Date 131

"Do you see me when we pass?"

I don't think this person really knew what she was looking for. She'd recently moved back to Brighton after living in America for a number of years, in which time she'd been married and divorced.

She was quite hard to pin down at first. After I suggested we meet up, she insisted on talking on the phone first. After giving her my number, she kept saying she'd call on certain nights and never did. In the end we never spoke on the phone but ended up meeting for a quick coffee one afternoon weeks later, after she'd messed me around a bit.

The coffee lasted less than an hour but I think we got on well and she talked about meeting again for a second date. Although, I wasn't very keen on one of her suggestions, which was to go and see a Country and Western band; however, I didn't outwardly show my lack of enthusiasm for that idea. Saying that though, I would have gone along if asked as I had a good feeling about her and wanted to see her again.

A couple of days later my Mum went into hospital with pneumonia and never came home, although she's now doing very well in a Nursing home in Hove. On the day this happened I got a text from Date 131 asking if we could meet up the following week and I also explained the situation to her.

I didn't hear from her until 2 or 3 weeks later when I got a message saying:

I was a bit disappointed that she'd changed her mind, but as I said at the beginning: I don't think she knew what she wanted. As it happens, I did actually bump into her briefly about 6 weeks later just as I was about to meet Date 132! I've not seen her since though.

Date 16

"Well, I wonder."

Funnily enough, I actually used to be a work colleague of this person, although she didn't know that when she mailed me first. We'd never worked that closely together but she recognised me when we met up, and it's probably fair to say that I remembered her more due to the fact that she had been highly coveted by most of me and my former male colleagues.

We spent the whole afternoon and evening together at a restaurant and various bars in Richmond and got on fantastically. It probably helped that we vaguely knew each other from the dim and distant past, so we initially had a lot to talk about in terms of reminiscing about ex-colleagues etc. and mutual friends. Besides that, though, we had a right laugh and the conversation never dried up. So much so that she told me she wanted to see me in a few days time for our second date and go to the cinema to see Control.

That second date never happened as when I texted her a day or so later to arrange things, she'd changed her mind and told me that she just wanted to be friends as she was getting back with her ex-boyfriend, which made me wonder why she'd been on a dating website in the first place. I told her I didn't want to be just friends with her and we stayed in touch for a bit but I never saw her again. Things may not have worked out in the long run, anyway, as she'd let on that she was a big UB40 fan and that revelation was quite hard to swallow, and it wasn't even a guilty pleasure (which I have many of)!