The Teetotal Geek - The Nail in the Coffin

Last night was the finale of my My Single Friend career – a date with a very nice bloke, who for the purposes of this blog will be known as The Teetotal Geek. His plan for our date was for us to meet in Soho, grab a quick supper then head onto a comedy show that he had booked for us at the Soho Theatre. To the set the scene, The Teetotal Geek was slim, with dark hair and in the height stakes, scraping a generous 5”7 - not the 5”9 that had been advertised. But, whatever, everyone lies in their profile.

                    We met outside the theatre, which led to an awkward “where do we go now?” chat, as we both side-stepped making any form of restaurant decisions in a super-polite way. Lesson for the future, is to always meet in a bar or pub to save this excruciating awkwardness in your first five minutes of meeting.

                      Our desperation to quickly find somewhere, anywhere, to plonk ourselves down and actually get talking to each other, is the only explanation I have for the fact that we ended up in probably the worst, most over-priced Italian restaurant in Soho. If I could remember its name to publically shame, I would. But, instead, I was too busy concentrating on trying to keep conversation flowing with the very sweet, but the rather timid Teetotal Geek sitting across from me.

                     It was about now, as I gleefully grabbed the wine list and began selecting potential wines to ease us through the evening that he dropped in that he didn’t drink. Fair enough, but this date sober was clearly something I wasn’t going to be able to stomach, as I valiantly battled to keep conversation flowing.

                    There’s no way to gloss up this experience. The truth is that this date was at best mediocre, at worst just plain bad, for the following reasons:

1      - Our supper table was on bustling Dean Street. This meant the waif-like Teetotal Geek’s chair kept getting knocked into by the exuberant crowd and sending him flying down the road – cue much embarrassment on his part.

2      - There was so much public participation in our meal, that at one point he got in the middle of an argument between teenage gangs and got heftily spat on by one of the youths. Nice.

3      - A friend I know from school walked past and started chatting to us. As she looked to me to introduce her to my date, I couldn’t provide the introduction as I had completely forgotten his name. Naughty Miss Fi!

4      - During the comedy show, the comedian dropped the “C-Bomb” approximately every 5 minutes, leaving the Teetotal Geek squirming uncomfortably in his seat and giving me side long glances in panic that my feminine sensitivities had been insulted. No chance, he was the only offended one. Oh, so very awkward!

5      - I wished myself, or even better both of us, had been drunk to make all/any of the above more funny.

Although the Teetotal Geek is a really nice guy, it was clear once again that we had zero chemistry and little in common. It would have been rather nice for my last internet experience to have been a great one, but it did leave me with no doubts that it was time to hang up my internet dating hat for good.

The Big City

On a Thursday night in London, there is one place that, if you’re brave enough, as a group of girls, you’re guaranteed to have a good night. The City, with a capital “C” comes alive with suits on Thursday nights, and when you have a Slutty Suppers Club who have started giving up on the world of online, it’s the perfect place to meet for drinks.

            Having been stuck at the office for an extra half hour, The Worker Buddy and I were a bit late meeting up with The Traveller (Miss Fifi), The Northern Lass (Tits McGee) and Sugar M for a couple of cocktails at B@1 in Spitalfields Market before going in search of suits.

            Because we were slightly late meeting the others, we were a few cocktails down on them by the time that we left the bar, but everyone was in pretty good spirits are we headed into town, getting waylaid at a pub called The Bull, nestled down a side street with suits spilling out onto the pavement.

            Wine ordered, we headed outside to get some air.  About two minutes later, The Northern Lass accidentally threw a glass of wine over herself and a boy standing near us, after which we quickly made our way back into the safety of the pub. The Traveller and Sugar M lasted an hour or so before they had to head out to a Burger King to stack up on mid-session carbs, whilst The Worker Buddy made her way over to the bar to make some introductions to encourage flirtations with a boy that had caught The Northern Lass’ eye earlier in the night.

            Having felt the pain of a stolen bag all too recently, I took charge of luggage management – effectively finding myself standing alone by a table covering a pile of bags, drinking wine and trying to work out when we would be able to leave.

            The Worker Buddy, in fabulous American style, spotted me keeping my own company, and in about ten minutes she had forced a boy with a pretty face and an utterly ridiculous tie to come over and talk to me whilst she went off in search of a new victim.  It turns out, she did really rather well for me! The Charming Suit was really rather lovely and utterly ‘eligible’ – although he was wearing a comedy seal tie. This really rather worried me until I had a little Bridget Moment. If Mark Darcy can wear a reindeer jumper, The Charming Suit can most certainly wear a designer comedy tie if he wants to.

I left having given him my number but with a low expectation of hearing from him again. I’d had a text before I got home, and a string of others followed. I’m not sure if I’ll see him again, but I do love a suit, so fingers are well and truly crossed for this one!

The Grown Up Part Three

After pretty much deciding that I wasn’t too fussed about The Grown up and it was probably for the best to let it lie, against my better judgement we had our third (and I really mean it this time) final date last night.

              I’m not really sure how I came to be on another date with him, but I think it may have had something to do with talking to my housemates, who all were of the opinion that it takes three dates “to know”. How anyone is meant “to know” or have an innate sense about whether something is right or not I haven’t got a clue. However, I did feel that there was no real harm in meeting up with him one more time, so we arranged to go to what he termed “musical comedy” at the Udderbelly Festival at the Southbank centre.

                He suggested without even the smallest dash of irony that we meet underneath the clock at Waterloo station. This, call me a tad judgemental, I took as another nail in the coffin for anything progressing between us. When we met and I commented on the cheesy choice of meeting place, his face clouded over and he professed he had no idea about what I meant. Worrying, very worrying indeed. Anyway, awkward greeting over, we wandered off to find some food on the Southbank.

                 We ended up in Giraffe, which I was perfectly happy about – at last, an opportunity to spend time with him in a non scary or intimidating romantic restaurant! Dinner was chimichangas, chat was continuous and easy, but soon enough we headed over for the dodgy sounding “musical comedy” show.

                   The comedy night turned out to be surprisingly very funny, in a sort of Flight of the Concords kind of way and we both really enjoyed it. But, later on the train home, I vowed that as good as evening had been, it was definitely time to draw a final line under The Grown Up. As nice as he is, we just have zero chemistry and I doubted that would change however many times we met up and he plied me with expensive meals and cocktails. I was hoping he’d feel similarly, but unfortunately a text message I received the next day, confirmed the opposite.  Oh dear. 

Bad times for Tits

Tits McGee found herself a nice (but apparently rather dim) young chap at the pub the other day.

Filled with hope that a strapping young lad with strong arms and a good face would be a dating potential, she was fairly excited when he sent her an initial follow up text. Oh, the disappointment that lay ahead:

Tim Nice-But-Dim: Hey how are you?

Tits: Fine thanks. Am having a very exciting night in, cleaning the oven.

Tim: Do you want to come for a drink if you can drag yourself away from the oven?

Tits: (bearing in mind that it is currently 8:45 pm) Er well I have oven cleaner in my hair and shite from the oven all over my arms, so not feeling too fresh. Why, where are you like? (Please be aware , Tits McGee is northern…)

Tim: What do you mean?

Tits:  Like, where are you? Are you out?

Tim: In Vauxhall chilling out, watching Magnum Force.

Tits: Oh a classic! I forgot to ask, is that where you live?

Tim: Yes.

Riiiiiiiiight. Might be time to delete that number methinks McGee!

Miss Fi - Back with the Grown Up

Nearly 8 weeks to the day since our last date, yesterday I had my second meet up with The Grown up. The time lapse was indeed ridiculous – the slow pace was due to his business trips (hopefully not, as my friends had joked, a ruse for spending time with the secret wife and kids), his rather nasty rugby injury and of course, my dalliances with The Captain (who to fill you in, has swaggered off my boy radar back to Germany).

                So, that is how I came to be shivering outside the Marquis of Cornwallis in Bloomsbury last night, listening to the grizzly tale of his knee injury and catching up on news from the last couple of months. As had happened last time, we had an hour or so of chatting over drinks, before he turned conversation to my favourite of all discussions, to deliberate where we should eat. With our unspoken understanding that my credit card could only access us dine-in Burger King, he suggested what else, but feasting on prime steak at the Hawksmoor. Jackpot!

                 An hour later, I was sipping a slightly odd but entirely wonderful marmalade cocktail, whilst eyeing up a bottle of finest malbec which had just been presented with a flourish. Whilst I was in this stupor of delicious cocktails/pre-steak anticipation, he asked me the bold and dreaded question...

“So, I guess what I’m really wondering, is what you think of me?” he said, smiling at the panic that had clearly appeared on my face in response to his words.

“Er...what?” I stuttered, grasping for time.

“You heard me!”

“Wouldn’t you like to know!?” was my shamefully witless answer. Thankfully though, it seemed to gloss over the matter adequately enough and conversation moved on.

                The completely truthful answer to this question is that I do like him - he is nice. He is quite attractive. He is quite funny. He has willingly bought me steak that cost twice the price of the dress I was wearing. But, the next morning as I texted him thanking him for a lovely evening, I realised that I really didn’t care whether I heard back from him or not. If that’s not a telling sign, what is? 

Let's call the whole thing off

It’s official, I am offline, and I am staying that way.

            A lot of people I know have said how much they’ve enjoyed online dating, how it’s a great way to meet new people and see if they fit. In essence, I’ve found it to be a great way to waste time, money and energy. I don’t need to pay a computer to make the sort of introductions that come across much more fluidly in person.  I don’t want to tick boxes about whether I like Chinese food and then actually think that the selections make any sort of a difference to the people I’m being matched up with. If I want to find a guy who lives in my area and enjoys Chinese food then I will go and sit in our local take out restaurant and scope out the suitability of whoever comes through the door.

            It’s been an experience, and one that’s had it’s highs and a lot more lows, but it’s off my list now, and it’s staying that way. Slutty Suppers will live on, as there are many more regions for us to investigate – Safari Suppers, Singles Nights, Speed Dating and the dreaded Blind Date through friend recommendations. I’m no nearer having won at the dating game, and I am most certainly no closer to having found ‘The One’ than when I started, but my profile is now well and truly suspended. Good bye online. Good riddance. 

A little boost

I received the following link from T-Bag this afternoon and thought it as probably worth sharing with the group. Have a read and see what you think.

            Keep an eye out for my favourite line: “Any man who is a person wants to be with a woman who is a person. Attraction isn’t intellectual, it’s involuntary – and if men really only wanted to squirt their penis inside of silent supermodels, then regular people would be extinct. But look to your left. Look to your right. Regular people in the house!”)

Then have a read of the comments too. It’s a bit sad, but quite an interesting article.