Today we have the lovely Hannah Beckerman sharing her worst blind date experience with us, very much like those we follow Max on in her debut novel The Dead Wife’s Handbook, I think we’ve all had similar experiences?
Hannah’s Worst Blind Date
I was single for a while in my late twenties.
Okay, I admit it: I was single for ALL of my late twenties. In fact, from my mid-twenties until just before my 30th birthday, I was never in the company of someone who I could – outside of the realms of fantasy – call a boyfriend.
During that time I went on my fair share of terrible dates. Dates with friends of friends who turned out not to be the Prince Charming they’d been described as. Dates with men I’d met socially (okay, often drunkenly) who weren’t quite so interesting when we were both sober. And dates with people I knew through work who, it transpired, weren’t *quite* as single as they’d led me to believe.
I only ever went one blind date though. Because after this one, I could never face another.
The Boy been ‘introduced’ to me on email by a mutual friend who’d told us both that we had loads in common and were definitely going to hit it off. And we did. Over the course of a couple of weeks, we emailed each other every day and there did seem to be a bit of a spark (if there can possibly be such a thing when your only actual connection is broadband).
After a fortnight, The Boy suggested we should meet and on the day of the date, he mailed me to tell me what to look out for: ‘about 5ft 8, brown hair and I’ll be wearing a green army coat.’ Take the army coat out of that sentence and nothing too offensive, right?
I turned up at the dimly-lit pub in question that evening and scanned the room. Someone at the bar nodded his head at me in vague, tentative recognition: it was dark and I could barely make out what he looked like as I walked over to him.
He hopped off the bar stool and I looked down at him.
Yep, I looked down. And I’m only 5ft 4.
5ft 8 was what you might describe as pushing the limits of dramatic license. I reckoned 5ft 2 at a push.
Now, I’m not generally superficial when it comes to looks but I do have A Thing about short men. Blame my mum. She always told me she couldn’t be attracted to men who were shorter than her or who kept their loose change in a wallet instead of pocket. These things stick, right?!
Not only was he short but he had the weirdest haircut I’d ever seen up close: cropped all over except at the back where a few strands – a bit like those rats tails that were fashionable in the 80s – hanging down over his shoulders.
Over the course of the next couple of hours, the full extent of our mismatch became painfully apparent. He whined on about how much he hated his job, about how work was for losers, about how he didn’t understand anyone who enjoyed going to work (at the time, I was making Arts programmes for the BBC and couldn’t have been happier trotting off to the office every day). He described how his perfect life would be to have enough money to sit around playing computer games all day (I didn’t even know he liked computer games). He chewed his fingernails and tugged at those funny strands of hair until individual strands came out, which he wound round his fingers into tight balls before flicking on the floor.
If you’ve read The Dead Wife’s Handbook, you might start to see where some of the inspiration for Dodie came from…
By the middle of the evening, I knew that this wasn’t going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and made my excuses to leave.
And then The Boy did the thing that boys do when they really don’t have a clue about a situation.
He tried to kiss me. Not as in a peck-on-the-cheek. As in an attempt at a full-on snog.
It took a firm, rejecting hand on his chest and a look on my face which I’ve no doubt was something between bemusement and horror for him to get the message.
When he emailed me the next day to arrange a follow-up, I politely declined.
And I’ve declined every blind date ever since.
Turns out a virtual spark isn’t always enough…
My Worst Date
I’ve been lucky enough not to have experienced the woes of a blind date, but I have had my fair share of terrible dates and heres one I’d never like to repeat…
For myself it has to be a date I went on during my second year at college I was 18, and it was tragic! Firstly neither of us drove so I had to wait for a bus in the rain while said date was half an hour late. Not the best start to our day. I was however rather looking forward to our pre-planned date, the generic trip to the cinema where neither party has to make small talk or even choose to interact with one another, perfect.
Their were some brilliant rom-coms out at the time so I had a good feeling about the day over all, that was until my date announced we were going to see ‘Borat’ I spent the next two hours of my life (hours I shall never get back) watching fat men roll around naked with their balls in one anothers faces, to this day that is the only thing I remember from the entire film, I’m sure a lot of other less disturbing things happened but that particular scene was enough to put me off and block out the rest for life.
After the rather traumatising trip to the cinema he suggested we go for something to eat, great idea! I was then swiftly taken to the nearest Greggs, I actually can’t stand the place, even the smell of their pastry makes me feel a little queazy.
I kindly announced that I must have filled up on cinema food and wasn’t really hungry, not wanting to sound like one of those girls who just doesn’t eat but I couldn’t put myself through eating a greasy Greggs dinner. This lead to me watching him eat a large greasy pastry at the bus stop, while he talked with his mouth full, he had beans and pastry flakes stuck to his teeth.
Thankfully he did not try to kiss me, because after that I don’t know what I would have done!
I hope you enjoyed our terrible tales of dating, please share your own in the comments below, we would love to know it isn’t just us who have been tarnished with the bad dates brush!
Many thanks to Hannah for sharing her blind date experience with us today, just remember if you’re going to risk going on a blind date you could fall short. 😉
