"I left the North, I travelled South."
With my match subscription expiring and none of the free sites bearing any fruit, I decided to venture back onto Guardian Soulmates after almost a year's absence. They sent me a special discount and I signed up again because I'm tight and clearly a dating whore.
My last experience on GSM had been very different from when I'd been on it a few years ago. In the golden years of 2008/9 I went on over 40 dates, yet when I tried it again, after its ill-fated relaunch last year, my time on it was characterised by rarely getting any replies to my messages and only managing to go on two solitary dates. This time around and after a month; the dating and messaging results are similarly barren.
Date 70 had first made contact with me last year when I had my previous subscription. During that time we had exchanged a few messages and then they just fizzled out without us meeting. I was quite surprised, therefore, when she emailed me again this time around, and she was super keen to go out for a drink.
We met up on a Sunday afternoon, went to a couple of bars, had about 4 pints and reminisced about our childhoods. She was a fellow Geordie and only a couple of months older than me, so we'd grown up in exactly the same area at the same time. It was a very pleasant afternoon despite me having to do the vast majority of the talking and she was very nice but after it had finished; I just didn't feel any great longing to see her again. I'm also ashamed to say that throughout the date I kept wondering what had happened in the last episode of The Bridge (one of the best tv shows ever made) and I was dying to get home and watch it, which is never a good sign. I got the impression that she possibly might have wanted another date but I never heard from her and I made no effort to contact her either.
This was a quite a rare experience for me as most of the time I'm quite keen to go on another date with someone, as quite frankly I normally fancy most of the women I meet, but on this occasion I just felt thoroughly underwhelmed. I've also gone on a bit of a rant in other blog entries, where I've often wondered why others haven't wanted to see me again and I think this has given me a bit of an insight into how people have thought when they've met me.
