Life, love 'n' everything

Just thought you might be getting bored with reading about bikes, so thought I'd go off at a tangent and write about something else.
As some of you will know, I lost my wife suddenly earlier this year, and my family, friends and neighbours have been very supportive towards me in what has been a very difficult time. However, I'm slightly bemused by the efforts by my friends and neighbours to get me to meet and go out with women, something I don't feel mentally or emotionally strong enough to do (yet.)
Most of my neighbours are retired women who take the approach that middle aged single men need 'someone to look after you', as obviously I can't cook for myself, clean my house, iron clothes, etc. I think they think I sit in my house watching Countdown in my underpants and eating baked beans straight from the tin!
As for my male friends, I'm amazed how many of them who have a, ahem, 'friend' who meets women through dating websites. Strange that none of them use these websites themselves, but have a 'friend' who does! One almost let the cat out of the bag when he mentioned how many women in the village were on one particular website. When I asked him how he knew, he hesitated then admitted that he'd joined the website 'just to see who was on it'. Quite!
I found this comic strip on the subject:

Which I found quite funny. However, is it just me who thinks that the 'Standard Creepiness Rule' is a bit generous? If you use this formula (age/2 +7), that would mean that that someone my age (53) could go out with someone of 34, which sounds a bit young to me. I've got nieces who are about 34, and going out with someone their age sounds a bit more than 'creepy' to me. I would have thought that about 40 was a more suitable lower end of the age range. Any thoughts? Am I being a wee bit over sensitive here?
I had an example of an older lady (c.85?) going somewhat too far to help me. I was speaking to her in the street and it was the familiar 'I hope you're looking after yourself', 'You're still a young man, you should go out and meet people', conversation, and whilst we were talking a young woman walked up the street towards us. As she drew level, the older woman turned to speak to her (she obviously knew her), then signalled towards me and said 'this poor man has just lost his wife........ would you like to go out with him?'  You should have seen the young woman's face! I was shocked, then embarrassed, and had to apologise the the young woman and tell the older one that she can't go around asking women to go out with me! The fact that the young woman was about 20 made it a lot worse, and even the concept is right off the end of the 'creepiness meter'!
At the moment I'm not even thinking about relationships, and I wouldn't be surprised if I never do. After all, I can do what I like now, it's not that I'm going to start fixing motorbikes in the house, or eating out of tins, but I can buy as many bikes as I like and go where and when I feel. However, if/when I do start 'dating' (don't you just hate that word?) again, I bet it's going to be a lot worse than when I was 20! For a start, I'm going to have to start holding my stomach in when talking to women! (Yes, we've all been guilty of that!)