"They cannot touch you now."
My very first Lockdown date and it was pretty much business as usual.
I was genuinely really looking forward to this date, as we'd texted quite a lot beforehand, and she'd said that she was too. I was also a bit nervous about what happens on a date during a pandemic when you want to snog?
She drove from Eastbourne to meet me via seeing a friend nearby and parked down my street as I'm near the seafront and it was a ridiculously hot day and was close to 30 degrees. And what did she do upon greeting me? She ran up to me and said "I know we're meant to be social-distancing but it's rude not saying hello properly." Then she flung her arms around me and gave me a hug....
What the hell did she do that for? I'd only recently been allowed to hug my niece and sister days earlier as we'd formed a bubble. I was utterly shocked. Who else had she been doing that to? From our texts, I'd built up a clear understanding that she'd been obeying the guidelines. I'd witnessed people doing this as Brighton had largely ceased social-distancing when the first restrictions had been lifted after 6 weeks or so, but it really knocked me for 6 as I've not even been in a shop for 3 months. At least she didn't snog me though, I guess.
We'd pre-arranged to have a picnic of sorts and I provided the drinks and ordered an Indian takeaway from Deliveroo. As I was using my app, I paid for it and she said she'd go to a cashpoint and pay me back. She also had more food than me, so it wasn't cheap.
Besides the unsolicited hugging, she wasn't really quite what I expected either. Although we only had one alcoholic drink, as she was driving, I got the impression that she was a huge drinker. When we'd first messaged on Bumble, she'd asked if she could reply the next day as she was drunk and all her stories were about alcohol-related escapades. We've all got stories like that but she seemed to have more than most. It had also been her birthday a couple of days earlier and she sent me a photo of her presents, which were mainly all different varieties of bottles of Jack Daniels. There must have been about 25.
She did seem fun but I was still reeling from cuddlegate, so really wasn't sure about her.
After a few hours she had to get back and before she left she said instead of going to the cashpoint, she'd buy me a meal on our second date, which although presumptuous, was fair enough.
Over the next couple of days we texted as normal and on the Saturday night, she was having another birthday party at her house with friends from work. It started at 6pm and she was still drinking at 4am. This backed up my 'alcoholic' theory plus to pre-empt a recent statement by the Police Federation, I pondered the notion that "drunk people cannot socially-distance."
I know she was still drinking at that time as that was the last text that I received from her. I never heard from her again, which I thought might have been her suffering from Jack Daniels poisoning, but as she deleted me from Bumble, I believe she thought it was ok to ghost me. I did send another text which she didn't reply to either just to confirm my suspicions.
It's probably the case that I dodged a bullet due to various reasons but ghosting people after you've had food, drinks and even your parking paid for is just not acceptable. With unwanted physical human contact all I got in return.