Breathe and Reboot

You know when you're at the start of a Dating Site Downer when...

• You list a non-smoker in your criteria and the site recommends you... a smoker
• You list men between 31 and 40 as your criteria and a 45-year-old gets in touch
• You're a prim little missy in need of an emotional connection, so when a matching service claims that "hornydevil82 seems really right for you" you begin to mistrust their judgment. BIG TIME

Needless to say I gave the whole dating malarkey a miss for a few months.
But in May, I opened the Metro to find an article about a new "alternative" dating site which we'll call "QuirkersAnonymous", for, erm, anonymity's sake, where folk meet up and do something they'd both like to do, such as feed pigs on a farm, go ice-skating, drink cocktails, visit a gallery, dress up as clowns and try juggling. That sort o' thing. I was intrigued. I tore out said article and stashed it in a pile of articles labelled, "hmm, may do something about this if the mood strikes me". And sat on it. But didn't stop thinking about it.

Then, in June, I spent the weekend with a friend who made me rethink my whole perspective on dating. This friend, whom I'll call J, is something of a dating aficionado now, and has very recently got herself engaged to a man she met online. Evidence if ever there was any that there is that Hope to be Had.

J had some brilliant stories to share about her experiences in dating, and something a few things she said to me struck a chord and made me think, I'm going about this all wrong.

At the time I think there may have been an aura of desperation and resentment about me, and I was taking entirely the wrong attitude. I wasn't enjoying the Game at all, I was doing it because I felt it was my Last Resort and if I didn't try it, well... this was my future:

via here

But J, while confirming the frog-kissing adage, also reminded me that dating could be fun, I could throw myself Out There, meet some new people, and even if no Big Romance came of it then maybe I'd make some new friends.

A fog lifted for me at that point, I think, and I decided that I could have some fun with the whole Dating Game if I didn't place too much pressure on it.

So I signed up to the new site I'd seen advertised in the Metro. And I used a Very Serious Picture of myself as my profile shot, thus breaking my own rule no. 5 of Dislikes by using a seemingly Overthought Profile Shot. To which not one blighter responded unsurprisingly.

Only when I replaced said Serious Shot with a more Quirky, more Natural Shot (taken by J) did my fortune start to change, especially when I hinted that I might like to see this Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit.

Shortly thereafter I got an email on the site from an Irish Chap, which went along these lines:

Hello QUIRKY_BRUNETTE. I hope your enjoying the weekend.

So. Ive checked out the exhibition youd like to see and it looks good.

Fancy some company attending the event sometime?

Any plans for this weekend?

Now, as you can imagine if you know me at all (!), it was a War of Wills to overlook the grammar and punctuation errors in this message.

But I reasoned that a) this guy (we'll call him Keen Irish Bean, or KIB for now) was the first to contact me on the website and b) he had three photos on his profile so seemed genuine and quite cute to boot and c) actually sounded like a fun person to meet.

After I'd replied to his email, we exchanged details and after discovering to our annoyance that the Courtauld Gallery never seemed to be open after 5pm, decided to visit the Titanic exhibition at the O2 instead as our first date. His suggestion.

And I was -- wait for it -- actually quite excited.

I think I changed my dating fortunes by changing my dating attire for this occasion -- I tipped up in the blue, daisy-print dress I'd been wearing in my profile photo (in case KIB couldn't distinguish me in a crowd otherwise...), waited outside the tube station at North Greenwich and true to his assertion in his profile that he valued punctuality (as do I) he turned up well on time, armed with tickets to the event. Big tick. He also turned up in a colour I'm particularly fond of. See my reference to (over)attentiveness to detail in my last post under no. 9.

We were early, so we grabbed a coffee and had a conflab over caffeine. He was a caretaker by day, an arts volunteer by, er, weekend day and was about to learn BSL. All sounded pretty good (I've always wanted to learn more BSL and, well, I like the arts). He was passionate about motor racing and vintage cars and he mentioned the Goodwood Revival and other retro events like the Prohibition Parties, which in the flush of Good First Date Euphoria did sound like good fun at the time (I'm quite into my 1920s style these days). It was one of those conversations that actually worked -- we seemed to click.

I got hopeful.

The exhibition itself was astounding and would have been enjoyable in its own right if I hadn't been there on a date. We even had our photo taken in front of a green screen as we went in, and received copies at the end of us as if in front of the wreck of the Titanic. It was sort of cute if not a little premature...

As it happened, KIB was very knowledgeable about the Titanic and its sister ship, both of which were built in Belfast, and his knowledge added a dimension to the experience, which was, yay, a good thing. (Though, me being me, and not being quite able to disassociate any real-life experience from a film experience, I couldn't quite shake this song from my head the whole way round...)

Afterwards we had a quick drink and a bowl of chips at the venue. Now, this was a square bowl, full to the brim of chips, and quite frankly I had issues keeping the ruddy things in the bowl. Cue un-date-like behaviour of dropping chips into my lap, onto the leather seating, onto the floor. Cue apologies for my lack of decorum. If this was a Guardian Blind Date he'd be marking me down for table manners by now. But oddly he didn't seem put off.

We parted soon after the last chip was down (my gullet), and I headed home, with that odd sort of positivity that, chip-fail aside, actually this had gone pretty naffing well. I actually liked this person. And he seemed to like me.

For the next couple of weeks, we messaged. OK, he was a little over-keen with the messaging at times but at least he was messaging, and we even spoke on the phone -- yes, Spoke, on the Phone! -- at one point when he was extolling the virtues of obtaining tickets for Radio 4 comedy show recordings, and trying to send me links to the Prohibition Party website. Keen Bean he certainly was, and when he talked about meeting up again I was just as eager.

via here

And we made Plans for Date Two.

Yes, Dear Readers, I had me a First Second Date.

Things seemed to be on the Up.