Towards the start of this summer, I matched with a Scottish bloke on Tinder and our first interaction went something like this:
Me: Hey ScottishGuy, whats cracking?
ScottishGuy: ARE YOU GETTING MY MESSAGES?
Me: Is this a joke?
SG: NO, people dont seem to get my messages when I send them
(maybe, they didnt "get" them on purpose)
After about 20 minutes of chatting, I knew already that things with this dude would never go anywhere, but because I apparently am a massive sucker for punishment (or perhaps past me knew that future me would start a blog detailing the ridiculous dating encounters that she goes through and needed fodder), I agreed to go on a date with him.
The Tinder conversation revolved mostly around our respective political stances and him repeatedly and intensively drilling me about my various nihilistic outlooks on certain topics. Eventually, we had gotten so deep into it, he started with the "I can say this over text" thing, so we agreed to meet up the following weekend to finish our very intense Tinder discussion.
We met at Hatfield House, in Hatfield - the filming location for The Favourite, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, V for Vendetta, Hot Fuzz and about 25 other movies on the first very hot day of the summer. I wore jeans, a tshirt and open sandals and was positively melting, so when this guy rocked up in jeans, a formal shirt, formal shoes and a leather jacket, I was rather astounded.
Now I understand first date nerves, and so, put this odd summer day attire down to wanting to be "appropriately" dressed, but the dude was clearly dying in this get up - and, I mean, he is Scottish so I know he cant handle even the slightest slightly too-warm temperature, which made me repeatedly wonder, while watching this poor, lanky, ginger creature struggle to keep his shit together while obviously dying from heat stroke, what the fuck he was thinking by, at the very least, wearing a leather jacket in summer.
As we would say in South Africa: Ag, shame.
We wandered off towards the gardens and popped into the little cafe to get something to drink and - as curiously as the leather jacket - he ordered coffee. A 6'5'' Scottish man in a leather jacket and formal shoes, in 32 degree heat, drinking coffee...Well, words escaped me.
Once the drinks had been obtained, we headed off to stroll through the gardens while chatting and once we had sufficiently baked in the sun, we headed into the actual house and had a little history tour which was very interesting - honestly, even with the evident cellular decomposition that this guy was clearly suffering from, it was a very nice first date - which we ended at a local pub (he got drunk on one pint of beer. Amateur).
The second date was when the wheels started falling off. I had suggested drinks at a pub in Highgate and he had asked if I'd be keen to tour Highgate cemetery beforehand. I had already been to the East side, but had always wanted to tour the West side (George Michael and Michael Faraday are buried there, in case you were wondering), so we agreed to meet there around midday to take the tour and then head off to the pub afterward.
To start off with, the guy arrived nearly an hour late, blaming the traffic. I do understand London traffic is fucking terrible, but in a world of Citymapper, Google Maps and even just GPS, for fuck sake, it does not make sense that you can be that late unless there is an actual vehicular catastrophe - which there was not.
He was also wearing exactly the same clothes - from top to toe - as he had worn on the first date. Fortunately, it wasnt a million degrees outside so he wasnt melting. I was a little irked by this, but I reasoned that I was wearing the same jeans so...
Anyway, the tour started and off we went following a guide around, listening to him tell us the history of the cemetery which was incredibly interesting, however, this dude fancied himself a bit of a history intellectual and kept interrupting the tour guide to ask him questions. Now, this was not a problem in itself, but the way he was asking the questions started to annoy me because he kept asking in a such a way as to try and prove the tour guide wrong. I mean...why do that?
He also kept dropping his water bottle. Repeatedly.
We got to the end of the tour and headed over to the East side as he was intent on seeing the grave of Karl Marx, but not before heading to the bathroom for a quick toilet break - or so I thought. The guy was literally in the bathroom for about 25 minutes.
Like...Twenty. Five. Fucking. Minutes.
I actually wondered a one point if he had left.
He hadnt...but seriously. Is the middle of a date the best time to go off and have personal loo time? IS IT?! FOR TWENTY FIVE MINUTES?
He eventually exited out of the bathroom to find me wandering around the local gravestones, trying not to be painfully obvious about how mortified I was.
By the time we had seen the Karl Marx grave, he had dropped his poor water bottle at least 15 more times, and I was beginning to wonder if he had an actual neurological issue.
Later, while sitting at a pub called the Woodman in Highgate, we ordered a couple of cocktails and I watched in horror as he picked up his cocktail and proceeded to spill more than half of it all over his shirt - this was after I watched him drink a beer and have beer foam droplets hanging off his moustache for about half an hour. I was just so awkward about how haphazard this guy was, but I couldnt stop myself from watching this perpetual disaster in motion happen.
It was both fascinating and horrifying.
Towards the end of the night, I had just returned from the bathroom, he looked at me and asked me, in a very strange tone if I wanted a (actual air quotations) "HUG"? I looked at him with real confusion because, not only was it a very strange question to ask me, but I had a feeling he was not referring to an actual hug.
I was correct - he wasnt.
He actually and honestly meant this as some weird sort of flirting and thought that I knew what he meant.
I didnt, but I could guess.
And because of the idiocy of the question, I purposefully maintained my ignorance and told him that I didnt have a clue what he was trying to say to me*.
(*in case you didnt get it, he was trying to ask me if I was interested in engaging in coitus with him - which I absolutely was not, but also who the fuck asks a person something like that?)
Since we already know that I clearly have the poorest of poor judgement, I begrudgingly agreed to a third - and final - date with this guy.
He asked me to meet him in Welwyn Garden City one Saturday afternoon - I remember wondering to myself what we could possibly do there that would be interesting, but left him to it.
Welwyn is, quite literally, family suburbia; the pubs are family-orientated complete with kids play areas and shitty food, so I was really interested (and anxious) to see what he suggested.
As a matter of contingency, I let one of my mates know that I would be in the area and might pop around later in the evening - and thank god I did!
We met at the central shopping centre in Welwyn and I immediately noted that he, yet again, was wearing exactly the same clothes as the first two dates.
I could forgive this twice and put it down to an error or lapse in judgement. I could not abide this a third time - how can you go on three dates with a person you dont know (and assumingly are aiming to impress) and wear the same crusty clothes each time - and think that it would go unnoticed??
He went to hug me as a means of gretting me and, in the process, patted (read: basically knowcked the wind out of me) my back three times - very hard. Right on my newly inked tattoo. I wanted to head butt him then and there.
He had also arrived about half an hour before I did and, by all accounts, purposefully waited for me to get there to then decide that he wanted to buy, and subsequently stuff his face with, two pies. Like - is it just me that wonders why the fuck he couldn't have done that before I got there??
While standing outside of Gregg's waiting for him, a whole 5 minutes into this "date", I already wished I wasnt there.
(Note: there was a water bottle present and it was, once again, dropped repeatedly)
Once the pies had been consumed, we proceeded to walk aimlessly around WGC while (dropping the fucking water bottle) he told me something about the town planning and then, when I thought I might die of boredom, asked me if this sort of thing interested me - to which I replied "Not in the least".
He seemed surprised by this.
We started on some other track of conversation which ended with him telling me that he didnt watch things like Mtv when he was a teenager as he had always considered himself too much of an intellectual to watch such "drivel" (guess Im not an intellectual then...). He also kept telling me how so many of his friends and family were quite "cerebral" and philosophical.
It took everything in me not to projectile vomit on him in that minute...it was probably the most pretentious one-sided conversation I had ever been party to.
Fortunately, past-Nicole had had this stroke of genius to let my WGC mate know that I'd be in the area and so used it as an excuse to leave the date after an hour. I gave him my (very valid) excuse and suggested we make our way back to the train station where he flagged down a taxi and then proceeded to make it wait 10 minutes while he tried to say good bye to me - which means that he tried to kiss me and I tried to not vomit in his face.
He also proceeded to mate-tap me on the back again - right on top of the large raw tattoo, so not only did he make me want to vomit, I also wanted to kick him in the goonies.
Kind of wish I had to be honest.
I never texted him again after that day, though two months later, when Id just arrived for a 10 day trip to Boston in the US, he texted me asking how I was doing.
I blocked him and we all lived happily ever after. The End.
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