Date 181

"So, goodbye."

I assume that this will turn out to be the last date that I meet from Guardian Soulmates considering it will be ceasing to exist from June onwards, and I deleted my profile about 2 days before they made it free for everyone.

It was a great site to be on in London and when I used to live there I met lots of interesting people through it. However, my experiences haven't been great on it the last few years with barely anyone replying to messages and a month's subscription coming in at a whopping £32!!!! I never understood where the money went for that as every time I contacted them about something like glitches on the app, it never got sorted and the format it used hadn't really been updated in the 15 or so years that it was active. I assume a lot of the non-swiping apps will become equally as obsolete soon as why spend a month messaging people and getting nothing back when at least with swipe sites the matching capability means you're halfway there to exchanging messages with someone.

I digress though. I met my last GSM date for coffee and cake that lasted probably under an hour and it was ok. She was quite insistent about a second one so we met for drinks but that was quite quick too and was probably only 2 drinks worth.

The pub date was definitely more fun but I'm not really a fan of cafe dates. Plus she'd made more of an effort to dress up. Our third date was meant to be the pub again but she postponed it due to there being a bad weather forecast, which turned out not to be true. So, it didn't take place but not for a very good reason. When we did rearrange it was for coffee again and I genuinely can't remember anything about it.

These took place in January and February, so before Lockdown, and I've obviously not seen her since but she's still in fairly regular contact, usually sending me links to news stories that are a couple of days out of date. So, she's either bored or just trying to keep a dialogue going. She's a nice person but I'm not sure if we'd meet up again as I just don't know what we'd do as she's usually only ever out for a short period of time before she has to get back.

Farewell Guardian Soulmates.....

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.

Date 145

"I know the wind-swept mystical air."

This continued the theme of quick, unmemorable dates.

I'd not had an active membership on Guardian Soulmates for about 6 months and this person had actually sent me a message quite a few months ago but I'd not received a notification to my inbox so I'd not picked it up. After a few messages she asked if we could talk on the phone. I hate doing this but I can understand why people want to before agreeing to go on a date and I must have come across ok as we did meet up. Bizarrely though, I've had times where a date has been arranged then they've wanted to speak beforehand and after hearing me have cancelled so I'm quite conscious of this happening. The weirdest example of this was a woman who called me from what sounded like a gale force wind-swept mountain top. I couldn't hear a word she was saying and after a few minutes I asked if we could speak a bit later, preferably somewhere a bit quieter, and she called off our date saying we wouldn't be compatible even though we never spoke again...so I clearly failed some sort of audibility test.

Back to this date, and it lasted possibly a couple of drinks. She was very nice and good looking and I thought perhaps there'd be a second date as she said that every date she'd been on had led to at least a second one. I was the exception to the rule though as I enquired about another one but she said she'd met someone else. I wasn't too disappointed.

Date 118

"Oh, but please put your tongue away."

I'm really surprised that this woman from Plenty of Fish only wanted to see me for a couple of dates as I thought that she was quite into me.

On our first date, I fancied her but I didn't really feel that there was much chemistry between us, however she was quite tactile with me and kept touching me (my arm, leg etc. obviously!) and urging me to keep moving closer to her. We had a few drinks and kissed a little bit too.

We agreed to see each other again the next week and she cancelled an HOUR before we were due to meet. Door to door it takes me nearly an hour to get to the pub we'd said we'd go to and I was all dressed up and just about to leave my house when she let me know. Five minutes or so later and I'd have been on the bus. I wasn't impressed. She said she'd had to work late but I still don't know how she couldn't have let me known earlier. I wasn't really that bothered about seeing her again but she insisted that we meet up the following week.

For our second date (take 2) I was actually very taken by her in a complete reversal to date one. We found a bar open until midnight, drank a fair bit, made arrangements for date three and even had a proper snog.

Sadly date three never materialised. I texted her the next day to see if she wanted me to book a restaurant and five days later she replied and said 'you are a lovely bloke but just not for me.' I wasn't that disappointed but I was more annoyed at myself for agreeing to another date after she'd cancelled at such short notice.

Date 49

"Miserable Lie."

Having decided to take a break from the crazy world of internet dating, I didn't go on any dates for about 6 months. That was until Match.com reeled me in with a one week free trial, which I tentatively accepted out of curiosity. After the week was up I was sent another offer by them in which I was given 2 months for the price of one, and, because I'd been getting quite a lot of interest from other members, I decided to take them up on that deal as well.

My first Match.com date (and incidentally my first date of 2010) seemed very keen to meet me from the off and gave me her mobile number after a couple of messages. I thought this was a bit quick so stalled a bit until a few more messages then she asked if she could ring me for a chat. So, after speaking to her on the phone and getting a good first impression, she asked if I'd like to meet up, which I agreed to.

She was about 4 or 5 years older than me and very quirky. Her appearance was very bohemian and a bit hippyish and she had an absolutely bizarre hairstyle, which I can only describe as containing a woollen type thing knitted into her hair! She was very striking in appearance and had a very unconventional, yet classic dress sense, but I have to say that I gauged some disappointment in her eyes when she saw me.

In the first bar we went to, we were just about to sit down to have a drink when someone called her name from across the bar. It was a friend of hers and he came over with another woman and asked her what she was doing there. She said she was on a date and his face lit up: "Ah, me too! Guardian Soulmates?" "No," she replied: "Match!" He then informed us that it was apparently the most popular bar in London for first dates!

For the rest of the night, and from my point of view anyway, we got on really well. She was very witty and outgoing and I have to say that I enjoyed her company a lot and was attracted to her. After drinking solidly for about six hours we then went back to the station and before I could say anything, she told me that she really wanted to see me again. I concurred with her view and told her I'd be in touch.

So, I texted her a day or so later to ask about a second date and she responded in the affirmative, but said she was busy for the next week or so, so she'd call me to make arrangements. I didn't hear anything back from her so contacted her again a week or so later and heard nothing. A few weeks later I thought I'd try her one last time and she replied saying she'd had some bad news and wasn't dating anymore, so I left it. Seeing as though she appeared to still be regularly signing in to the site, the cynical side of me led me to conclude that this excuse was bullshit, which was a shame.

Date 12

"Nobody ever looks at me twice."

Another local lass and we got on like an absolute house on fire. It was one of my best and most fun first dates so far and we spent a good 4 or 5 hours drinking. While I'm not sure that there was real chemistry between us I thought that there was a good chance of a second date mainly because on the walk to the station, where I got her a cab, she kept going on about hooking up again.

I contacted her a day or so later and she told me she was busy for the next week, so I got in touch again a week later and never got a reply. There was definitely a common theme developing here.