As we know, this was my first date from an all-Christian website. And I have to admit that the way it began really did confirm all my worst fears about this kind of dating. To wit, here was my date’s opening line:
‘I’ve worked out that I know your mother.’
Chaps: no. There is no girl on earth who wants to be presented with that sentence at the beginning of a date. Never, ever, ever. I don’t know whether he thought the connection would impress me, or if he just wanted to wow me with his investigative skills, but either way, I was freaked. I love my mum, but I don’t want her silent presence with me at the start of a possible romantic liaison.
Having released that bombshell, perhaps the evening was unlikely to recover, and it was certainly hard going as my date had recently been made redundant and was carrying an (understandable) air of melancholy. He was, I should note, a perfectly presentable chap with nice manners. But the chat was just awful. Whether because he was nervous, or because I was dampened by the suffusion of melancholia, the conversation never got off first base.
What happened, as a result, was all too predictable. We ended up talking about churches, and with Mr Melancholy’s eager eye for a connection, the whole evening became a rather tedious listing of people we knew in common. I regard such an evening as an outer circle of hell, the one Dante might have reserved, perhaps, for deviant PRs and society hostesses caught in flagrante.
Mr Melancholy, on the other hand, seemed to hugely enjoy the pursuit. He started guessing at the names of people in my stories even before I’d said them (and scarily, got some of them right). There was actually a moment when he stopped me mid-anecdote to tell me the subject’s surname: ‘Ooooh, don’t tell me… I know this one…’ he cried as he knotted his brow. He didn’t get it, but half an hour later, as we were eating burgers, he suddenly yelled ‘Matthews!’ across the table. And then it got worse…
[...] As you know, I always try to go on a second date with the guys I meet, unless the first one is irredeemably awful. My mother, however, thinks that I could fall in love with any one of her army of proteges if I [...]