Germ warfare

I dunno, you step away from the internet for 48 hours to sleep that pesky summer bug off and people start having lives, making amazingly cool announcements, and the spammers and weirdos come out to play en masse.

A few months ago, I joined a nearby book group. Lovely people, interesting books, insightful conversation (some publishers, editors and library bods attend), boozing - what more could a girl want? Well, I liked it so much I thought I'd join another one which concentrated on different genres, to expand the old reading a bit. The new one is organised via a fairly swish website which allows you to swap messages and fill in a page about your favourite books etc. I signed up the other day, but didn't get round to putting any personal information on it.

And lo and behold, this morning I found I have been, er, 'cruised' twice by someone in the group. Lucky me. Get this:

"Hay [sic] Penny, Dan* here. Saw youd signed up in July and wanted to touch base..."

Turns out the lovely chap, on top of being a sleazebag and a right slouch with the spelling and punctuation, is claiming to be a primary school teacher in a posh part of town. Oh, and he's a Coldplay fanatic, and his fave books are The Alchemist and Harry Potter. Fortunately he doesn't like Celean Dion. Woo, lucky me.

Even in my currently febrile and weedy state, I want to punch him. Why can't people like that just piss off and join a dating agency? It's completely put me off swish new book group. Bah.

* name changed to protect the guilty