Here's the deal. I've been single since time immemorial. So, in an attempt to remedy my eternal singledom, and to get over my nauseatingly pathological fear of dates, I've decided to challenge myself. The challenge? To go on one first date a week for a year! So in 52 weeks time, I will have either found my Mr Right, or I'll stay forever Miss Write. This is what happens...


The Rules

Here are the rules to the 52 First Dates challenge...

1. A first date must be had once a week, EVERY week, for a year, that's 52 dates in 52 weeks.

2. Taking someone home after a drunken night on the cider does NOT count.

3. Second and third dates are allowed, I must continue first dates unless there are exceptional mitigating circumstances. For example, God forbid, the start of a relationship.

4. Each date must be blogged.

28 December 2011

Mr #29 - The Man is the Moon

The preamble:
Mr #29 and I had been bantering to and fro by email and text for a few weeks, and despite slightly poor texting etiquette, on the whole we seemed to have a fair amount in common, he seemed like a good enough sort so we arranged to meet. Slap bang in the middle of Christmas. Pretty brave move, for both of us...!


The man:
Age:37
Profession: Freelance web designer for a TV production company
Random factoid: He had the roundest face I have ever seen on a real life human being. It was literally a perfect circle; the moon, with hair. Amazing.

The date:
We met outside the station and although we'd both clocked each other standing in the cold trying not to look conspicuous, we had to send the cursory identification text just to avoid that eternally embarrassing situation of 'Hi, are you Mr #29? 'No, I'm not'; stranger clearly knows you're on an interweb date; you die inside. 

Apart from his perfectly circular visage that I have previously mentioned, he also had an awesome head of curly hair and one very pretty set of  baby blue peepers on him. He was definitely a lot cuter than I had been expecting, even though he wasn't a lot taller than me, he was cute enough for that not to matter. 

We ambled off to one of my favourite pubs, although once in we did a prompt 360 when we realised a. there were no seats, b. it was playing Slade so loud our chances of conversation were drastically low and c. 90% of the revellers looked and smelt but a cider away from sick. Not to matter, the next pub along was both with-seat and without-cider-sick. Bonus. 

I have to say right now, this will be a relatively short write up. Not because he had nothing to say. Oh no. He had plenty to say. We covered everything from John Terry to Twitter, Mexico to Masterchef, and football to Facebook. But I have to say, I can't fault the guy. He was cute, polite, bright and really good company. We chattered non stop for a few drinks, time at the bar was called, and we went our separate ways, snog-free but smiling.

Memorable Quotes:
He was so nice and normal, I literally don't have anything to add here. Genuinely.

Events of note:
Again...he didn't fall over drunk, didn't spend the night talking to my chest, didn't offend me, had no errant bodily functions and didn't appear to have a criminal past. I think this is probably also notable in itself.

The Verdict:
Well 52 First Dates readers, I feel in some ways I've let you down here; by going on a date with someone rather nice, and not having some ridiculous anecdotes to take away from the evening. But for me, this just goes to show quite how many 'unusual' dates I have to go on to meet someone pleasant, and out of the 29 dates so far, he's one of only about 3. Those aren't great odds. So I suppose the question now is would I see him again? Yes. Did I fancy him? Yes, I think I probably did. Was he good company? Yes he was. Did we have any ROFL moments? No, sadly not. Was there chemistry? I don't know, I really don't know. But I'd certainly be up for meeting him again just in case. But the kicker is he's off to Mexico for 3 months next week, so whatever happens, I'll have to hang on a little bit and keep on dating and see what happens when he's back in Blighty. But I think this is where time really tells.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not going to be chasing anyone for a second date over the course of 52 First Dates, as I've done on many an ocasion in my undignified past. I'd like the guys I meet again to want to meet up enough to actually ask the question, which funnily enough seems to be rarer than you might think. I've had a few pretty successful dates before where they've just not been arsed to get in touch again which questions both their motive and I suppose also my view of how well the date went. So I guess for now, this is a 'watch this space' scenario. But if this is as far as it goes, I'd just like to thank Mr #29 for being nice, normal, and nothing like Mr #28. Faith in men once again restored. God bless 52 First Dates.