With LA Bae’s departure back to warmer climates and more intense yoga practices, it was back to the apps for me. As fruitful as my continental approach was proving, I felt it was both unsustainable and potentially a wee bit judgemental towards my fellow countrymen. I mean, 48% of the country didn’t vote for Brexit. Based on the assumption that that was then split 50/50 by gender, that still gives me 24% of the population to play with. I know there are multiple additional factors: some of those will be in relationships, some will be married, some will not be interested in women and some will not live within a swipeable distance. My maths wasn’t good enough to work out the exact percentage of the UK’s population that is left potentially dateable but the number was starting to sound depressingly small. It sounded like broadening my parameters was very much required, so with the maths abandoned, I went back to swiping.
Enter Joe. I must say I did not learn much about Joe prior to our date other than that he worked in IT. To be fair though, I kind of took this as a positive. It had been one of those cyber chats that seemed to evolve into ridiculously in-depth nonsense on an utterly random theme as opposed to the usual mundanities of what we did and where we lived so when he asked if I would like to meet I agreed. He may have been an axe murderer for all I knew but he had good chat (sorry Mam, I know you still worry about me agreeing to meet random men and can see you stressing at the very prospect of this approach). Joe suggested we meet for a Sunday afternoon date - not something I had gone in for in the past but LA Bae had taught me a new found open-mindedness in my approach to dating, so I agreed. Also, if he was an axe-murdered, better to meet in day light just to be on the safe side.
Joe had only recently moved to London and was still in the stage of exploring new areas so also offered to come to Camden - an ideal opportunity for me to continue my personal exploration of the local area. The day dawned and was looking like a particularly sunny one so I decided to revisit the route that had proven so successful on my last date. I did make one crucial error though: trying to locate someone you know outside Camden Town tube station on a weekend is difficult enough but made even more challenging when it’s a stranger and you have only ever seen the highlights reel of what they actually look like. Eventually I recognised the round wire framed glasses and dimples from Joe’s profile. His floppy hair and baggy, trendy-patterned-short-sleeved-button-down shirt didn’t scream serial killer, he looked rather sweet, and so we set off along the canal towards the zoo. This time, not only did we see the warthogs and the lions but we also ticked African hunting dogs, meerkats, the tiger, the monkeys and a porcupine off the list. A bumper day by any standards! I think I was probably more excited by this than Joe was but he did show suitable levels of enthusiasm.
I have decided that a walk really is a pretty good first date. Talking to a stranger is much less awkward when you take the aspect of eye contact and trying to work out what to do with your hands out of it. Add in a free tour of a zoo and you have a constant conversational topic as you move amongst the animals. Eventually our walk took us away from the zoo up Primrose Hill so conversation was forced to turn to other things. We discovered that we had both lived in Australia, which provided good common ground as a starting point. Joe had lived there for two years following school. He said that when he left school he went to uni for a couple of months, found himself highly unmotivated and realised he just wasn’t ready to throw himself back into full time education yet so he travelled for three years, finding bar jobs where he could to support himself. Three years later he knew he wanted to go into technology so spent three years studying computer sciences, graduated last year and moved to London. I had a lot of respect for this approach. I think it takes a lot more balls to realise that university isn’t right for you and go and support yourself until you do feel ready for it than it does to go to uni, doss your way through and come out with a below average degree in something you have very little interest in and very little idea what you want to do next. Points to Joe.
As an even more recent Londoner than me we discussed how he was finding adapting to big city life and more generally moving to a new place without knowing many people. Joe wasn’t particularly enjoying the area he lived in but he said he was making a lot of new friends because he was a big fan of bouldering and had joined a local bouldering centre. At this point I was split – I confess, I have dabbled in bouldering and it is good fun, it’s sociable and great exercise. It is also, however, the most millennial of trends at the moment. Bouldering centres are so over subscribed in London that you tend to spend more time queuing than you do actually climbing. If I had a pound for every guy I came across on a dating app that had at least one picture of them hanging off an indoor, manmade rock face with colourful shoes, ripped shoulders (they always seem to be topless or in tank tops, I am yet to discover why it is not the done thing to wear normal t-shirts bouldering) and dusty fingers, I would be a rich woman by now. Joe was the real deal though; he was so dedicated to bouldering that he now had a repetitive strain injury in his thumb. He had been advised by his doctor to rest it but that white chalk was like coke to him, he just couldn’t help himself. His thumb did look pretty gammy as well.
What I haven’t mentioned thus far is that throughout all this conversation I was being constantly distracted by a persistent buzzing in my pocket. I consider it highly rude to check your phone on a date but at this point I was getting slightly concerned. I apologised and took mine out my pocket to find three missed calls from my mother and one from my sister. I messaged the latter and asked Joe if he would mind if I quickly rang the former as I felt at this point there must be some sort of family emergency, three calls from Mam was unheard of. He said it was no problem at all so I rang her back. The phone was answered on the second ring with her shouting down the phone “I can’t believe you did that!” Crumbs! I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about but the volume of her voice meant there was little doubt that Joe could also hear the conversation.
“Did what?”
“You know what you did!”
I really didn’t know what I had done and said as much. It sounded like it was something bad though, maybe she had found out I was currently on a date with a total stranger and potential murderer.
“You signed me up for a hearing test without telling me!”
I was both baffled and highly bemused. My sister and I had been joking for months that Mam was going deaf but neither of us would have though of going as far as to book her in for a hearing test, especially without telling her. This was all proving highly embarrassing, especially as Joe continued to saunter along beside me, pretending he couldn’t hear the neurotics coming out of my phone. Mam eventually explained that she had just opened the weekend post and found a letter saying her complimentary hearing test had been booked. It took rather a lot of coercion and stifled giggles to convince her that it really wasn’t me. In this instance she was proving much more of a cock-block than her usual Wing Mam status. Admittedly, I didn’t mention on the phone that I was on a date at the time. Eventually I managed to convince her of my innocence and get her off the phone. Within half an hour I had messages from both her and my sister. Mam had done some research and found out that once you hit a certain age, everyone is given a free hearing test. My sister had only wanted to ask me to pick up a cucumber on the way home. No family emergency whatsoever.
I returned my attention to the walk and trying to maintain any semblance of dignity. This was not helped by the fact that somehow, I’m not sure how, the conversation had moved onto the fact that I had actually been off work for the best part of the last six months due my neurological disorder. Despite my open discussion of it with LA Bae, I still felt telling someone you actually don’t have full control of either your brain or your nervous system on a first date is potentially a risky route. In this instance it was made even more so by the literal route we were taking. By this point we were walking through Primrose Hill that unbeknownst to me was holding a farmers market. Joe was incredibly empathetic about my neurological disorder, as a neurological injury to his sister when she was younger had left her permanent restricted movement in her hands. It was a refreshingly honest conversation made challenging by the fact that we were walking into the sun whilst trying to navigate our way through throngs of the entire population of Primrose Hill, most of whom also seemed to own small children, dogs, or both, all of which they had brought with them and all of which provided additional obstacles. Explaining or understanding a neurological disorder is difficult at the best of times, without having to simultaneously avoid getting entangled in the lead of either a pug in a Barbour jacket or a toddler dressed head to toe in Petite Bateau.
By the time we reached the end of the high street we were exhausted and veered down one of the quieter side streets to find a calming café (another new local establishment ticked off the list). We were not out of danger’s way just yet though. I must confess that I have very little recollection of what we discussed over our peppermint teas. This was through no fault of Joe’s but was down to the couple sitting immediately behind him. They were a totally non descript affluent elderly couple that you might expect to find in Primrose Hill – a bald man and an immaculately put-together lady. What made them so enthralling, or more accurately, distracting, was what they were doing. The lady had leant over their cake and coffee covered table and was proceeding to squeeze the most enormous spot right in the middle of her husbands shiny bald head. She took the napkin off her plate and mopped up as she went. It was absolutely disgusting and I could not take my eyes off them. It was also only a small café. They were less than a metre away so I couldn’t even tell Joe of the scene unfolding over his shoulder. He must have either thought me incredibly rude of incredibly bored.
Eventually Sunday evening life admin beckoned and we headed in our differing directions. The following day I awoke to a message from Joe, chatting away and asking if I would like to do something again some time. Objectively, the date had been a good one. Joe had looked like he did in the pictures and there had been no awkward silences, even without the social inebriation of alcohol. In all honesty though, when I looked back at the date I could remember the various interruptions and distractions far better than I could remember Joe himself. My automatic reaction to his message was sadness at the prospect of having to let him down rather than butterflies at the prospect of a second date. I took this as a sign in itself so duly tried to let Joe down as gently as I could. To be fair to Joe, he then responded saying that that was completely fair enough, that he had really enjoyed spending an afternoon with me, that he hoped we both had better luck finding the one and finished the message off with a party emoji. Fair play to him, I almost wanted to go on a second date with Joe just from that message. He took rejection like an absolute champ. More points to Joe. But no second date.