Date 71

"And if a double-decker bus crashes into us."

My second date on GSM in 3 months, and it nearly didn't happen at all. We'd been in contact for a couple of weeks and decided to meet up, and had set the day, but when I emailed her to ask about the time and place; she never replied.

I'm super organised when it comes to meeting up with people, so if I haven't heard from them on the day then I'll chase them up (this happens a lot). However, on this occasion I didn't, simply because I thought if she's so disorganised then why should I? Plus, I'd also assumed that she'd gone off the idea of meeting up, which isn't exactly rare with online dating.

Then at about 5:30pm on the day that we were meant to be meeting I received this from her:

"If you'd changed your mind about meeting up this evening, that's fine. But you should have at least had the decency to let me know so I knew what was going on and could have made other plans."

I was obviously quite annoyed by this, seeing as though she was the one who'd ignored my email, so I replied telling her this and attaching the message I'd received no response to. She replied later that evening saying sorry and claiming that she never got the email that I'd originally sent to her, which I'm not quite sure I believe, plus she did actually go out that evening so in fact clearly made other plans. I then just left it as I really wasn't bothered about seeing her after she'd sent me such an arsey message without even bothering to check the facts. I also thought that if she's like this before we've even met then what's she going to be like in person.

A few days later she emailed me asking if we could try meeting up again and to be honest, I wasn't fussed but thought that I might as well, if only to see what she was like and because of the possibility that it could make a good blog entry. I also wanted to find out whether her obsession with Chas n Dave was genuine as well (it was).

So, we met up in central London about a week or so later and we actually had a really enjoyable evening. We just kept going from bar to bar and ended up both missing our last trains home because each time I suggested we should go to the station, she just kept telling me that she wanted to keep on drinking and that we should stay out and think about the consequences later. So we continued our quest to keep finding bars that were still open.

In the end we had to call it a night as we ran out of places that didn't require an exorbitant entry fee, and the last hour or so was actually spent trudging around Soho aimlessly with no luck, so in retrospect in the time we wasted doing that, we could have actually made our last trains. Thus, getting home was actually a complete pain in the arse as we both had to get the night bus (locating our respective bus stops was a mission in itself and took ages but at least I know where mine is now), so I didn't end up getting back to my flat until 3:30am. Bizarrely, even though she lives in Kent, she actually beat me and got home before me.

We texted each other a bit on the bus and when we got home and then for a couple of days I didn't hear anything, so I emailed her to see if she fancied going out again. To no great surprise, she replied and said that she'd had a brilliant night but that we weren't a 'romantic match' but we could still hang out if I wanted. I have to say that I was quite disappointed because I thought that as we had stayed out so late, she must have been enjoying my company and I was surely worth another go as we'd both had a good time, but at least she was honest.

We then met up a few weeks later and spent the afternoon in Richmond Park and had a really pleasant time. I also have to report that she was correct in us not being a romantic match. Clearly she is much wiser than me, although my judgement is sometimes swayed when lots of alcohol is involved on first dates, plus I think that when someone appears and acts normal then it's such a relief to me that I probably mistake having a good time for a possible future romance.

We've hooked up another time since then, and whilst she is very nice company, we've not really got that much in common which was highlighted by the fact that when I met her in London, she wanted me to go all the way back to a theatre near her in Kent (where she'd just come from), so that we could meet Will Young (currently appearing in Cabaret) at the stage door as she'd been to see the musical twice already and one of her friends, who works at the theatre, said s/he'd introduce them. I politely declined her offer...

She then contacted me some time later to see if I wanted to go with her and her aunt (yes, really) to see Ghostbusters at the cinema for a special showing where you could shout out the script in unison as it went along. I have to confess that I took this as my cue to run to the hills...