"I lost my bag in Newport Pagnell."
After permanently deleting or deactivating all my dating profiles on Guardian Soulmates, Match, Plenty of Fish, OKCupid and Tastebuds, my life appeared to have a void in it; so I joined a site that I'd never been on before called Lovestruck.
My first impressions of the site were good in terms of its design and search facilities and it has plenty of members. My only sticking point initially was the price as it's vastly more expensive on a monthly basis than any site that I have ever used before and I don't quite understand how they can justify that. The whole site is geared towards 'busy' professionals who want to date and so you can only sign up if you live in one of 8 cities in the UK e.g. London, Manchester, Birmingham etc. I suppose some people may see that as being a flaw but as I currently live in London; I'm not interested in meeting anyone too far away. Another feature the site offers is that you can show whether you're free for lunch or dinner each day, which is not something I'd ever use as I prefer to exchange a few messages first, although that may appeal to some people.
After initially signing up, I quickly received quite a few winks and a couple of messages and so I was sorely tempted to subscribe but I resisted for a few days as I was still put off by the high price. In the end I signed up for 3 months as the deal they offered for that was significantly lower on a month by month basis.
Funnily enough, after being subscribed for a few weeks, the interest shown in me by others before I became a fully paid up member dropped to virtually zero...hmmm, I wonder why that is? I guess my status as 'fresh meat' wore off pretty quickly.
I wasn't exactly enamoured by Date 73 at first as one of her initial messages informed me that her flatmate thought that I looked like a serial killer. However, after a few more emails she asked me if I fancied meeting for a drink so I said yes.
The date nearly didn't happen as when I was making my way into London, I started to suffer from vertigo and nausea on a train platform and nearly cancelled. It did pass after a while though and I assumed it was just nerves, although after feeling worse the next day I found out that I had an ear infection.
The date itself was fine, and she'd just got back from visiting Newport Pagnell, which was great as it gave this blog entry an easy title. As a lot of you may have noticed; this blog is named after a song by The Smiths, and each dating entry has a lyric or song by them at the beginning, and luckily, Morrissey once mentioned the aforementioned Milton Keynes town in one of their songs.
She was 5 years younger than me, had a subtle Northern accent and was good company but I'm really struggling to say much more about her other than the fact that she occasionally went to the shops in a onesie and having worked in numerous bars in her youth; had discovered, after intensive research, how to make the perfect Gin and Tonic. She was a nice person but I didn't have any burning desire to see her again after the date had finished, and I think that she probably felt the same as we both didn't make any attempt to contact each other again.
