Christmas is very much over. All that’s left of the January sales are the XS and XL items, all forms of social invitations have dried up as peoples stop drinking in an attempt to atone for their guilt at overindulging on Baileys and mulled wine, and even the blue ones have been eaten out of the Quality Street tins in a desperate search for a chocolate hit during the early days of the ‘New year, new me’ resolutions. It’s January, the weather’s dire, and people are feeling even more desperate and alone than usual. Ideal! Clever researchers have found out that there is a surge in dating app usage in the first month of the year through a combination of loneliness and optimism as people want a new partner to go with their new banging bod which surely must be on it’s way now that they’ve been to the gym three times. I decided to cash in on the new meat and hit Tinder, Bumble and Happn hard.
The researchers were right and it wasn’t long before Happn delivered the goods in the shape of a 35 year old lawyer from Newcastle, Kevin. My last Happn encounter had been Pilot Bae, arguably one of my most successful dates so far. Clearly Happn was the popular cyber hang out for the slightly more mature man and I was hoping for another success, this time with someone who at least lived in the same country! Impressed that Kevin was willing to make the hour long drive for the sake of a date, we met in a pub not far from where I live.
Kevin was already standing at the bar when I arrived. He had been very crafty in his use of a suave monochrome profile picture on his Happn account. What seemed to be a thick, manly beard in his picture, was, in reality, almost entirely grey. I think I would have minded less if it was someone my own age who had a grey beard, it would have just been unfortunate genes. In this case, however, the grey beard was combined with those glasses that don’t have rims so it looks like you’re not actually wearing glasses, which made the eleven year age gap seem even greater than it was. I decided against making a claim of misleading conduct and continued with proceedings.
Considering the distance Kevin had travelled for the date I thought meeting for a drink was a little mean so I agreed to have dinner with him and hoped that I had been too quick to judge. The menus arrived and the meal did not get off to a good start. I’m not sure quite what Kevin was expecting from a run-of-the-mill Cumbrian pub but he spent a great deal of time looking down his nose at the menu before announcing, ‘Well I suppose I had better have the steak but I don’t imagine it will be very good’. It turns out that Kevin was quite the foody. A big fan of cooking myself, I was relieved that we had hit mutual ground. I was wrong. Kevin was quick to point out that, he simply doesn’t have the time to cook for himself. He recently moved back up to Newcastle from London. In London ‘one really can’t go wrong in Knightsbridge, they really do have some quite good restaurants around there now’. I was surprised by the stark juxtaposition when I learned that, having moved back north, Lawyer Bae was living with his parents and his mother now did all his cooking and washing for him. Kevin was simultaneously the most snobbish and molly-coddled thirty-five year old I have ever met. That’s without even mentioning the fuss he made over the wine list! Who would have thought there was such a blatant distinction in knowledge between the sommeliers or Knightsbrige and Wetheral!
Unfortunately things did not improve as the meal progressed. I explained to Lawyer Bae that although I wasn’t planning on living in Cumbria for ever, I currently had no desire to live in London and instead am looking for jobs in more Northern cities. Kevin heard the word London and went into lawyer mode. Did I know that he had recently moved up from London?!? Clearly not having listened to a word of what I had said, he embarked on a one man court case; providing both the prosecution and defence of every borough of London in turn and why I should or shouldn’t move there. The only up-side of this was it got us through most of the main course without having to fish around for any further common interests.
In case you were interested, Kevin thinks the most important thing when looking to live in London is, ‘you simply have to be near green space’. Lawyer Bae had cohabited near a green space in London with his ex-girlfriend and their dog. I felt that the dog was definitely safer territory than the ex so headed down that route. ‘What breed was your dog?’. This was the final nail in the coffin for Kevin. His dog was a black labrador, they’re his favourites. I know that what I am about to write may insult many of my readers: I’m sorry but I just can’t stand black labradors. I know many of you own them, and I have probably been more than complimentary about yours in the past but the truth is, I was lying. To me, they fall into the same category as babies: they smell a bit funny, they all look the same and people get terribly offended if you’re rude about them.
Obviously I didn’t say any of this to Kevin. I made polite noises, insisted I was far too full for pudding and suggested we get the bill as he had a long journey home ahead of him and a busy day of lawyering to get up for. My lack of follow up text from Lawyer Bae suggests that the lack of attraction was definitely mutual. No doubt he saw me as a highly immature millennial - still living at home and too backwards and rural to comprehend the complexities of a fine wine and wonders of the capital. Considering the evidence I think it is safe to say no adjournment, case closed!