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Last weekend Karen was finally back in town after a couple of weeks of spectacular island holiday, trekking through jungle and peering into active volcanoes. She came over for dinner and to share pictures and stories, and Melissa came over too, to celebrate Karen’s return. It had been threatening rain all day, and sometimes had delivered on the threat. Michael and I, seeing that even this grey day was the best of the weekend forecast, had spent several hours in the garden, digging the top of the hill away and building the rock walls for the terraces. Karen watched us work for a while, and then retreated into the house to roll on the floor with Perry, smell the fantastic soup made by Rob and left temptingly on the stove, and put together her dinner contribution (which on this day was, er, the whole dinner). Michael and I dug. Karen discovered that she had left the ingredients at home and headed dismally to the grocery store to buy new ones. Michael and I dug. Karen came home, wrestled with the filo dough, told the kids what to chop and break and mix, and put the spanikopita in the oven. Michael and I finally, at long last, finished digging and began to plant. Melissa arrived, her motley dinner contribution cheerfully in hand. Michael and I dragged our weary bodies inside, pulled on clean clothes, and sat down at the dinner table with the full knowledge that we’d be sore for the next three days (and right we were!).

It was lovely sitting in my warm house (fire blazing) and eating fantastic food prepared for me by friends. It was a treat to feel my body bone tired and muscles screaming, and to know that the work I had done would lead to a better look for the back yard and also to salads picked fresh from the garden. I was outrageously blissed out. And it was still in that blissful sleepy sore state that I sat down on one side of Karen with Melissa on the other to check out pictures from the islands. Multiple laptops out and wireless in front of the fire, we three sat on the couch and thought we’d dabble in the internet dating sights briefly before turning to the serious work of holiday pictures. I was about to learn about the perils and pleasures of internet dating in a tiny country. It began like this:

Melissa had met a nice fellow on the local internet dating site, and he had ended up bringing his kids around to play for the day. Somehow they ended up looking at her internet page together, where he discovered that Melissa had just been winked at by a new guy…who happened to be this fellow’s ex-brother in law. Welcome to New Zealand. Karen wanted to see this new fellow (she hadn’t dated the brother-in-law) and asked Melissa to pop up his picture. Ahh, it turned out that Karen and Melissa were on the same internet dating site. Picture popped up, and Karen recognised this guy! He’s the vet, the one who likes jazz. She’d looked at his page as well. Laughter all around. Turn to the next one in Melissa’s queue. Karen didn’t know that one. But she knew the next fellow, and the next, and they ran through Melissa’s list with peals of laughter.

“Ahh, that’s the ecologist—I was thinking about winking at him.”

“Don’t bother, he’s seeing someone now.”

“This guy got a new picture, way better choice!” And so it was, down the list. They read profiles, admired screen names, told stories of outrageous first contacts. I found myself in multiple foreign worlds, there on my couch in front of my fire. There was the world of internet dating, which I know about only through the eyes of friends and media stars; my last date was well before the internet was invented. And there was life in this tiny fish bowl of a country, where you can guess that you and your ex-brother-in-law are on the same dating site and winking at women who will have dinner together and judge whether your new pictures are better than the old. I met Michael’s eye as and we toasted to each other for keeping us safely out of internet dating sites, and to Melissa and Karen for being brave enough to date in a fishbowl. Here's to the hope of love for us all.