Date 74

"I want to leave, you will not miss me."

Having said in my previous blog entry that I quite liked Lovestruck; I am now utterly bored by it and I suspect that there aren't many paid up members on it, which isn't surprising considering how much it costs.

Date 74 was actually the first person to message me when I joined but it took us absolutely ages to finally meet up due to various reasons. Before we'd even met, she'd asked me to go to a gig with her of a band I had no interest in seeing. As I'd found out with Date 66, going to a gig on a date really is a rubbish idea. She said that if I didn't fancy it then we didn't have to and so I was honest with her and replied by saying that they weren't my cup of tea. She then responded sarcastically by telling me that it was nice to see that I was open to new things and offered me some more dates when she was free. I thought that was quite rude considering she'd said it would be fine if I didn't want to go. I then thought that maybe that was just her sense of humour (which hadn't translated very well in email form) so I messaged her back a couple of days later and agreed to meet her on another evening she said she'd be free on. However, she got back to me and said that because I hadn't responded straight away (I received the message from her on a Friday, was out all day on the Saturday and replied to her on the Sunday), that she'd already made other plans!

I thought that was a bit odd but agreed to another time anyway and funnily enough had to cancel due to the fact that I was suffering from a really bad ear infection. She was very understanding and I felt bad but it couldn't be helped. We made another date and she then cancelled on me due to work commitments and so the whole thing really was turning into a saga.

During all this, I was getting a bit fed up with her emails. She continuously kept asking me to go to gigs with her to see obscure bands that I just wasn't interested in. I love going to gigs but not with someone I'd never met before and not to see a band I'd never heard of. I think that, like Date 66, she just had spare tickets that she needed paying for, and the thought of having to fork out for something I didn't want to go to just to do her a favour didn't appeal to me. Another noticeable thing about her messages to me was that she would write very lengthy essays about herself and never ask me about anything. We did finally agree on a date when we were both free, but by this time I wasn't really looking forward to meeting her, but I felt that I couldn't back out of it.

We met one afternoon and I was dreading it a bit, however, this was mainly because I'd stopped smoking the previous week. And, as it happened this was the first online date I'd ever been on as a non-smoker. It was a very strange feeling not to have a pre-date cigarette to supposedly 'calm my nerves' beforehand but it probably helped that she wasn't a smoker either, although that didn't stop me from thinking about tabs the whole time especially when I started drinking.

She was originally from Edinburgh and a midwife but as it turned out she wasn't good company at all. She took the chance to belittle most things I said at every opportunity and her sense of humour was so sarcastic that it was actually bordering on being aggressive. I am now a man in my mid 30's and like many other gentlemen of a similar vintage, we are going a bit thin on top. I'm not bald by any means but I am receding a bit. This is something I'm a bit sensitive about (as most men are) and when she started making jokes about this, I'd had enough and called an end to proceedings, which was the first time that I'd done this myself despite having been on 74 first dates. I can take a joke but I just felt that this was the final straw and I just didn't want to spend any more time with this virtual stranger constantly taking the piss out of everything I said, yet I was expected to be polite and appear interested in what she had to say about herself and her life (which was a lot). I was also disappointed by the fact that she'd been to see The Human League the previous night which I'd have gone to without a second thought, yet the only bands she'd asked me to go to with her were utter shite ones.

Date 50

"I smoke because I'm hoping for an early death."

My second date on Match.com was with a New Zealand girl, whom I think was the same age as me. Like the last date, she also seemed very keen to meet up and sent me her mobile number after only a couple of messages. I can't remember who asked who first, but I suggested that we meet at a tapas bar in King's Cross after only exchanging a few texts, so I didn't really know much about her at all.

It was an ok evening but a couple of things stick out which annoy me a bit in retrospect. Firstly, despite claiming to be a non-smoker, she proceeded to smoke all my cigarettes during the course of the evening, as she obviously didn't bring her own as she didn't smoke. And secondly, despite drinking for about 3 hours or more; she only bought me one drink all night. That was partly my fault as I'm a fast drinker so instead of waiting for her to finish I'd head to the bar and get us both one, but she just never offered so I could hardly ask her to stump up the cash as I was on my best behaviour.

After exchanging a few dating stories (I have a few), she told me how she could never say 'no' to men she didn't want to see again so she never replied to them. What was more interesting, however, was an anecdote she mentioned about someone she'd been on a date with, which some mutual friends had set up for her. I can't remember if they went on more than one date, but as he was quite keen on her, he messaged her a few times about seeing her again and was met with stone cold silence each time. It got to a point in which he contacted the mutual friends to find out if she was interested in him and out of embarrassment or because she instructed them to do so, they made up a story and told him that she'd moved back to New Zealand just because she couldn't tell him herself that she didn't want to see him again.

She was quite good company, but I guess the only real highlight of the night was her scarily accurate impression of Cheryl Cole. On the strength of that I e-mailed her the next day to see if she fancied hooking up again, and, believe it or not, she didn't reply and I never heard from her again and so I just left it at that.

Another thing which I found quite interesting during the evening was the fact that one of the perks of working for a media company meant that for some reason she had free and unlimited access to Match.com, which prompted me to surmise that she probably smoked a lot of men's cigarettes and had drinks bought all night for her, never to see them again.