Dominic Monaghan Ate My Hamster

”Your Heathcliff quality cannot be found

In places where I’ve looked around,

Like Swindon.”

~Excerpt from ‘To Her Coy Master’ by Carole Bound 1972

There are no James May’s in Swindon. I found one similar (sans shaggy long hair) a couple of years ago from Reading (or was it Cheltenham?).  Long before I knew who James May was but when I was well into my middle-aged men period.  Sadly he had the personality of a piece of MDF and was about as interesting. Looks indeed are not everything, but he did wear a jumper well.

There are no Matthew Fox’s in Swindon either for that matter. There are plenty of urban foxes, but I’ve yet to meet a native Swindoo male who uses moisturiser simply because he’s ‘worth it’. Or who cultivates the fine art of facial hair so that it doesn’t just look unshaven and rough but manages to achieve just the right level of sexy*.

*for further studies see also Holloway, Josh

Maybe my standards are just set too high, after all if all the men out there are looking for Angelina Jolie or Scarlett Johansson, I’m screwed since I have more of a Dawn French thing going on. I’ve dated plenty of men and boys in my 36 years…but it just dawned on me today, that I’ve never dated a man from Swindon. Lived in Swindon? Yes. But Swindon born and bred? Never.

What is wrong with Swindon men?

“I can’t read and I can’t write

But that don’t even matter

Coz I comes from Wiltshire

And I can drives a tractor”

~Local proverb circa 1975 best spoken with a thick West Country accent

I was born in 1972 in the Princess Margaret Hospital in Swindon (don’t go looking for it, they’ve pulled it down*), but I was raised in a small town west of Swindon called Wootton Bassett by parents who had emigrated from even further south, Cornwall. Therefore whilst I fulfil the criteria for a Swindonian from the circumstances of my birth, one is not a native Swindoo, by virtue of not having generations of relatives in Swindon and never having lived there for the first 20 years of my life.

Of course the fact that you can stand on the Wootton Bassett side of the M4 motorway junction 16 and lob a tennis ball across it quite easily and have it land in Swindon on the opposite side is neither here nor there. As long as the junction remains, Wootton Bassett will never be a part of Swindon.

Thus my exposure to the Swindon male was exceedingly limited until I turned 16. Although I was to deny myself the opportunity to investigate these strange and mysterious creatures close up in their native habitat by opting to stay at my comprehensive school’s sixth form (don’t go looking for it, they’ve pulled it down*) to complete my A levels rather than go with several friends to Swindon College. A move I was to regret much later in life when I attended the Regent’s Circus College (don’t go looking for it, they’re going to pull it down*) as a mature student.

Once I reached the 6^th form I was to begin my dating adventures in earnest. But not one boy that I was to date hailed from Swindon. A couple of them lived in Swindon (a place as exotic to me as Kazakhstan) and many forays were made into ‘town’ to the night clubs or to hang out at Steve’s comic book shop above Harry’s video shack. But the ones I dated who lived in Swindon came from distant places like Oxford and Dundee.

Somehow, during my formative years, I never met a Swindoo male who asked me out on a date. I lived in the country and they were in the town and n’er the twain should meet. Plus I had an instinctive hatred of nightclubs.

I have always hated dancing (from the years of forced ballroom dancing to the clinging slow dances of my early adulthood) and believe Mr Darcy said it best when he claimed that “every savage can dance”.

Plus one tended to stick to the floors of the nightclubs (of which there were three – Brunel Rooms, Hardings and Level 3. The names have changed over the years but the floors still haven’t been cleaned apparently). And the drinks were over priced, the music loud and the women paraded and the men trawled as if it were a cattle market.

Wootton Bassett had a night club, called Charlies, which was over the shopping arcade (200 yards of bakers, cobblers and haberdasheries). Charlies was a room of approximately twenty square feet. I went there once. I didn’t dance. And I didn’t pull.

Then there was the year of self-imposed exile where I went to live in Bath (and didn’t date at all) to be followed by the bright lights of the Wiltshire Constabulary (Swindon Central to be precise, although don’t go looking for it, they’ve pulled it down*) beckoning to me.

I was young, I was fit, and I had hair down to my bum. I was fending off the advances with an exemplary knowledge of Star Trek: The Next Generation and a two-tone Austin Metro, enough to disturb even the most persistent of admirers.

Still, nights out with the girls (and the boys) were spent in the desperate nightclubs of Swindon. I remember one night chatting with a really cute guy, short dark hair, and blue eyes. And I thought, finally, a Swindoo male I am attracted to. And then he told me to come by the McDonalds drive-thru anytime and he’d give me a free burger.

I was never going to meet my ideal mate at a nightclub in Swindon (or anywhere else for that matter), so I stopped going.

From that point on I exclusively dated police officers (from varying departments and of various ranks). Not one of them had been born in Swindon. And they all, in one way or another, turned out to be bastards of the highest order.

I really wanted to just find a nice local guy but now I was in a position to clearly see what nature had brought forth with her native sons.

Bad hygiene, bad posture, bad teeth, and a serious lack of brain matter. I once remember a lad trying to chat me up by proudly exclaiming that he had ‘only ever read one book’ and it was ‘quite good. A bit like a film with words.’

But the voice, the voice was the most annoying thing…every statement was followed with the word ‘right’.

“You listening to me, right?”

“Do you want a drink, right?”

All in a light west country accent that invariably meant dropped h’s, t’s and a yokel twang redolent of those native to Bristol (yes I know James May is from Bristol but he no more has a Bristol accent, than I have a Swindon one).

And then my days of dating were no more. I settled down in Swindon itself with the man who was to be my partner for 12 years. He came from Oxford. I moved to the West Swindon Police Station (don’t go looking for it, they’ve pulled it down*) and decided to go back to college part time as a mature student to do A levels in film and media studies.

At last, complete exposure to the boys I had missed out on in my youth. There was I, an early thirty something, in a classroom of 17 and 18 year olds. Fabulous. Here were boys who knew how to moisturise, what hair product was for and had gleaming white smiles even Richard Hammond would be envious of.

As I got to know them, I was to learn that these Greek beauties (as Oscar Wilde would have considered them) were not native to the town that was now my home. In fact the ‘local’ students, and there were two of them (this was a very small class) had distinct body odours and wore anoraks with a fur trim, a style which I had not seen since the late seventies.

Time had not improved the Swindoo male. Two generations on and the town was still producing either Adrian Mole or lager swilling football hooligans.

Circa 2005 I was suddenly single again. Rather stupidly I rushed into dating at the earliest opportunity and had two very unsuccessful dates, which included Mr MDF from Cheltenham (through a dating agency *hangs head in shame*) and a friend of a friend from somewhere exotic like Chichester.

Both were disasters. I wasn’t interested and they were duller than the toes of my work shoes. I had to accept that the single life was the way forward.

So is there a conclusion that can be reached from this self-indulgent and overly dramatic rendition of my dating days?

Should it be that I should give Swindon men a chance? That having dated from a gene pool that covers the length of Britain, I should be looking closer to home?

I’ve skimmed the dating sites, I’ve looked at the police profiles, I’ve even eyed a barista or two in Starbucks, but invariably the native Swindon son is found wanting. Right?

Wrong.  I am not afraid to put my hand up and admit that clearly the fault lies with me.  An exemplary knowledge of Star Trek, a legacy of crappy cars and an arse that clearly indicated (even at my thinnest) that it was only a matter of years before it would begin spreading.

There are great guys in Swindon, heck I’m certain there are great guys in virtually every town.  If we haven’t found one girls, it’s probably because they’re smart enough to avoid us!

*One wonders where they will put my memorial plaque in 2172a.d