This week the hayfever season has come early to our
office. As I type I can no longer see the rest of the
office for cut roses, tulips, irises and other floral
delights. Leah, our impossibly young, impossibly
pretty¹ secretary is currently the target
of a fresh flower campaign by an ardent admirer. She
is being wooed in the true old fashioned sense of the
word. At least twice a week, as we are drinking the
first mugs of tea of the day, the Interflora man
arrives with that day's pick of Covent Garden market.
This morning it was white lillies, forcing the Chief
Executive to remark that it would a horse's head in
her bed next.

All the other girls² in the office are as jealous
as the day is long. It is not that we resent Leah's
luck, it is just that we wonder why can't we, successful
girls in our late twenties, find men who seem to be
keeping the entire flower industry of Holland afloat?
While we might pretend that we are hard modern career
women, there is nothing that reduces us to emotional
pulp faster then a really beautiful bunch of flowers.
Instead, with our own love lives resembling the
Sahara, we have been forced to live vicariously
through Leah.

So where did the lucky Leah find this old fashioned
gent? Well, of all places, in a chatroom of a
prominent ISP. Being a thoroughly modern miss, she
has abandoned the old style bars and pubs she used to
frequent a Friday night. The advantages of meeting
new people in this sort of setting are clear, no
smokey atmosphere, the ability to hear what the other
person is saying perfectly and not having to run the
gauntlet of drunken city types who really fancy their
chances. The result has been a nice man who works in
private banking. The only downside is that he is
significantly older and taking the flowers home
results in awkward questions from an over protective
Mum. After chatting on line for six months, they met
in a pub in Southwark last month with Katharine and
myself hidden round the corner, just in case. He
turned out to be perfectly normal and the relationship
has blossomed. Who says romance is dead?

One of the upshots of this is that there has been
an increased interest in the internet as a medium for
meeting nice young men. No longer is Damson accused
of being a nerd by her flatmates and colleagues. Now
the office debate is which are the best flatrate ISPs
and is it too forward or a breach of netiquette to
private message someone without asking first? The
thought that it might be unethical to search for
people on Odigo solely by location and marital status
hasn't entered any one's head.

In the meantime, we all continue to bask in the
reflected glory of Leah's flowers. Katharine and Lucy
gossip about whom they met online last night and I muse
on that nice young chap from Sidcup.

Please note: All names changed for the sake of privacy!... ed

Damson Jones

29.03.01. Front Page

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