Date 177

"Shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you'd like to."

Just before our first date, while I was walking across Charing Cross/Hungerford Bridge over to the South Bank, I received a text from 177. It partially showed up on my watch as "I think that the elastic has gone in my..."

Obviously, when I read the full text on my phone it turned out to be her tights! I'm not quite sure why she was telling me this though, and she didn't know either. It sort of summed her up though as she was a funny one in all meanings of the word.

After a few drinks, I suggested dinner and she was overjoyed and said that no-one had ever taken her to dinner on a date before. I wasn't sure if she was taking the piss at first with her reactions but she just tended to get very excitable about things.

The evening was fun and in the days afterwards she basically invited herself to my place in Brighton a couple of weeks later for a horror movie night. So, she came over one Friday evening. We had a lounge picnic, watched a horror film, drank wine and swapped dating stories (unsurprisingly I had a lot more than her).

When it came to sleeping arrangements, I offered her my bed and said I'd sleep on the sofa but she was insistent that we sleep together. This led to partial sex until she got shy halfway through and the rest of the night was spent with us writing song titles by The Smiths on each other's backs with our fingers and having to guess them. Her idea.

The next morning I made us breakfast then had a shower. After her shower she announced that she'd left the bathroom door open and was disappointed that I hadn't joined her. So, she was certainly giving off mixed messages. She then proceeded to run around my flat like a child who's had too many Smarties, and began jumping on my bed. At this point, I didn't really know what to make of her, so I was quite relieved when she eventually decided to go home.

We kept in touch, but the texts fizzled out and I wasn't too bothered about seeing her again, particularly as it would have been only a matter of time before she found my secret stash of Sunny Delight.

Date 46

"Coyness is nice."

This 'coy' lass from Billingham is by far the closest friend I have made from my many forays into internet dating. We're still very much in contact and see each other on a fairly regular basis, mainly to stalk the wonderful Adam Buxton at BUG from the front row, which he hosts at the BFI every couple of months. The great man himself even commented at one of the November 2010 shows how we both looked very cool in our almost matching thick, black rimmed glasses; so he's clearly on to us.

After a number of very enjoyable dates, I decided that we'd be better off as friends and we still get on really well almost 2 years later.

Probably the most explosive and entertaining incident to occur during one of our dates happened one evening when we were sitting outside a bar on Charing Cross Road having a drink and a smoke on an absolutely freezing cold night. We were deep in conversation when a severely pissed up city boy/Essex lad, not very resplendent in a grey suit and matching waistcoat, and heavily resembling the maverick snooker player Ronnie O'Sullivan, launched himself at our table to acquire a lighter without so much as a please or thank you. We just stared at him as he tried to light his cigarette without any luck, then forcibly tossed said lighter back onto our table claiming it was broken. He then walked off and I breathed a sigh of relief only for my companion to shout back at him that his flies were undone, which they actually were. He then stormed back to our table demanding a working cigarette lighter, and then grabbed my ladyfriend's bag on his ultimately fruitless quest for a tiny, hand-held flame. A very minor struggle ensued and when he'd realised that he wasn't going to get what he wanted, he proceeded to clear our table by smashing our drinks and ash tray onto the ground. Then, to top things off he drunkenly stumbled off up the street shouting back at me over and over that I was a fucking c*nt, which I was simply aghast at, having not said a word to him during the whole altercation! If only he'd taken the time to get to know me better.