Given the title, there are no prizes for guessing that this week’s date was not a resounding success. For the first time since starting my quest for Cumbrian Bae I have actually struggled to write about a date. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, there was absolutely nothing entertaining about Barely Worthy of the Name Bae; no unusual habits, no ridiculous comments and no strange hobbies. Secondly, I’ve realised that it’s quite hard to write about a bad date without sounding like a bad person. Hence I am starting this post with a couple of quick disclaimers that should make more sense as the post continues: I don’t consider myself shallow, I do consider myself a feminist, and I do have some basic form of moral compass.
Surely saying that means I now pretty much have carte blanche to be as scathing as I want (I consider this the written equivalent of starting a sentence with ‘No offence but..’)! On paper, Chris looked pretty good. His pictures showed him on a speed boat, mountain biking and at a racing track - no snapchat filter or bathroom mirror selfies in sight (both of which are harder to avoid than you might think). As a disciple of organised fun myself, Chris’ apparent love of adventure got a big tick from me. Cyber chat soon revealed that, as a racing car engineer, his job took him all over the world - a fellow fan of travelling, another tick. It was only as the day of the date arrived that alarm bells started to ring. I scrolled through his pictures so I would know who to look for but realised that in all his pictures Chris was either wearing sunglasses or too far away from the camera to tell what he looked like. How on earth was I going to recognise him without his disguise?!
I arrived a bit late in the hope that he would already be there. Surely there wouldn’t be many men sitting on their own in a bar on a Tuesday night. As I walked into this week’s generically shabby-chic venue, ‘Eaten by Monsters’, I did a quick scan to see who my options were. My heart sank as my methods of deduction reduced the selection to one. He hadn’t noticed me yet and I strongly considered hitting the brakes and going into reverse but, determined to prove the shallowness of Tinder wrong, I made the approach.
I began to understand why Chris had opted for distant and disguised pictures, and think maybe some large glasses with a comedy nose attached would not have gone amiss. Although only twenty five, the combination of a receding hair line and a suit jacket/jeans look which I don’t think was an attempt at retro 90s fashion, gave Chris a distinctly middle aged appearance. We aren’t talking Pilot-Bae-sexy-older-gentleman middle age here; we’re talking dad-attempting-to-be-down-with-the-kidz middle age. Fingers crossed for a winning personality!
If first impressions weren’t great, the second weren’t much better. I apologised profusely for my tardiness and offered to buy Bae a drink. Throughout this grovelling word-vom of an introduction, Chris remained seated. Only when I had finished babbling did he respond, ‘I’m fine thanks. I’ve got one’. A man of few words! I was slightly disgruntled that he did not offer to buy me a drink or even stand up to greet me. To clarify, this wasn’t because of my sex but I think it is common courtesy to do either upon meeting someone, especially if you are trying to impress them. Apparently Chris did not share these views though so I headed on a solo mission to the bar. This trip turned out to be the highlight of the date: ‘Eaten by Monsters’ stocks Opihr gin (this isn’t product placement, I just really really like this gin (having said this isn’t product placement, if anyone reading this happens to work at Opihr I definitely wouldn’t turn my nose up at free samples)).
Surely any date could be enjoyable when armed with Opihr? How wrong I was! Quite accustomed to dating by now, I served first with the usual conversational starters. Chris appeared to make little to no attempt to return my shots: successfully killing any possibility of a verbal rally stone dead. He only travelled for work and didn’t explore much other than that, he used to like mountain biking but doesn’t have the time now, he is an only child who lives at home and has no pets. The end. Cue desolate landscapes and rolling tumbleweeds. There was apparently nothing else to say. I gulped down my drink and looked at my watch: learning all that there was to know about Chris had been achieved in less than forty-five minutes. Clearly he applied the speed and precision needed in his job to all aspects of his life. I was relieved that we had bought our own drinks as there was now no obligation for one of us to buy the second round. How on earth was I going to make my escape though?
I am not proud of what I did next. Although very effective, a basic moral compass would immediately rule it out for most date goers, but I panicked… I looked at my phone, donned a shocked expression and announced my dad had just been taken into hospital. Desperately trying to consolidate my lie and simultaneously escape the shame of having told it, I grabbed my coat and ran.
I got home to find my father sitting at the kitchen table, tucking into his supper and somewhat surprised to see me back less than an hour after I had left. Whether it is measured on appearances, conversational skills, blog-worthy quotes or length of date, this Bae barely merited the title. This was without doubt a total racing car-crash of a date, although hopefully Chris was at least impressed by the speed of it! Now I am left warily watching black cats, dodging ladders and avoiding cracked pavements, waiting for karma to come back and bite me for my lies and deceit!