FindingTheScottie: The hashtag that illustrates a very modern romance

How modern romance works … Girl meets boy, they kiss and he walks her home. Girl gives boy her number, boy never calls. Girl plasters posters on bus stops around her London neighbourhood in the hope of finding her “Scottish Boomerang” and sets up an email address and hashtag in the name FindingTheScottie. Twitter users see posters and share. News agency contacts girl and sends her story to media outlets. Story appears on news websites.

Back on social media, the search quickly becomes a sort of boy-meets-girl version of that wretched dress everyone saw as different colours. Some view the posters as “creepy and stalkerish”, others see the “romantic and brave” nature of the quest.

But is there a “happy ever after” for the woman in question – Elisa, 28, from Italy but now living in Clapham? “Not yet,” she tells me in an exclusive interview (this column gets all the big stories). And what, I ask, does she make of the mixed response her search has had? “Well,” she says, “even my flatmate thought it was a bit scary. But the fact is me and this guy had a really nice night out together on Halloween, and I don’t want to spend the next few months thinking I should have done this or tried that.”

And what’s the plan if he never gets in touch? “At the very least,” she says, “it’s been an interesting social experiment.” And that, it seems to me, is as good a way as any to describe dating in the 21st century.

For the record

Guinness World Records Day was last Thursday. To celebrate and to publicise the latest edition of the perennially (and bemusingly) popular book, Otto the bulldog skateboarded through the legs of 30 people and a man parked a car backwards at great speed.

Now you can call me an old cynic (guilty as charged), but didn’t world records used to celebrate humankind’s most remarkable and extraordinary achievements (not to mention the dedication you apparently had to have to set or break one)? Since when was there a record for skateboarding dogs that needed breaking in the first place?

Last week, too, a man from Indiana spent three hours, 34 minutes and 33.24 seconds breaking the world record for driving round a roundabout. Which sounds inane, dull and a bit dangerous (it’s also illegal in the UK if you’re thinking of trying to better that effort). But seeing as how anyone now can invent any endeavour, however foolish, and attempt to set a world record in it, here is my effort – the most times the word “daft” has been printed consecutively in a national newspaper: daft daft daft daft daft daft daft daft daft daft (can we break out the champagne yet?).

Thinking outside the boxes

Gentrification of “characterful” areas is an issue in many parts of the world, and especially so when the phenomenon feels less creeping and more manufactured. So, it came as no surprise when a promo film by the Aerial Development Group for the Shelby Hills area of Nashville was widely criticised recently. The film, which shows prospective residents jogging, doing yoga and drinking wine on the porch, came under fire when people noticed that there were no black faces to represent an area that, in the last census, was more than 40 per cent non-white. The YouTube parodies came thick and fast.

One effort replaced the film’s background music with Rihanna and another, titled “The White People are Coming”, set the short clip to “Ride of the Valkyries”. Both have since been removed after their creators received cease-and-desist letters from Aerial’s lawyers.

Amusingly, the one parody that survives online is perhaps the most damning of all. “New Nashville”, posted by a YouTube user called Dawson Wells, sets the short film against Malvina Reynolds’ 1962 hit “Little Boxes”. “And there’s doctors/And there’s lawyers/ And business executives/And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky/And they all look just the same.” Ouch.

I’ll eat to that!

Eat Your Drink is the say-what-you-see name of a venue opening on London’s Carnaby Street this week.

Serving “edible alcoholic delights” which are the creation of a company called Smith & Sinclair, the bar (?) will serve up alcohol-infused perfumes, candy floss and cocktail pastilles.

How will people know how much they’re drinking, I ask co-founder Emile Bernard. “Our pastilles are between 6 and 8 per cent ABV and we say that if you have five, you shouldn’t drive,” he says.

Any chance of an alcoholic kebab to save me having to stop on the way home? “No,” he laughs. “Some things are best kept separate.”

No rhyme or reason

Another in a regular series of limericks based on recent events:

Once more to the jungle they trek,

To be greeted by Ant and by Dec,

So fix on those smiles,

For Bushtucker Trials,

And think of that fat juicy cheque.

Twitter: @simmyrichman