The weird, weird world of single mingles: pt 1

Sometimes, a spontaneous evening can turn out to be the best night of your life. Accepting a last-minute invitation, agreeing to join a friend at a party you haven’t been invited to – these can be the moments that change your life forever.

Or they can just be frickin’ weird.

Yesterday I got a call from a friend who lives nearby. I’d been planning a quiet night in watching Strictly Come Dancing; she wanted to know if I’d like to go to a ‘Christian singles party’ with her housemate, who was a little nervous to go alone. I said yes. I felt like the soul of spontaneity. I even convinced myself that there was something destined about it. After all, I’d been invited out on a Saturday night and I didn’t have already have plans. What were the chances?*

When I met up with T, I asked her where we were headed. She pulled a small scrap of paper – the corner of an envelope – from her jeans pocket, and peered at it. ‘Somewhere near Piccadilly Circus,’ came the reassuringly vague reply.

I asked her what kind of party it was. She wasn’t sure. Who was organising it? She didn’t know. So I asked T how she’d heard about the party. She said she had googled the phrase ‘Christian singles’ and this had come up. All she had was a mobile phone number, the address of an Italian restaurant in the West End, and the promise of dancing.

The journey to the restaurant wasn’t any more promising. Our bus was only halfway into town when it came across the kind of gridlock that suggests a ravenous monster/giant tidal wave is on the loose. We didn’t move for half an hour and one by one the rest of the passengers left the bus (presumably to their imminent, gory deaths). We crept towards our destination a few inches at a time; after an hour, the only people left on the bus, we both admitted that if we’d been going to this party alone, we’d already have turned around and headed home.

But we’re made of strong stuff. One hour late, we arrived at the restaurant and the maitre d’ bustled up to us, trying to show us to a table. ‘We’re here for the party’ said T. ‘Which one?’ he asked with a hint of impatience.

‘Er, we don’t actually know the name…’

‘It’s a, erm, group event…’

He leaned in confidentially.

‘Speed dating, yes?’

Ah. So that was what we were coming to. We followed him down a narrow staircase into the basement…

*Pretty good actually.

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off…

Decision made. I have pulled myself out of my dangerous slough of despond. I have marshalled my troops, given them a damn good pep talk, and will now proceed to sent them out on two fronts at once. Heaven help the men who find themselves in my way.

My new plan is to double-date. Not in the sense of dragging my unfortunate friends along with me on my man hunt, no. Rather in the sense that I shall tackle two dating sites at once. I’ll return to my most successful online destination – the magical land where BigBear and Woodland Vole live – and I’ll try out another, Christian, site that’s free to join. Yes, she’s back in the game. In, I said. In.

On Wednesday, moreover, I am attending a work event at which Bona Fide Crush will be both present and, more importantly, drinking. He may even manage to relax enough to talk to me. On the other hand, I will have my sister in tow, which will make me an even more intimidating prospect than usual. When GirlGlory and SisterGlory descend on a group together, there’s a certain amount of shock and awe. Imagine a scene of extras in a Roland Emmerich disaster movie: that’s how people normally look when we leave. And often when we arrive.

I can predict two things about this event. One, sushi will be served. (My sister and I were recently at a function where my boss observed it was the kind of event where they would serve mini-hamburgers, he was right, and she was very impressed. I wish to prove I too have the rarely-seen gift of catering-prediction.) Secondly, at the end of the evening – or at a far less appropriate moment, say, when BFC turns round to pick up a piece of sushi and SisterGlory incorrectly assumes he can’t hear – my sister will proclaim, ‘He’s SOOOOO posh!’

SisterGlory thinks everyone’s posh. She thinks I’m posh, and she grew up in the same house as me. I’m about to introduce her to someone whose father has a title, who hangs out with the cultural elite and who speaks as if he’s just come out of an elocution lesson at Eton. Luckily she finds posh people incredibly amusing. Hopefully he’ll just think she’s laughing at his jokes…

The law of dating probability

I can’t face my inbox. City Chap has replied to my rejection email, and while I’m sure it’s a very pleasant reply, I just don’t want to read it right now. It will only add to my already gloomy feeling that I’m not really getting anywhere. You might have guessed I’m in a bit of a slump. The fun of blind-dating is all very well – and I really do enjoy meeting new people – but I’m coming to the end of my third month and I’ve not experienced a single spark with any of them. Short of wearing 100% acrylic clothing, shuffling my feet on the carpet and rubbing a balloon in my hair, I’m wondering where that spark’s going to come from.

The bald stats are as follows*: I have dated five different guys. Three of those I’ve been on more than one date with, but only one made it past the second date. And after a few meetings I told him I just wanted to be friends. I don’t know whether that’s normal or not.

Maybe I should talk to my friend S who has considerably more online dating experience than me and, crucially, was rewarded for her efforts with a wonderful guy with whom she’s now made house. It would be interesting to find out how many damp squibs littered her path.

Perhaps what makes it more frustrating are the myriad stories I’m told about the people who found love on their very first date. Almost every time I tell someone new that I’m internet dating, they go wide-eyed and tell me excitedly of the friend they know who only did it the once, met their soulmate, and now live in bliss in Haywards Heath.

Now, usually I’d happily pooh pooh their exaggerated claims, but I know of some of these one-date wonders myself. It might sound encouraging, but as far as I can see it’s terrible news for the rest of us. Plenty of Fish could probably help me out here with the maths, but surely the laws of probability mean that these freak encounters mess up the odds for the rest of us? I mean, I’ll probably be the one who evens up the average – by dating for years…

*I didn’t have either the energy or the skills to knock up a pie chart/venn diagram

Do these guys have the X-factor? You decide

I’m supposed to be having a ‘relaxing’ day at a spa today. But in order to be ready to ‘relax’ at exactly 12noon on the dot, I have to race through all the million other things that have to be done before I go, and thus have worked myself up into a lathered frenzy of stress. Ironic.

The worst is that I haven’t emailed City Chap back despite his proposal of a third date, because I have decided definitely to decline but I feel strongly that those kinds of emails need a bit more care and attention (more care and attention that today’s blog is getting, certainly). Maybe I can do it from the spa, but that feels a bit too Krystle Carrington. Dynasty may be back on our screens but I don’t fancy myself as Joan Collins, sealing men’s fates from the sauna, while nursing a scotch on the rocks.

Anyway, a few days ago I promised that you could help me choose my next step… My current online dating subscription is coming to an end and I’ve had two emails from men on one of the sites I’ve tried previously. Do I go back? It seems a shame, as I’m keen to keep on trying out new sites. But these two guys do sound promising. One of them has a very nice picture, and calls himself WoodlandVole which seems quite cute. He’s a Christian, plays squash badly (like me), and has impressed by recognising several of the more obscure references in my profile (which is of course what I put them there for). On the downside, he has suggested beginning our email correspondence with a game of true or false. You can be too cute, you know.

The second calls himself BigBear and has a profile that made me laugh out loud at least five times. He works in human rights law, which is the kind of thing to make a nice Christian girl swoon, and says he has some mild geekiness, which isn’t, but is, frankly, par for the course with me. On the other hand, he is an atheist. And I’ll save that debate for another day.

What do you reckon – do the Vole and the Bear have enough going for them to merit a date?

When to pull the trigger: here comes the science…

Sorry to have been so quiet this weekend, but since I’m on holiday I thought I should give myself a couple of days off from blogging too. After all, a weekend at home with my parents requires plenty of time for arguing.

The current debate raging in the family home is whether TheGirlGlory is too darn fussy for her own good. In the blue corner, my mother, who thinks I am spiking any number of possible romances by throwing guys off after the second date. In the red corner, TheGirlGlory, trying to explain that there’s no point continuing to date guys you don’t fancy.

Mum has adopted City Chap as the posterboy for her campaign. My second date with him had gone fine, in spite of my unintentional facial tattooing. The sole and fatal flaw that I didn’t fancy him, wasn’t becoming any closer to fancying him, and couldn’t foresee any future circumstances in which I was likely to fancy him, with the exception of a powerful love drug or a parallel universe.

To me, this is not a matter of particular concern. I don’t fancy most of the guys I meet and I believe this to be quite normal outside excitable teenage girls. But when I told my mum I was declining his next invitation out, she sighed. ‘You have to give these men a chance,’ she complained. ‘You’re so quick to say no. Some people take time to come out of their shells. He might grow on you.’ She then went on to list his many good qualities, which was impressive as she has, obviously, never met him.

The problem with arguing with my mother is that I generally end up terrified that she might be right. Maybe I am too quick to judge these guys. But if you don’t find someone attractive on a couple of meetings, how long are you really obliged to give it?

I’ve asked a few friends and had wildly differing answers. Most of the girls say two dates is plenty. A lot of the guys say I should extend it to three or four (they might have a more realistic idea of how long it takes a guy to relax in new company). One of my best friends said seven, although this is a man who pursued his current girlfriend for a year before she succumbed. He is the king of the slow burn, and not everyone can aspire to such patience.

So I’ve turned to science. Having recently discovered PlentyOfFish’s blog – he’s a dab hand with the old dating statistics – I’ve been inspired to try a little graph to express myself. It’s a graph of my own dating expectations over time: the x-axis is what I expect to feel about a guy, against, on the y-axis, the rising number of dates… Any thoughts and comments welcome!

Graph of dating expectations over time

Emergency face transplant needed

Aaaargh! I have a date in one hour and my face is covered in tiny red dots…

Guys, you can ignore the following bit. Girls, if ever anyone asks you if you want your millia extracted, say no and run for the door. RUN, I tell you.

My first day of holiday I thought I’d pamper myself with an afternoon at the beautician and I can only assume that she had pampered me into a semi-coma, because when she said she could remove the handful of little white spots under my skin, I barely heard the word ‘needle’ in her explanation. I didn’t even know the little spots were called millia, but in my warm fug of mellowness, the thought of having them magically removed from my face by a smiling lady with a hypnotic voice seemed a great one.

After a thousand painful little pricks (no jokes here, this is a nice Christian blog), and her sorrowful announcement that ‘there were more than I thought’, she handed me the mirror. I looked like a porcupine had sat on my face. And, attractively, still do. She was very, very clear that I should leave my wounds to heal themselves and on no account use any sort of concealing product for 24 hours.

I am meeting City Chap in one hour. I am terrified to use cover-up because I don’t want these horrendous stigmata to get any worse. But short of concocting a story about being mugged by pre-schoolers armed with sharp pencils, I don’t know what else to do. This smacks of a divine punishment for vanity…*

*joke. I know God’s got more important things on.

TheGirlGlory seeks an upgrade

Well, I’ve had another email exchange with Celebrity Crush and I can’t deny that just the sight of his name popping up in my inbox made me feel pretty darn cheery. I’ve got a couple of weeks off on holiday before we meet up, and you can be sure that a fair amount of it is going to be spent primping myself until I reach a state of extreme radiance. I don’t care what they say about beauty being skin deep. My skin is going to be deeply beautiful…

J is worried that I’m getting too carried away about Celebrity Crush. I can tell because of the way she looked at me the other night when I forced her into a long conversation on the exact wording of his email, and what depths of meaning could be read into phrases such as ‘looking forward to it’ and ‘see you soon’. She could be right. I did react rather forcefully when she said it sounded like he was just being polite.

But if I do take bit more care of myself than normal over the next fortnight I’m sure my other dates will appreciate it too. I’ve been worried that I haven’t been making enough of an effort for these internet dates. Perhaps it’s the lack of butterflies, but I find it hard to get especially dressed up for someone I don’t know at all. I probably spend more time on my appearance when I’m going to sweet-talk the butcher (he knows I live alone, and boy do I get good steak).

That aside, I have a new dilemma. I’ve received a couple of emails from guys on a site I currently have a profile on, but no subscription to. In other words, I can read their emails, but I can’t reply and fix up a date until I part with some money. I now have to decide whether their emails (and profiles) look promising enough that they’re worth spending 18quid on (yes folks, this dating lark can be expensive). Deal or no deal? Tomorrow you can help me decide…

Second dates, criminal records, and Liz Lemon

City Chap has asked me to dinner on a second date. I put this down to the fact that my charm is irrepressible, whether I’m attracted to men or not. My friend S puts it down to another part of my character. ‘Guys ask you out on second dates,’ she told me this week, ’so that they get their turn to talk.’

As we know from past experience, I will accept the offer, thanks to a pathological inability to turn people down, and a warped concept of Christian charity.

And this despite the fact that I dislike second dates the most. Unlike first dates, you don’t have that anything-is-possible, who-knows-he-might-actually-look-like-James-Franco, frisson of anticipation. Nope, you already know what you’re getting. The best you can hope is that the lighting will make him look less like General Franco.

You’ve gone past the small talk stage too, so now you’re required to ask intelligent questions about his career/community work/Call of Duty addiction, and at least appear to listen to his replies. Of course, if it’s a good date, this will hopefully come naturally. But there’s still a basic amount of information you’re expected to extract from each other over the course of the evening, eg family members, place of birth, foreign trips in the past 12 months. It’s the dating equivalent of a CRB check – an essential but mundane process that takes far too long to come to a conclusion.

Talking of which, I leave you with a zinger from 30 Rock. I don’t know if you watch this American comedy but I’ve been finding much, much joy in the character of Liz Lemon – the professionally brilliant but personally flaky 30-something played by Tina Fey. The other day her boss Jack (Alec Baldwin), trying to persuade her to go out on a date.

Liz Lemon: Meeting someone new – ugh. All the nodding and smiling and sibling-counting. And what’s the upside? It works, and you have to have a bunch of sex?

Jack: You want to be single for the rest of your life?

Liz Lemon: No, I just wish I could start a relationship 12 years in when you really don’t have to try any more, and you can just sit around together and goof on TV shows, and then you can go to bed without anybody trying any funny business.

I wish I could find this exchange on YouTube for you, but instead here’s a taster of the wonderful Liz Lemon. As Liz herself would say – I want to go there…

The return of Celebrity Crush – and why a sausage stick won’t keep him safe

Ever seen Sleepless in Seattle? Meg Ryan falls for Tom Hanks despite the two never having even spoken to each other, and it’s supposed to be a beautiful romantic destiny…

But watch it again and what actually happens is this. A newspaper journalist starts fantasising about a man she’s heard once on the radio. She becomes obsessed to the point where she breaks off her engagement. She uses all her contacts (and a private detective) to track him down. Then she flies across the country to trail him around his hometown. But because it’s a romcom, no one admits that Meg Ryan’s a Creepy Stalker. They call her a Hopeless Romantic.

This is clearly dangerous and irresponsible filmmaking. It seems to be saying that if you really, truly fancy a guy, even if he’s happily getting along with his own life without you on the other side of the country, he can still be yours – if you just wish it hard enough, and are prepared to break various professional and ethical codes of conduct.

So, I blame Sky for what happened next. You don’t preach the virtues of stalking to a dangerously suggestible female with a Celebrity Crush, but they just went ahead and aired it anyway, at a time I was feeling particularly emotionally vulnerable, and without any sort of warning. The next thing you know, I’m sending an email to Celebrity Crush (and a mutual friend of ours) inviting them both on a corporate event. Wildly daring act, or dangerously unhinged? I’ll let you decide.

What you should be more worried about is this: they’ve both accepted. There is the very real possibility that TheGirlGlory will soon be spending several hours in the company of her favourite celebrity, and he will have nothing more than a sausage on a stick to defend himself.

At last: the perfect first-date venue

Lunchtime date yesterday with City Chap from the all-Christian website. We had some common interests, the conversation was fine, he was amiable without ever really making me laugh: I’d give it a three out of five, the dating equivalent of a Jason Statham action movie. In other words, a sequel’s almost inevitable, but no one’s looking forward to it that much.

More importantly though, I’ve uncovered my ideal first-date venue. So far I’ve been happy to wing it, and agree to meet anywhere with the proviso that it’s vaguely central, and dark enough to hide the bags under my eyes. But I’ve always rather envied my colleagues who have tried-and-tested places. I’ve noticed that seems to be an exclusively male thing, but I’m not too proud to learn from the guys.

One of them has a riverside walk that he takes each new date on, which ends at his favourite bar. It might sound unimaginative, but it’s actually very well thought through. For a start, the walk means that you’re not thrown into an immediate face-to-face situation as you are over, say, a dinner table. Walking shoulder to shoulder along a riverbank is a less intense way to begin with someone you’ve never met before, and it takes the sting out of awkward silences – there’s plenty to observe and remark on if you do run out of things to say. The bar, meanwhile, is one he feels really at home in, and he can be fairly sure that if the girl doesn’t enjoy the place then she’s not the one for him.

I like this idea. Yesterday I met City Chap at a pub I used to live near and adore; the perfect place to test out* a new date. It’s low key; it makes me feel warm, nostalgic and happy; it shows sport (in an unobtrusive way) so if things flag a little we can talk about the match; and my route home is in the opposite direction to the tube, which makes for a quick escape if things do go wrong.

I have thought of only one possible flaw. Having shared this hidden gem of a pub with my various dates, they may start using it freely as their own, which would obviously ruin it for me forever.

*no, not in an evil, trying-to-trip-them-up kind of way. I’m a nice Christian girl, remember