Date 123

"Fame, fame, fatal fame."

I'm choosing to look back on this date as the one and only time so far in my life that I got to snog a TV personality.

We'd only exchanged a few messages on Bumble and actually met up really quickly. She lived in North London and I happened to be spending a couple of days away in the capital so we met a few hours after I'd checked into my hotel room.

As we hadn't really 'spoken' much beforehand, I was quite surprised when we were choosing a location to meet that she suggested an alleyway for a shag. Of course she was only joking and said she instantly regretted saying that, so eventually we settled on my old favourite the South Bank. When I met her at Embankment tube station, I was instantly attracted to her and we seemed to hit it off straight away, especially after a few drinks at the BFI Benugo Bar (the scene of many a failed date for me). It was here that I also learnt her claim to fame; she'd played a starring role in the Channel 4 tv series Educating the East End and had also been on some tv dating shows over the years...so she clearly wasn't shy.

Afterwards we went for something to eat and I think shared a couple of bottles of wine and got very merry and I enjoyed my first proper snog of the year. At the tube station I also asked her if she wanted to come back to my hotel bar and she said she definitely would have but as bad luck would have it, the GCSE results were coming out the next day so she had to be in school bright and early.

So, we parted ways and I went back to my hotel for a night cap. Whilst there she rang me to say she'd got home alright and that she'd had a lovely evening. Still feeling that the night was young I stayed at the bar drinking until 4am, talking shite to the staff whilst being plied with free cocktails that they were trying out on me. When two members of staff, who were visiting from other hotels in the chain, left me on my own to sit somewhere else, I took that as my cue to go up to my room.

I felt absolutely awful the next day and instantly regretted not going to bed at midnight when I had the chance. I was meeting a very good friend of mine from Twitter for the first time to go to the flicks and I was really in a bad way. We went to see David Brent: Life on the Road, which was so funny, and I really thought I was going to pass out in the cinema. My stomach was turning somersaults and I had the sweats and the shakes badly. Then, weirdly towards the end of the film, I suddenly felt back to normal again.

On my way home, I received a text from her saying the GCSE results had been rubbish and she'd speak to me soon as she was going to bed. A couple of days later she rang me but I missed her call because it was 2AM and I was ASLEEP!

Two days after the missed call she texted me to ask how I felt about us because she was worried about logisitics. I said I wanted to see her again and she felt the same and that she liked me and thought that I was handsome and genuine, which made me wonder if she was actually blind and that I hadn't noticed. She had a dissertation to complete and said could she finish it first then we could meet again. It was due to be handed in a week or so later so I said that was fine.

I'd still not heard anything a fortnight later and messaged her to see how it had gone and I got no response. A week after that I thought I'd give it one more shot and again I got no reply, so I thought I'd leave it. Then a few days after that she sent me a long text apologising and saying she hadn't been in touch purely because she was busy with work and her family and that she'd be in contact me properly in a week. She also said I could pursue other leads if I wanted to (which I found a bit weird) but also that she really wanted to see me again and that she was thinking of me.

That was almost six weeks ago and I've still not heard from her. Bloody celebs.

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 66

"Still I must speak frankly, Mr Shankly. Oh, give us your money."

I'd been holding off writing this blog entry for quite a while now as I genuinely thought that there was going to be a third date, but sadly I've come to the conclusion that I've been taken for a bit of a ride by her.

She'd initially winked at me on Match.com, which is quite a rarity as no-one really looks at my profile, although funnily enough this only happens when I have an active subscription because when I'm not a fully paid up member my profile gets upwards of 20 views a day....what a coincidence, I wonder what that's about. So, I sent her a message as she looked and sounded great, and she replied. We exchanged a few lengthy emails as we had quite a lot in common, then they just stopped. I thought that I must have bored her until I finally got an apologetic message from her about a month later saying she'd been busy with work and she'd been abroad for business a lot so hadn't had time to reply, and she asked me if I fancied going for a drink.

So, we met up at the BFI on SouthBank (a particular fave bar of mine) and had a wonderful evening as we just clicked straight away. She'd studied at Newcastle University (I'm a Geordie by birth and lived there util I was 16), she'd been a season ticket holder at Crystal Palace since she was 15 and as we were the same age, we had a lot of similar reference points in terms of music, film tv etc., so we had absolutely loads to talk about. I've never had a type of woman that I look for but out of all the dates I've met so far she seemed to be one that ticked all the boxes.

A couple of days later I messaged her asking if she'd like to go on a second date and a week or so later she replied in the affirmative saying that she'd had a really great time and that she really wanted to see me again. The only thing was, as she was busy with work, the only available time to see me was for a gig she had a spare ticket for. The band in question were The Drums (more about them later), and ordinarily if it had been anyone else I would have politely declined the offer, but I really wanted to see her again, and she apparently wanted to see me again too, so I accepted her offer.

By this time I'd come to realise that she was really slow in replying to emails (often taking between 1 and 3 weeks) and in between dates we barely had any contact. However, I actually think that this is a good thing as when you're in constant contact with someone from a dating website then you get used to always hearing from them and you probably think that you know them better than you actually do, and then when they don't want to see you again it's always a bit harder to take when all contact just stops.

So, we met for round 2 a few weeks later with both dates taking place either side of my brief dalliance with Date 67. We had a quick bite to eat at Wagamamas in Camden, then made our way to The Roundhouse, which was incidentally my first visit there. I'd purposely not done any research on The Drums as I knew that they wouldn't be my cup of tea and one of my friends had described them as being vanilla dull...and she wasn't wrong! I was also a bit surprised that I had to pay full whack for my ticket as well as she hadn't mentioned that beforehand. I'm not sure about the etiquette of going to a gig of a band that you have no interest in on a second date, but if it had been a gig that I'd wanted a date to go with me to, then I wouldn't have expected them to pay for it, particularly if I knew that it wasn't a band that they had any knowledge of.

As I knew nothing about them, I had no expectations, therefore, I wasn't going to be disappointed, but I couldn't not be as they were the most blandest and unimaginative alleged set of musicians that I'd ever laid eyes on. I went on a bit of a rant about Elbow in Date 65's blog entry, but I'd rather go and see them any day of the week than these set of soporific sell-outs. Aside from them being so boring though, the weirdest part of the night was when Boy George stumbled onto stage mid-set. He then proceeded to sing one of their songs with them then they all did a rendition of 'Do You Really Want to Hurt Me,' in which my reply was 'yes, I do really want to hurt The Drums....a lot.' At least I was familiar with one song then.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy seeing Date 66, but as we were there for 2 or 3 hours including the support act too, the loud music meant that we couldn't exactly converse with one another for most of the night. A few friends said that I shouldn't have gone but as she'd made it clear that she wanted to see me again I thought that I had to show willing and that hopefully it would give me some brownie points and that I'd see her again. And it's not as though I went into a sulk while I was there as I made the best possible effort of looking like I was having a fun time.

As we were waiting for the tube home, I gave her my email address, as my Match.com subscription was about to expire, and as the next day she was about to embark on lots more travelling abroad over the next couple of months, she said that she'd mail me when she was away.

A couple of weeks later and I'd not heard anything from her, which wasn't unusual, but there was a gig that I was interested in going to and as I didn't have her email address, I texted her to see if she wanted to go and see Kate Jackson (former Long Blonde lead singer) at the end of March. She replied a few days later from New York and said she couldn't as she'd be in Amsterdam then. We exchanged a couple more texts and I suggested that maybe we could meet up once she was travel free. She didn't reply and I never heard from her again.

This was a real shame as we'd got on exceptionally well on the first date and I was quite excited beforehand for the next one as I hadn't been on a second date for well over 18 months. However, in retrospect, I think that she just needed someone to pay for her spare ticket and accompany her to the gig and I was the sucker that obliged. Still, at least I was able to fulfil a life long ambition of seeing Culture Club's lead singer in the flesh...

UPDATE: About 6 weeks after our last bit of contact, I thought that I'd text her again and see if she fancied going for another drink. She responded a few days later and basically said that she was too busy to see me again so I didn't reply and deleted her number from my phone.

Date 42

"Still, I must speak frankly..."

A boozy evening and one of my most enjoyable first dates. We'd hardly had any contact beforehand so I was probably the most nervous I've ever been before meeting someone off Soulmates. Thankfully, we got on well and yet again drank a lot.

However, when I e-mailed her a couple of days later to ask about another date she said that she didn't 'forsee a romance' between us. I was a bit disappointed, but I appreciated her honesty.

We've stayed in touch and still see each other on a fairly regular basis two years later and she's definitely one of my favourite drinking partners and a lot of fun to hang out with.

Date 21

"I didn't realise you wrote such bloody awful poetry."

This woman had a penchant for rhyming couplets and therefore all our communications prior to the date had been via the medium of poetry. That's about as much as I can remember about her as we had a couple of drinks, got on pretty well, but as had predominantly been the case so far, she didn't want another date, and told me so the day after by rhyming verse.

I wasn't really bothered, but one thing that did annoy me was that when I asked if she wanted another drink (just before we left) she said she'd better not as she had another date the next night. Gee, thanks...