Date 167

"I'm just a country mile behind the world."

Finally a date in Brighton! I decided to have a brief dalliance again with Tinder. With 'brief' being the operative word. Tinder is widely thought of as a hook-up site but I'm clearly doing things wrong as I've only ever had standard dates on it.

This woman was very hard to get much out of but we swapped numbers and arranged a first date. Which was no easy thing to organise either. The only time she was free to meet was 9pm on a Thursday evening in Hove. She dismissed the first pub I suggested out of hand, claiming it was too middle-aged; which it really isn't, but she settled on my second choice.

I live a bit out in the sticks so aimed to get to the pub for 8:45pm. On the bus I got a text from her at 8:30pm saying she'd be getting there at 9:30pm. No apology or asking if that was ok for me, just stating a fact. So I went for a wander down by the seafront to kill some time.

When she arrived she looked absolutely stunning and had really made an effort but didn't like my choice of table and didn't say sorry for being late. She didn't drink either so had 2 orange juices and the date finished at 11pm. It was fine but she came across as really ditzy and I got the impression that she was just living in her own little bubble with not much idea what was going on outside of her life.

I did fancy her though and texted her the next day to see if she wanted to go out for dinner. She said yes but only if we could do it again on a Thursday night at 9pm (9:30pm probably in reality) as she had Zumba. The place I had in mind closed at 10pm so that wasn't an option so I left it with her. Meeting for dates only on late Thursday evenings did seem odd.

Eventually she got back to me a few days later on a Tuesday and said she was free that night so I booked a table at a Tapas restaurant for 8pm. She arrived still speaking on her phone, which made for an awkward minute or two, and her eye make-up had all smudged due to the positioning of her mobile. I did tell her so she rushed up to the toilet to put it right.

We had a lovely meal and she was really impressed with the food and restaurant. She did seem really young for her age though and quite immature. Although she was nearly 39 and only a few years younger than me, she could easily have been in her early 20's, which she constantly spoke about. She also seemed to be really out of touch with things: bemoaning her flatmate for shopping online, which she'd never done before and she'd never used a streaming service like Netflix and didn't really know what one was. She didn't like alcohol, coffee or tea either.

I never normally do this but I paid for her dinner. I'd had a glass or two of wine and she was only on orange juice so it seemed easier too. Again it was a brief date too as she didn't want to go elsewhere afterwards so it lasted the same time as the first one.

I contacted her the next day and asked her if she wanted to come to dinner at mine sometime and she sent this reply:

Unsurprisingly, when I suggested a couple of dates for her to come over, she didn't open them in Whatsapp and I never heard from her again. Which, is probably just as well as my cooking is shite.