After a great deal of anticipation, nerves, and internal questioning on the lengths I would go to for the sake of a good blog post, the day of my date with Simon arrived. Leading up to the day I had put a lot of (arguably too much) thought into what one is supposed to wear on a first tinder date with a goat farmer in Carlisle. For once, Google drew a blank. Ok, I may not fancy him but I still wanted him to fancy me, but then I didn’t want him to think I was too keen, but then what if I did fancy him then wished I had made more of an effort. This whole dating malarkey was proving to be a minefield before it had even begun!
In actuality I had no time to worry about any of this. Most normal excuses for being late for a date would include being held up at work, bad traffic or delays on the tube. This is rural Cumbria though, not London, and I was running late because of a blocked drain on the farm. There was a mad dash home to jump in the shower and clean off before chucking on the closest respectable outfit that didn’t involve wellies, jabbing on some mascara and running out the door.
In my recent move back to Cumbria I am still relatively ignorant as to the hot, hip and happening date spots in Carlisle. Arguably this is only partially due to ignorance and more largely due to Carlisle’s severe lack of hot, hip and happening date spots. The romantic rooftops, ping-pong bars and speak-easies are yet to make it this far north. I thought that my choice was a pretty good one. We met at the, what I hoped wouldn’t turn out to be aptly named, ‘Hell and Below’. Its bare brick walls, brand-new-but-bashed-up-to-look-old furnishings, bare light bulbs and bearded bar staff proved that even Carlisle had caught on to some of the hipster trends.
By the time I eventually made it I was quite glad that I was going on a date with a farmer. When I arrived, somewhat bedraggled and trying to disguise my faint aroma of sewage, Simon didn’t even blink an eyelid at my explanation. Simon, bless him, could not have looked more stereotypical if he had tried. As he had arrived in a dog-eared wax Barbour, I was beginning to think the wellies would have been a more appropriate choice.
I quickly learnt that I had under-sold Simon in my description of him as a goat farmer; this was far from the only string to his bow. As well as working part time for the National Farmers Union (NFU for those who are down with the lingo), he farms not only goats but sheep too. Goats are his speciality though. In fact, he has just won an award for his goat farming and his goat meat is stocked in major supermarkets. I was suitably impressed. I had picked a good one. This guy wasn’t kidding around; he was clearly the creme-de-la-creme of the caprine community. And this wasn’t it, he had his eye on bigger things; venison is set to be his next diversification.
Now my intention here is not to mock or underplay Simon’s impressive C.V.. His business plan is forward thinking and lucrative. The issue lay in the fact that the ingenuity and diversification Simon clearly displayed in his farming were not applied to his conversational skills. An hour and a half into the date, I had run out of all possible intelligent sounding remarks I could make about farming. Other than the odd segue into stories of binning pints with a lot of rugby mates whose names seemed to consist of terms for the male genitalia followed by a vowel (Cocky, Dicko, etc.) I was forced to plough on through Simon’s farming chat. The highlight of this was definitely learning that he tries to name as many of his goats as possible. His favourites are called Sharon and Beverley and are apparently very chatty. It seems I have stiff competition!
Eventually I was able to make my excuses and escape. Despite my portrayal of him, Simon was incredibly friendly, chatty and sweet. I’m just not sure that a Goat Bae is quite what I’m looking for, especially if I would have to vie with Beverley and Sharon for his attention. The next morning I woke up to a text from a friend: ‘Did I see you in Hell and Below last night? Who was that guy you were with?!’. My first Cumbrian date and the cat (or rather the goat) was already out the bag before I could even write about it! I would advise all Cumbrians to blog about their dating life, the chances are most of Carlisle already knows about it anyway…