I'm an unholy man looking for love (From The Argus)

I'm an unholy man looking for love

4:11pm Thursday 11th February 2010

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By Ron Sharratt - Blue Badger »

There’s a speed-dating party this weekend at a cafe in Rottingdean – when I first heard of it I thought it was a joke. I thought: “How could such a thing happen in posh Rottingdean?“.

I could understand something like this happening in the pubs in the centre of Brighton, Kemp Town or even in Woodingdean but not Rottingdean with its millionaires, big beautiful houses around the village centre and posh-talking ladies. The kind of thing you usually see in the cafes and coffee shops of the village are smartly dressed ladies and gentlemen having coffee parties but certainly not speed-dating parties.

However, some of my friends are trying to get me to go on this party – it’s been four years now since my darling wife Janine died as a result of Myotonic Muscular Dystrophy and I hate being on my own. We never had children as her disease is genetic and we were warned that any child would have a good chance of developing the condition.

My friends have said that this sounds the very thing I need to go to especially, as I reported earlier this week in the Community News of the Argus Online, the event is desperately short of men. In fact, at the time of writing, it looks as if there are going to be two women for every one man at the party and so there will be plenty of choice for the men.

But I must admit that the thought of going to such an event rather scares me. Like my Janine I am disabled and have been since I was young. In my case, I was disabled in a car accident and although I am nothing like as severely disabled as Jan, I was hurt a lot as a young man by girls who rejected me because of my disability.

I always remember one girl who attended my church saying “we girls like our men to be physically whole” and so I had to face the fact that I was unholy. It was only when I met an unholy girl, - my darling Janine - at college that I found my match.

Although she had tremendous beauty, it was her strength of character and the fact that we both had so many interests in common that really made me fall for her. However, these things took time to discover – a lot more time than you’ve got at a speed dating party - even a party in the quite sedate posh village of Rottingdean.