epsiode 9

The blind (drunk) date

Post speed dating, I had my accidental blind date to look forward to and I had also ticked and been ticked by another guy, actually the dolphin trainer/builder, (I remembered what he looked like, his name and everything) and we had emailed each other and arranged to go out the following week. I was feeling rather pleased with myself, I had actually managed to secure two real live dates. As in actual person, dinner, wine. See I was making progress.
Despite the fact that I remembered practically (actually completely) nothing about my first date, we had exchanged a few texts, and they were quite funny so I wasn’t too scared. Well, not more than any woman about to go on her first date in over ten years anyway. I dressed to feel confident, I tried to stop shaking and I resisted the urge to take an emergency bottle of Tequila with me.
He had booked a restaurant. I’m not great at making decisions and also when a guy asks you out I quite like them to make decisions. Obviously if he had suggested McDonalds I might have changed that rule, but he didn’t and we were going somewhere nice. Finally I was going to get wined and dined.
I have to admit as I set off I was slightly worried about how I was going to recognise him. But as it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about that at all. I was a bit late, and as I approached the venue I saw a man waiting outside. I proceeded with extreme caution, but said man came up to me, and kissed me on my cheek, greeting me as if we knew each other. Before I could process the thousands of thoughts running through my brain he thrust a pink shiny gift bag toward me.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and looked inside. He’d bought me chocolates. For some reason I found this strange. They were posh chocolates, don’t get me wrong and perhaps it was a nice thing to do but it felt weird. Maybe it was old fashioned, maybe it was the gift bag, or maybe it was me.
Now for the some of the rest of the thousand thoughts that I began to process as I was led into the restaurant, pink shiny gift bag in hand.
1. Bright ginger hair.
2. Irish with a strong Belfast accent.
3. Trousers, Simon Cowell-esque.
4. Slip on shoes.
5. A bit dribbly.
6. How embarrassingly drunk must I have been not to have remembered the above things in the first place?
7. This wasn’t going well and we had barely got in the door.

We sat at the table and he ordered wine. I asked for water as well, determined to be sensible, and actually feeling a sudden need to be in control. Then we ordered food.
To say the silence was awkward after that would be a slight exaggeration, but it certainly wasn’t comfortable either. The problem was that I had obviously met him speed dating, and I had obviously (or hopefully) spoken to him for four minutes at least, and I had obviously asked him the normal questions. Then I’d obviously forgotten all the answers.
I couldn’t really ask the same questions again could I? It was a terrible dilemma, I thought as I sipped my water. In the end I decided that I couldn’t bear the silence so I just asked him the questions anyway. Then I talked about my favourite subject; myself.
Being the born again virgin dater that I am, I did feel slightly naive. It wasn’t that I was having a bad time, it was fine, but perhaps I had forgotten that just because I was on a date didn’t mean that you should expect to click. And if you’re going to date as much as it looked like I was going to, I couldn’t expect fireworks every time. However, I didn’t fancy him which was the first problem, we didn’t seem to have much in common, which was the second, I felt guilty because of how we’d met, and how I had clearly given him the wrong impression.
This suddenly manifested itself after the first bottle of wine was emptied and before I could say anything another was ordered. He was becoming slightly more lucid and not in a good way. In fact he was getting a tiny bit lecherous. He was edging closer to me, and he complimented my bottom (I was sitting on it at the time so was slightly surprised). Then he kind of got this look in his eyes, a bit like a child when they’ve been promised ice cream after dinner and they’ve almost finished eating their greens. Clearly we weren’t going to order desert; clearly he thought I was it.
You know that thing on a first date when you wonder if you’re going to kiss the person or not? Well as I had obviously already kissed him, he didn’t harbour such concerns and I don’t think he was thinking of just a kiss.
After dinner, (he paid the bill although I did offer), there was an atmosphere of expectation of mammoth proportions. And despite being rubbish at the dating game and naive, I was thankfully sober and alert.
It was my first need for an escape plan and I wasn’t going to be so mean as to climb out of the window in the ladies (actually there was no window I could climb out of anyway), but I needed to get away politely, clothing and everything else intact.
So, I did what any girl would do, quickly thanked him for a lovely evening, kissed his cheek and hurled myself to the safety of a very attractive black cab, leaving my blind (drunk) date standing on the pavement in his high-wasted trousers and slip-on shoes scratching his very red haired head.

Next Week: There’s no such thing as a normal date?