office for the first time since early July and see how my boss handles the resignation letter..