On a national level I was devastated to leave the single market. On a personal level I am even more devastated to be re-joining it. If the future of this country is bleak, the future of this single market looks even bleaker. No longer will we be able to suggest the fail-safe first date option of wine and cheese. “BUT”, I hear the fervent Brexiteers amongst you cry (of which I can’t imagine there are that many but this blog is nothing if not apolitical), “you can still have British cheese and wine”. This is true. Whatever your political affiliations though, there is a reason that French, rather than English is universally known as the language of love.
You can’t help but fancy someone as they order a bottle of Chateau Neuf du Pape, as happens frequently on my first dates. The same cannot be said as they ask the waiter for a bottle of Court Garden Ditchling Red which legitimately sounds like the grapes were grown in an underwhelming dyke. Similarly, I am as strong an advocate of a Wensleydale or a Double Gloucester as the next gal. but they don’t sound quite as seductive as Epoisses or a Comte. I’m afraid it only gets worse; not only are we to be done out of the dairy-based and drinkable delights the continent has to offer, we won’t have the thickly accented, tanned and toned men to discuss them with. We must say au revoir to Antoine, arrivederci to Angelo and adios to Alberto. Shit! Or merde! Time is of the essence. As I rejoined one single market, I realised I better make the most of the other whilst I still had the chance…
So there I was, back in the game and back on the apps. I am thrilled to report that little has changed in my two-year absence from the world of Hinge, Bumble and Tinder. Using them is rather like riding a bike - even if you’re a little rusty, the fundamentals remain the same. It wasn’t long before the matches started trickling in. Given the previous paragraph, it would be fair to assume I kept things strictly continental but age has taught me the benefit of an open mind (plus beggars can’t be choosers). Thus I ended up agreeing to a date with the distinctly un-exotic sounding Angus.
I’m still not entirely sure how much of his original date suggestion was a joke and how much of it was a genuine invitation but during our cyber small talk he mentioned that he was spending his afternoon prepping for a dinner party (or DP as he referred to it) and asked if I would like to join. I mulled this over - on the one hand, after a fair amount of time out of the dating game, a dinner party of strangers would definitely be throwing myself back in at the deep end. On the other hand, it could have the potential for great blog fodder. Well, there was no question really was there. “Sure”, I replied.
It was only at this point that he divulged who the other guests were: his brother, his brother’s fiancee, his brother’s dog, his cousin, his cousin’s husband, their baby, his other cousin, her husband and their baby. What kind of a psychopath invites someone to meet their entire extended family on a first date?!? I suggested that maybe a pre-cooking drink would be more conventional and a safer bet.
Then came the logistics. He lived in CJ but had to head into town to pick up a jacket. This took a while to decipher; it transpires, for those of us not in the know, that CJ is Clapham Junction and ‘town’ refers to central London, specifically Piccadilly in this instance. I mean, alarm bells should have really gone off at this point - I am all in favour of an abbreviation, I can ROFL, LMAO and get DTF along with the best of them, but assuming that a stranger would immediately know what a DP and a CJ were suggested that old Angus moved in fairly narrow social circles. I had committed though so I had to follow through. He said he didn’t know central London too well so I suggested meeting in a fairly non-descript pub in Soho. It was mid-afternoon on a Saturday so I felt it was not quite the time for wine and cheese.
There were further alarm bells when I arrived to find him wearing brown suede loafers, a signet ring and a jumper that only zipped down half way. I might as well have been back at one of our interchangeable singles dinners! Still, don’t judge a book by its cover and all that - we got chatting. It transpired that the jacket he was purchasing was a tweed one from Charles Tyrwhitt that he needed for just general drinks and things, naturally. I quickly steered the conversation on to less ridiculous territory. Hoping that podcasts would be a safer bet I said that I had been listening to Desert Island Discs on my walk there. He seemed surprised by this, saying “Really, I always thought it was just boring people being interviewed for old people to listen to?” I mean, there aren’t many things that I hold sacred but Desert Island Discs is definitely one of them. I will admit that this was pretty much a deal breaker there and then but by this point I had a pint in my hand, I couldn’t just walk away.
We moved on to the safer ground of what we did for work. Angus told me he was a stockbroker. This is one of those professions that, for me, just falls under the general umbrella of ‘adulting’ - I always try to make noises that suggest I am both impressed and fully informed on what this entails but in actual fact I don’t have a scoobies what on earth a stockbroker does. I assumed it was something suity though so asked if he worked in the City, a safe guess. “No, no,” he said, “I’m based in Oxford Circus”. Hang on a second. Earlier that day he had been unable to suggest a place for us to meet in Soho, the area next to Oxford Circus. It was slightly worrying that he worked in Oxford Circus and didn’t know a single pub in the vicinity.
I thought that maybe food might be more of his cup (and saucer) of tea so asked what his usual lunch spots were. No points for guessing the response to this one - he was a regular Pret or M&S soup kind of guy, I asked if he had ventured as far as the Berwick Street food market. “Ooh, no, I’ve never even heard of it. What sort of food do they do?” I gave him a stall-by-stall account of the set up - the delicious gyros, the exotic salads, the stall selling what is arguably the best falafel wrap in London. “Hmm, might not be quite my sort of thing”, he pondered, “I’m not much of a fan of foreign food”. I was beginning to think this opinion may not only relate to Angus’s culinary tastes, so much for a continental embrace of all things and men European!
From there we moved on to what my plans were for the rest of the day, given that I was both unable and unwilling to attend his family reunion. I told him I was heading up to Old Street to help a friend with some DIY. He didn’t know where Old Street was. When I said it was in Shoreditch he clocked on, “Oh yes, in that direction?” In a similar manner to the date as a whole, he was entirely off the mark and pointing in totally the wrong direction. Well it is a long old commute from CJ to OS, with the latter providing little opportunity for him to take his new jacket for a spin.
To be fair to the guy, the date wasn’t entirely negative. Angus and I shared similar views on the stomach turning potential of a runny egg white and to give him his due, conversation was flowing and relaxed, if a little ridiculous. This may or may not have been helped by the fact that I had barely touched alcohol for over six months so by the bottom of two pints I was bother rather lively and a little bit slurry. He was a really nice guy though, it not fairly sheltered in both his life experience and London geographical knowledge. It wasn’t a resounding success of a first dip back into the dating pool but it wasn’t shockingly frosty enough to induce brain freeze or wind me. This arguably isn’t setting the bar particularly high but I’m really trying to find a silver lining here!
Eventually Angus had a lasagne to get making and I had a toilet seat to get attaching so we went our separate ways. To my earlier point, Angus couldn’t have been less continental if he tried. He was about as British as they come and did a great deal to prove my point of the need to make the most of those Europeans whilst we have them - a far better deal than any other that may be currently on the cards!