Name: Henry Williams

I can't really be putting down a last name like Graystons, interminably dull. Williams is far more regal. Yes, good job Henry, brilliant last name.

Age: 39

Well 47 but I feel 39, that is to say I felt 39, and that was when I was 30. Nonetheless 39 is a very appropriate age for a bachelor.

Interests: Oh anything and everything really. I enjoy sport, particularly soccer, anything that challenges me physically. I think it's very important to remain active. I find making money to be an aphrodisiac and have been successfully running a stationary business for the last 4 years.

How I loathe sport. Committing yourself to physical exhaustion is as pointless as it is stupid. Not to mention that I hypothesize with reasonable conviction that sport in fact kills brain cells, I offer to you athletes and P.E teachers as conclusive evidence. Nonetheless I will bet that I have left numerous female minds salivating at the thought of abs and a Beckham-esque physique. And that "money is my aphrodisiac" rhubarb is superbly enticing.

What Am I Looking For: Am after a companion, someone who wants to be a best friend as well as a romantic partner. I like a women who is intelligent and enjoys good conversation. Am ultimately looking for someone to share experiences and a connection with.

Another stroke of brilliance Henry, it's not specific, it doesn't discriminate, every women is a candidate. With requests as general as this I may have well just asked for a female between the ages of 18 and death.



Outsider, of course he's an outsider. Far to large to fit in.

Stretched across his swollen belly is a white cotton shirt, made diaphanous under the armpits by sweat - improbable amounts of sweat. He heaves and lurches, belches and burches. It is his way. His awkward, disjointed waltz.

He runs his fingers over his scalp, his touch wistful of a bygone mane. Oh to have hair Henry pondered. The possibility of a lock, the chance of a trestle. He was certain that all his shortcomings as a man could be explained by the lack of that oh so precious commodity. Hair, he concluded, was the most potent symbol for virility; when he lost his hair he also lost his link to that red blooded, robust, Clint Eastwood machoness. Hair needs more than a eponymous musical. It needs a national celebration, perhaps an international week of festivity, a religion that eulogizes by shampooing and conditioning

"Eughh!" He sighed anxiously as he shifted in his seat. Then in quick succession embarrassment, followed by in even quicker succession the possibility of becoming bilious. He had sighed too loud, dreadfully too loud. It screamed above common audibility, roared above decency and almost graced disruption. People glanced at him, they probably thought ill things about him too.

Once the patrons of the restaurant returned to their meals, and with them the familiar cacophony of wine glasses clinking, language burbling, and knives and forks fighting for food resumed, he renewed his nervous wait. Expectant poor Henry was, of a lady - but do not mistake her to be simply a "lady" (although that is thus far the only description I have offered) for she is as she puts it a "Jaguar", that is the automobile not the spotted cat.

In the streams of self chatter that fill her dating profile she makes clear that like the Jaguar ( Yes, the car) she is supremely British, effortlessly classy, expensive to run and looks a treat in leather. With the extension of this metaphor having extended itself right the way through her profile Henry was rather taken, this unearned and I fear unreasonable affection was concreted by the fact it had always been a dream of his to one day drive a Jaguar (not that as a gentleman he was to ever be so presumptuous).

He fiddled with his scarf, moving it so it reached and stretched to conceal different areas of his body trying hopelessly to cover the elephantine mass that was Henry. He had become all too quickly and all too aware of his cumbersome body, he was as most people are before a romantic tryst, rather self conscious - it was just an awful shame that he had so darn much to be self conscious about.

Oh how unfair it is to be the one left waiting for their date to arrive. How dreadful time can be. In my utopia there would be no such wait, no one would be left suspended in romantic protocol - left to the beast of loneliness. Or if the aforementioned "wait" was immutably sealed in the conventions of dating then at the very least there would be a waiting room. A place where all the poor sods who had been left to there own devices at dinner tables could gather and forge a sense of community - united by women who stood time or them up.

The sweet dreamings of his far away utopia were momentarily disturbed by the recitation of the days specials in a phlegmy french accent. Henry just mentally joining this juncture in time intervened with a "Sorry, could you repeat that?". The waiter pursed his lips as if he had swallowed something more vile than the food he was serving. " Very well monsieur" He rasped.

The waiter went on to soliloquize about the various culinary creations that the menu was garnished with; Henry again ignored him.

Frustration. This boot in the face of punctuality was utterly frustrating. Megan had promised to arrive at the this temple for gastro indulgence at least twenty minutes ago. What made it worse was that this restaurant was of her choosing. However good they look in leather, Jaguars do have a reputation for unreliability.

"So what will you be having sir?"

"Oh umm. Perhaps just more bread, my date hasn't arrived."

"More bread?" (With a superior disdain as if to solidify this waiter's nationality as French)

"If it's not too much bother."

"Not at all sir." The waiter snarled as if to communicate differently.

Then through the door Megan. Although he had never met her in person before he was certain of it. Wearing an unusually large British racing green overcoat, and high cherry-red boots that corseted what Henry imagined to be her curving thighs - she was, through and through, a Jag. The confident strut up to the reception of the restaurant and her choice in wardrobe only secured and fastened this terribly seductive metaphor. Henry's heart was a flutter, his hands jittery under the expectation of a perfunctory embrace.

She looked around the restaurant, searching for the man with whom she was to enjoy this romantic rendezvous. Scanning the tables she churned through a myriad of emotions; a salad of feelings was being served on her face. Henry slowly began to regret sending her a photo of him that had been taken over decade ago - a photo chosen purely as it showed him with visible patches of head hair. The cruel back hand of virility - in his opinion the worst drug known to man.

How was he to progress, call out her name? No. He had endured enough embarrassment as it was. Dammit, he cursed. She was surely looking for a Beckham-esque, late thirties corporate high flyer. Oh how insecure Henry felt now, 47, dressed in tweed and resembling what could only be described as a much loved, well worn "Paddington Bear".

Megan just stood. Resigned to the fact that the affluent (probably hair gifted) young man she was looking for had failed to make it, hadn't bothered to show up. After sometime Henry sat and watched as Megan, his beloved Jaguar reversed away.

Feeling more deflated and alone than ever he pushed at his bread on the plate, moving it slowly from one side to the other. It acted as a meagre distraction from yet another episode in which he dined alone. Not that he felt much like eating anyway.

Henry after sometime decided he had had his fill of bread, got up and left the table. His podgy body felt twice the size, his hulking thighs seemed doubly as bloated. As he made his way out the door he caught the eye of his impossibly French waiter. The Frenchman muttered something under his breath, simply adding to the insult of failed romance.

Trudging to the bus stop was Henry, aloof to the world that scuttled by him - absorbed in rueing the days events. At the bus stop was seated a 30 something women, Italian and in a bright red trench coat (a women who for sometime had been harboring an unconsummated fetish for sad dysmorphic men). He took a seat beside her, still reasonably oblivious to her presence. She noticed Henry's altogether morose countenance and decided to distract with the apparatus of language; the transporter of conversation.

"Hi, my name's Bianca." She smiled and shot out her hand.

Henry looked up, a smirk ran it's way across his face (it was not an everyday occurence to have such a pretty young girl talk to him voluntarily). If Megan was a Jaguar this feisty Italien was most certainly a Ferrari. He quickly forgot the British tradition that Meagan had been an emblem for and fell under the spell of passion that was cast by this exotic femme fatale.

"Well hello there Bianca." Shaking her hand enthusiastically. "My name is Henry." Then after a stilted pause and a small moment of consideration, " Williams. Yes. Henry Williams."