The Girlie Night Out

Music: U Sure Do - Strike

So how was your Saturday night?  Mine was pretty eventful as it goes.  Well, from what I can remember anyway...

After umming and ahhing and fannying about, I finally decided to take up the offer of my best friend Nicola for a good old fashioned girlie night out around my home town.

I arrived at Nicola’s house at about six o’clock on Saturday evening after spending a lovely afternoon with my Mum, Dad and Grandma. It was really good to see everyone and my Grandma was in good spirits which I was really happy to see after her latest round of chemo. After chatting away the entire afternoon and drinking copious cups of tea, I set off for Nic’s and I was the first one of the girls to arrive.  There was only one thing to do: crack open a bottle of wine and chill out on her squishy leather sofas whilst we waited for our friends Jayne and Aarti.

A few hours, several bottles of wine and too many shots of sambuca later, we were all present and correct and piling into a taxi to whisk us off into town...

Our taxi pulled up on Preston's main street, just outside of the legendary Yates’ Wine Bar at just after 10pm. Such a classy place.  Most of the bars and pubs line the main drag, which is very helpful when you’re tottering about on your heels after one too many sambucas.

“Right then ladies!” Nicola announced as we stumbled into the bar. “What are we all having?”

Inside it was dark, the music loud and the place is packed with young girls in towering heels, groups of men drinking pints and eyeing up the women, and the dodgy DJ that Aarti had a bit of a fling with a few months ago.

“I’ll have my usual please mate,” I say to Nicola, who promptly orders me a vodka lime and soda.

“Half a lager for me please,” Jayne says before disappearing off to the loo.

“I’m a bit nervous about tonight you know,” I say to Nicola as the foxy barman bends down to get a bottle out of the fridge which shows off his taut arse, a sight that doesn’t escape either of us.

“Nice.” I comment, to which Nicola agrees.

“I’ll say. Anyway, what you on about being nervous for?” Nicola laughs. “You’ve got nothing to worry about at all. It’s going to be a great night, just us girls,” she says as she digs her purse out of her bag.

It’s not that I don’t believe her. It’s just that she’s said that on a night out before, just before she cornered me with the ugliest man in the world.

Who am I kidding? I don’t believe her.

“Please just promise me that you’re not going to try and set me up with some hideous munter,” I say, as Aarti motions that she’ll be back in a minute and then wanders off.

“You know I can never promise you that,” Nicola replies with a devilish glint in her eye.

Oh great. That’s just what I need: a night spent fending off weirdos and serial killers.

“Nah, I’m only joking love,” Nicola continues. “If you do meet anyone tonight I think for once you deserve for him to be nice.”

Ah well, we’ll see about that. I’ll be quite happy to have a few drinks and a good laugh with my mates. Hang on, is this just a ploy to throw me off my guard and into the arms of a random minger?

“Where’s Aarti anyway?” Nicola asks as the barman hands us our drinks.

“Over there,” I reply. “She’s chatting up DJ Dickcheese again,” I say, nodding over to Aarti who is leaning into the DJ booth.

Maybe calling him DJ Dickcheese is a little unfair, but he's like a walking ball of Edam with uber-gelled slicked back hair, with a penchant for making ridiculous gun slinging gestures with his hands in his feeble attempts to look 'cool'.  Idiot.  Oh and he's a total arsehole too.

“Oh God, not again,” Nicola replies. “I think we need to go and grab her.”


Having wrestled Aarti back to the bar, we end up having another drink before deciding to head off for a dance before Aarti tries to pull the hideous DJ again. Our destination is the wonderful *cough* Squires, which is one of the handful of clubs in Preston that specialises in sticky dance floors, overpriced sugary drinks, and a clientele that ranges from pissed up students, stag and hen dos, big groups of blokes, young girls dolled up to the nines and everyone in between. Unlike some of the other clubs the majority of people that frequent Squires are usually a little older than the barely legal brigade so I don’t feel ridiculously old as we make our way to the dance floor and start to dance much less sexily than we probably imagine. It doesn’t matter as we are all having a great night.

It is exactly how I remembered it: the dark dance floor is a mass of people flailing about to the anthems of yesteryear. The place is filled with a mixture of people: some fit, some fat, and some just God damn fugly.

“Come on mate!” I hear Nicola shout behind me. “We’ve got to go and dance to this!” and in one swift move she grabs my hand and her drink and drags me to the dance floor.

It feels like I’ve been blasted back to ten years earlier when I first embarked on vodka-fuelled nights out with my now very best friend. The lights flash and the music blares and I realise I am having a great time as I dance and drink and catch the eye of some cute blokes on the dance floor.

As Nicola plies me with drinks and we keep on dancing, the night melts into an alcohol laced blur. What follows I can’t exactly be sure of as the sambuca flowing through my veins combines with the deadly alcopop that I’m drinking causing my memory function to disengage, instead leaving a gaping black hole.

Now in the cold light of day I’m trying to piece together the missing hours from last night where I lost (amongst other things): my memory, most of the contents of my purse and undoubtedly some of my dignity. I can remember everything until just after midnight, and then? Well, then I can’t remember much at all.

Well, that’s not strictly true as I do remember Craig...

Brace Yourselves... It's ON

Music: Push The Feeling On - Nightcrawlers

OK, so I've been weighing it all up and taking all your comments on board and I've decided that I am going to go out with my very best friend Nicola this weekend.  I've not exactly been a recluse for the past month but it's been pretty close, and I could really do with a proper girlie night to brush away the cobwebs.  I'm visiting my family and my Grandma on Saturday afternoon, then it's all aboard the Nostalgia Express as I head off to my old stomping ground from my college days: the wonder that is Preston, Lancashire on a Saturday night. 

Preston is many things: a northern working class university city; home to one of the oldest football clubs, Preston North End; birth place of sexy England cricketing hero Andrew Flintoff and rather randomly it is one time home to the parents of the legendary outlaw Butch Cassidy. Preston is also perfect if you’re looking for a great, alcohol fuelled night out, especially if you don’t mind pubs and bars that are a bit rough around the edges. The same can be said for most of the people drinking in them. I love it. It’s where my friends and I went out drinking when we were all underage, painted with lip gloss and wearing micro-mini skirts. The height of late 1990s chic - or not. All the old places from those days are still there: Yates’, Wall Street, Revolution, Takkies, Squires – the list goes on and there are far too many others to mention, but every time I return to these places I feel the glow of nostalgia and I wouldn’t change them for the world.

It's payday today so after work I’m going to buy myself a killer new outfit and some sexy, spiky heels to make sure I feel über vampy and alluring for my first proper night out as a newly single girl. Who am I kidding? I know I’m going to be tottering round after one too many vodkas, then heading off to the tackiest nightclub with the stickiest floor to get chatted up by mingers.  Just a typical night out round my home town then...

In spite everything else that’s going on I think it’s just what I need to put a spring back into my step.

I'll let you all know what happens!

Mr. Friend of a Friend: More Than Friends?

Music: We Are Your Friends - Justice vs Simian

Whilst I'm deciding whether or not to go out this weekend, I thought I'd treat you to the final dating disaster from the last time I was single.  This one still makes me cringe to this day...

I think that some men are best left well alone. These men include members of your family, weird men that sit alone on park benches, and friends of friends that are mildly obsessed with you.

I’m not blowing my own trumpet but I’d kind of had the feeling for a few months that Beth’s friend John liked me, and even though I didn’t fancy him I didn’t exactly discourage his attentions. In all honesty I found it all extremely flattering, and sometimes I’d sit and daydream about him in a way that almost convinced me that there might be something there. It’s a big ego boost for a girl who’s had her heart bruised and her self-esteem squashed by the love of her life to have a guy always asking after her, blushing when she talks to him and being fascinated by every word that passes her lips. I’ve never been an object of desire like that before and it felt good. I put to the back of my mind the fact that I didn’t fancy him remotely as I figured it wasn’t something that I’d have to deal with. Instead I could pretend that I was wandering round in blissful ignorance about the whole thing and laugh it off if anyone dared to even suggest that he might have a bit of a thing for me.

The flirting had been going on for months, and John had developed a sudden interest in rugby and had started to support the same team as me. Hell, he even came to matches and bought a replica shirt. All the signs were there, but I just played along thinking that he was just being sweet and that there was nothing serious going on, all the while enjoying all the attention.

It was on a night out with some of my friends from university that things all came to a head. John sent me a text to ask if I was out in town that night, and the half tipsy me replied :

“Yes, why don’t you come out....”

I’d been telling my friends all about him, and wanted a second opinion I suppose. I knew deep down that I didn’t fancy him, but with a few vodkas pumping their way round my system he was starting to become an increasingly more attractive proposition. I can see how wooing used to work in the old days, as I think perseverance really can wear a girl down so that she eventually yields to the most persistent of suitors. Well, when she’s half-cut at least. John met us in the club that we were in, and I introduced him to my friends and we all danced for a bit.

After a while, my mate Amrit pulled me to one side and warned me to be careful as she sensed that he definitely wanted to be more than just a friend.

“Do you think so?” I slurred....

“Yes. Definitely,” was her response.

Why I did this I will never know, but I marched right up to him and said:

“You fancy me, don’t you?” and looked at him straight in the eye.

The poor f*cker didn’t stand a chance.

“Er, yeah,” he replied, and before he had a nanosecond to register what just happened I launched myself at him and was slobbering all over his face. (I was drunk. I wasn’t being alluring).

We locked tongues for about ten minutes (I might have been pissed, but he wasn’t a great kisser by anyone’s standards) then it dawned on me what I was doing:

Shit. You are snogging a friend of a friend that you do not fancy at all. He’s not just a random bloke that you can hide from in the loos until he goes away. You are going to see him again. It is going to be toe-curlingly embarrassing. He is going to think that you fancy him. He is going to want to TAKE YOU OUT ON A DATE.

F*CK.

F*CK.

F*CK.

So what did I do?

I ran off to the toilets and hid.

I had been avoiding John by skulking about in the Ladies for a good thirty minutes when my friend Amrit eventually came and found me.


“You know, John’s wondering where the hell you’ve gone to. What the hell are you doing? Why did you kiss him? You don’t even fancy him!”

I know. I KNOW!

Amrit and I headed back to the dance floor, and I strategically placed at least two people in between John and me at all times for the rest of the night. I thought I might have got away with it, until we were all getting in a taxi at the end of the evening, as John assumed that he was invited back to my place and tried to climb in with us. I can only thank my lucky stars that the taxi driver (for once) was on my side.

“Only 4 in the taxi mate. No room! No room!” Joe le Taxi yelled at John as he tried to squeeze in.

Phew. Thank God we didn’t hail a 5 seater. I pulled the door shut and John waved us off, looking slightly pissed off. (Cheeky bastard. Did he think I was going to shag him that night? Charming.)

The next day I think that even an intravenous drip would have failed to rehydrate me I felt so rough. I lay in bed until mid afternoon, piecing together all the hideous bits of the night before. It must have been about 4pm when my phone pinged with an incoming text message:

John:

Hey how are you? Great night last night. Can I take you out next week for a meal or something? Jx

AAAAAGGH! There it was. How on earth do I play this one? I decided that the best course of action was radio silence, so I ignored it.

The day after.

Ping.

John:

Hello hope you’re OK. Didn’t hear back from you yesterday... So which days are good for you next week? Jxx

Two kisses this time. Hmm, slightly more insistent. I thought it best to reply as I couldn’t ignore him forever. Let’s blame the alcohol. Yeah, good idea...

Hi, yeah I had a good night thanks. Really enjoyed catching up with my uni mates and I was so drunk! Sorry I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. Think it’s best if we just stay friends.

I felt like such a bitch, and I know that I probably was. However, I didn’t see what was about to happen next and none of my friends did either. I thought that John might lie low for a couple of weeks and lick his wounds, maybe not come out as much to start off with and definitely stop going to watch the rugby, but what actually happened was unprecedented and might I add completely weird. John fell off the face of the earth for six months. SIX MONTHS!

No-one heard from him. He went down to London to work for a bit and stayed with family and didn’t get in touch with anyone. Even Beth couldn’t get hold of him and they’d been really good mates for years.

When John eventually came back, he met up with Beth and told her that me messing him around had been the last thing in a long list of things that had gone wrong and he just needed to get away for a while. Fair enough, I thought, we’ll at least be able to be civil to each other when we meet, and I’m sure he’ll understand that I still wasn’t 100% after splitting up from the Evil Cockbag (even though we’d been separated for about five months when John and I kissed). Hey it was a good reason and I was sticking to it!

I was round at Beth and Rob’s one night just for a bit of a catch up, and we were sat in the lounge when there was a knock on the back door and a “Hello” as it opened. We all looked at each other as we knew it was John, and this would be the first time I’d seen him since he’d been back. Beth and Rob were sat on the sofa, and I was on the chair facing them. As John walked through the kitchen he saw me, and stopped dead in his tracks in the doorway to the lounge. I said hi, and he responded, but he couldn't look me in the eye. He focussed on Beth, and even when I asked him a question he replied whilst looking at her. Very strange. You won’t turn to stone if you look at me you know! John must have stayed all of two minutes before he made an excuse and left. As soon as the door shut we all burst out laughing.

Jesus, is that the effect I have on men? Beth and Rob assured me that John was just being weird and all I’d done was kiss him. Even though he’s a friend of a friend and therefore should come with a gold stamp of approval, it just goes to show that some people have a little too much crazy in them. He’s back living up north now and has a new girlfriend who he’s been seeing for a couple of years, however if we ever bump into each other it’s always really awkward. I don’t want to think that I had such an impact on someone but maybe I did? Or maybe he’s just a bit weird and can’t get over any kind of rejection. Who knows...? Either way this whole situation left me feeling like such a cow and I don’t want to go down the route of leading someone on like that again just to make myself feel good, so sorry John, you know who you are.

Points to note

• An ego-boost is all well and good, but I shouldn’t be so wrapped up in it that I stomp on other people’s feelings

• I should follow my gut instinct as it’s almost always right

• Alcohol AGAIN makes snogging people seem like a good idea. Damn it.

January Sucks

Music: January Rain - David Gray

I'm glad January is almost over.  It's always the worst month of the year for me.  It's cold, dark, and this year was even worse as it's been horrendously snowy here in the UK.  I'm always skint in January after being paid early in December, and after splitting up with my boyfriend a couple of days after New Year's Eve I've not really been in the mood to socialise.  This is why my blog posts have so far have been about my previous dating disasters and not about what I've been up to, which is because in reality, I've not really been up to much.

January has been especially shit this year for another reason though.

Unfortunately before Christmas my Grandma was diagnosed with cancer.  Her radiotherapy has been going really well though and she seems to be feeling a bit better.  Therefore I'm going home this weekend to spend some time with my family, although my Mum is encouraging me to take my best friend Nicola up on her offer of a girlie night out.  I wasn't going to go out as it doesn't feel right for me to be heading to pubs with my mates and getting drunk when my Grandma is so ill, but my Mum keeps telling me that life goes on regardless and my Grandma wants the newly single me to go out and have a good time and forget all about my evil idiot ex-boyfriend.  She never liked him from the moment she met him.  If only I'd listened to her.  She's a wise old lady is my Grandma.

So what should I do?  I'm going back home to visit my Grandma on Saturday afternoon.  It's weird, but I think a night of letting my hair down with my friends might be just what I need after everything that's been happening.  I'm feeling loads better after the end of my last relationship (although I'm not quite ready to tell that particular story yet). Oh I don't know.  What do you think?  Should I get dolled up and hit the town with my friends?

Mr. Side Parting: The Brush Off

Music: Sad Story - Plain White T's

So despite all my reservations about our date, Mr. Side Parting and I met. 

When he was walking towards me, he only vaguely resembled the man I’d swapped spit with a few days before. Damn vodka. He looked much older than I remembered too, late thirties I’d say, and a bit unkempt. The “indie” look which I’d fancied on Saturday was actually just general scruffiness.

His hair was long and a bit shaggy which I usually like, but he hadn’t even been arsed to wash it. He was wearing a “white” t-shirt which was now off white at best but closer to “grubby” after one too many outings, and as he approached me, the slight breeze didn’t do him any favours as it blew his manky top against his chest and showed off his moobs somewhat spectacularly. Not a man who looks after himself too much then. We headed to a quiet bar, and as we took our seats I told him about the situation with the project, all the time noting that his fingernails were chewed and dirty and that he hadn’t even bothered to shave. I played the potential for receiving an emergency phone call down, willing myself to give him a chance.

Ten minutes passed, and it felt like several lifetimes. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone so difficult to talk to in my whole entire life and we did the exact opposite of click. We’d already covered music, sport and TV in that short time – topics that I can usually talk about with someone for hours. Still, it was early days so I persevered...

"So do you go out in Leeds often then?"  I asked as I took a sip of my diet coke.

I know, such a lame line but I was running out of inspiration.

"I only moved back up here from London a couple of weeks ago," Side Parting said as he started picking his fingernails.

"Oh really?"  I replied.  "How come?"

It was an innocent enough question, but I wasn't prepared for what was coming next.  Let's just say it was Classic Dating Gold.

"I'd been living with my girlfriend in London but she moved back up north for a job, so I followed her," he began.

"Oh right."  I replied.

Eh?  Did he stalk her up the M1 or something? 
Side Parting must have noticed the quizzical look on my face, as he quickly moved to allay my fears.

"Don't worry, we're not still together or anything!" he 'reassured' me.  "I'm not cheating on her with you, if you're worried about that!"

Well no I wasn't, but I was keeping my fingers crossed, as it would have been an excellent Get Out of Date Free card.

"You see it's a bit complicated," Side Parting continued.

Great.

"I mean, I did move up here to be with her... But when I got here she dumped me in less than a week," he continued, looking totally tragic.

Marvellous.

Cue a five minute (one sided) conversation about his ex-girlfriend, how he felt about her, what he thought they were going to do in the future and where he thought it all went wrong.  I'd say it was your manky T-shirts and chewed up fingernails for starters mate.

Still I decided to try and appear interested in him and steer the discussion away from exes, so I attempted to change the topic of conversation.

"So where are you living now?" I asked as I sipped my drink.  "You must have been lucky to find a place to rent so quickly after only getting back a couple of weeks ago?"

"Oh no", Mr. Side Parting said, "I’m back living with my Mum and my Grandma and I'm sleeping on the sofa bed in the spare room."

I thought he was joking, but alas he was being deadly serious. Man, I wish I could have a beer.

So to summarize, I was on a date with a totally unattractive, tediously dull bloke in his late thirties, who’d just told me all about his evil bitch of an ex-girlfriend and how he'd stalked her from London before she dumped him, leaving him to live with his Mum and Grandma in a small box room. Oh, and did I mention that as he left London so quickly he didn’t have to foresight to line himself up with a job, so he spends most of his days watching Jeremy Kyle and QVC but still doesn’t find the time to wash his t-shirts properly.

What a catch. This was now officially the worst and most painful date of my life. Not only was he unattractive, but he was blatantly not over his ex and nothing in his life seemed to be going for him. Except for when Beth rang, as I hot footed it out of there faster than a cheetah with its arse on fire, therefore saving both myself and Mr Side Parting from any more stilted conversation and very awkward silences. He knew that the date was terrible too, and happily I never got another stalky (or any sort) of text message from him again.

Post mortem:

• Seriously. Learn the lesson that alcohol in vast quantities does not help you meet nice men.

• Text stalking = text stalking. You can be keen and still manage not to harass someone in 160 characters.

• I was quite obviously this guy’s rebound date, and didn’t I know it. It really made me realise that talking about exes in any way, shape or form is bad news when you’re meeting someone new.

• To reiterate: alcohol is not my friend.

Mr. Side Parting: The Tangled Web

Music: The Great Escape - We Are Scientists

The aftermath of my date with Chris (aka Mr Blind Date) put me back a bit on the whole dating game, as everything had looked so rosy but it still fell all flat on its face. I was starting to feel a bit sorry for myself due to my recent run of bad form in the dating stakes, and I think my date with Mr Side Parting was a direct consequence of that.

I still hadn’t learnt from my previous mistakes, as I met him when I was very drunk in a very cheesy club, wearing my thickest beer goggles. Looking back, the venue, my inebriation and the fact that he thought I looked like Drew Barrymore (I don’t, wishful thinking on his part) should have given me all the warning signs I needed to figure out that the foundations for our date weren’t exactly the best. If that wasn’t enough, the day after we’d met I was out with my friend Louise for lunch, when she told me that he had a big, fat side parting and possibly wasn’t as fit as I remembered. To make matters worse, Mr Side Parting then started to text stalk me…

Louise and I had gone to a pub next to a park so we could stuff our faces with greasy food then wander round the park very slowly to nurse our hangovers and gulp in as much fresh air as possible. What was meant to be a relaxing afternoon stretching out in the early summer sunshine turned out to a stressful full on text assault. I didn’t reply to one of Mr Side Parting's text messages within an hour as Louise and I were having a bit of a nap on a grassy bank, and as a result I received another message from him asking me if I was ignoring him. No, I’m suffering and I wish you would BACK OFF.

Still, he might just have been keen so I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, and we arranged to go out on a date that Tuesday.

Now, due to the factors I’ve mentioned: the side parting, the stalking, the beer goggles, I thought it prudent to put a few measures in place for the date so I could get the hell out of it as quickly and painlessly as possible if required. Deep down I must have known it was going to be shit, but practice makes perfect, and you never know I might have lucked out this time despite the dozen bottles tropical reef and the sinking feeling I was starting to experience.

I am slightly ashamed to say this, but I created the ruse that the project I was working on was about to go-live and I was on call in case there were any major issues. Cunningly, this also meant that I couldn’t drink so therefore my getaway would be relatively easy as I could just leg it back to my car. Genius. The final part of my Great Date Escape Masterplan came in the form of my friend Beth, who was briefed to call me after 45 minutes. If everything was hunky dory then I’d ignore the call and continue in doey-eyed bliss. If I was praying for a small natural disaster involving the ground opening up and swallowing me then I’d take the call, go outside, then return pretending there was a massive issue at work and I had to leave immediately.

I felt a slight twinge of guilt at the web of deceit that I was weaving, but on the whole I couldn’t help smirking at my Machiavellian planning. I mean, the poor guy, he didn’t really deserve all that even if he did possibly have the dodgiest hair seen on a man since 1983…


For legal reasons I'd like to clarify that I didn't pull Ben Affleck as the photo with this post might suggest.  I just liked his rather splendid side-parting.

Mr. Blind Date: The End?

Music: Too Fake - Hockey

It was a strange feeling, looking forward to going into work on a Monday morning, but I was so excited about picking up where I’d left off with Chris, my blind date, that I sang all the way down the motorway and even got in early. For some reason (and I really can’t think why now) we hadn’t exchanged phone numbers on our date, I think because we’d been so happily communicating by email that the thought never crossed our minds.

It was about 10:30am, and I decided that this was a time that wasn’t too early to look over eager, but was reasonable to expect me to have picked up any new work and have a bit of time to craft an email. So I emailed Chris, asking about how his weekend had been and all the usual friendly/flirty chit chat. I also told him a bit about what I’d been up to, all the while keeping it nice and breezy.

Now up until this point I’d usually get a reply from him in about an hour or so, sometimes pretty much straight away. It was really hectic at work, so I was busying myself with all my tasks. Before I knew it, 2pm had crept up, and still no reply from Chris. I was getting a bit worried. Had I said something to offend him? Had I come on too strong? I didn’t think so, as I’d only sent him a casual email, just as we’d both been doing for the past week or so. Had he met someone else he liked more at the weekend after our amazing first date, or had he decided that he really just didn’t like me that much after all?

At just after 3pm my computer pinged and the new mail icon appeared. It was from Chris. Without even taking a breath I clicked on the icon and his message appeared full screen.

To summarize:

Chris had a good weekend and spent a lot of it watching the cricket. He’d gone out into town on Saturday night but it had been a bit of a quiet one as his mates were skint. He poked fun at where I’d been out and asked me how my day was going. Then he kicked me in the proverbial nuts. I’m paraphrasing what he said, but here’s the gist:

As you know I had a brilliant time last Thursday when we went out, but I’ve got something I need to tell you. I was singing your praises to all my mates over the weekend and telling them all about you, but that made one of my female friends come to a bit of a realisation. You see, we had a bit of a thing a while back but she decided she just wanted to be friends. I think that hearing me talking about you got her thinking and she wants to try and give it another go before she decides if she’s going to live in New Zealand. I’ve still got really strong feelings for her and I’m really sorry as you are great and it almost feels a bit like wrong time wrong place. I hope you understand and don’t think that I’m a total bastard.

Would love to stay in touch, as it’s not often you find a girl that knows so much about sport and can almost(!) beat you at pool.

Sorry again…. Chris

F*cking great.

The girl doesn’t want him, then someone else arrives on the scene so she decides that even though she’s not entirely sure if she wants to be with him that no-one else can have him in the meantime. Grrr. 

I send a short and to the point reply, which I do remember word for word:

That’s a shame as I thought we got on really well. I hope things work out for you, as you seem to be a nice guy. Take it easy.

And that was that. The best first date in my life, and I didn’t even get a second date out of it.

Things I learnt from this fiasco:

• Blind dates have the potential to work, provided that both parties are truly looking to meet someone new.

• Blokes can have baggage too, even if everything seems to be hunky dory on the surface.

• Sometimes even if you do everything right and things are going brilliantly, try not to get too carried away as things can still go wrong.


Now I do have a bit of a postscript to this story, as two and a half years after our one and only date, I put Chris’s name into Facebook and up pops his profile. I decided to poke him to see if he remembered me, and within a day he’d requested me as a friend. Curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to send him a message to see if it ever did work out with his “friend”. Here’s what he said:

Me
1:17pm Jan 16th
Well hello, fancy bumping into you on here.

I bet you don't remember me, but you kicked my arse at pool at The Elbow Room after we'd been set up by our mutual friend Ian.

How's things?  Still following the cricket?

I hope that all's well, and that you got it together with the girl that was going away (to New Zealand I think?).


Chris
3:09pm Jan 16th
Course I remember you! In fact I was thinking about you just yesterday strangely enough.

I ended up flying halfway across the world to tell Sarah I loved her: at the Orangutan sanctuary in the jungles of Borneo, alas she didn't feel the same, she decided to stay in NZ although we are firmly best of friends and she's at home visiting at the minute.

I feel cheated by the national cricket team these last few years! They are appalling bad!

Chris

Me
9:51am Dec 17th
Blimey you're an old romantic devil aren't you? I'm sorry things didn't go to plan, but at least you've stayed good mates.
I'm really not impressed with the English cricket team at all at the moment either…

Anyway on a different note, are you back living in Leeds now? From what I remember you'd gone back home (and weren't too happy about it) when I saw you.

Chris
11:19am Dec 17th
Ah well after a lot of umming and aahing I thought it's better not to have any regrets over the matter so off I went. Had a bloody good holiday too.

I am back in Leeds, this time right in the middle of the city, moved back in April after a winter in the wilderness.

I've just checked the cricket score, I feel sick!

Interesting, no? So they didn’t end up getting it together, but notice how he doesn’t ask me any questions about myself. Therein signifies a man who is not at all interested. However, Facebook tells me that he’s not in a relationship at the moment, but that could mean anything. I have to admit though, that recently I have been contemplating asking him for a rematch at pool but so far have chickened out as I think it would be a bit out of left field and also look a bit desperate. We’ll see…

Much to Ian’s annoyance I think I’ll mull over that one a bit more.