Low Life | 30 May 2009

Siren’s call

‘Looking for love?’ said a junk-mail invitation to join an online dating site free of charge. They’d hit the nail on the head. I signed up and followed the step-by-step instructions to compiling and posting my profile. First I had to describe myself in at least 28 words. Then I had to tick boxes about whether I eat meat, or smoke, or want children and so on. Finally I had to display a photograph of myself.

I have few downloadable digital photographs of myself and resorted to a snap of me taken on holiday in Guyana. I’m stepping out across the savannah at first light on the trail of a giant anteater. My luggage hadn’t turned up at the airport, and I’m wearing a yellow flat cap with ‘I love Guyana’ embroidered across the top; a shirt comprised of the red, yellow and green triangles of the Guyana national flag; and a painfully tight pair of swimming shorts; all of the above hurriedly bought in a department store in Georgetown.