After Goat Bae proved a non-starter I was determined not to fall at the first hurdle, so got straight back on the Tinder horse. So far my Tinder journey has taught me a great deal, primarily that dating is actually quite a time consuming habit. For every date I manage to wrangle there are hours of multiple different versions of the same dull cyber small talk that get abandoned by the wayside. Eventually I bagged myself a date with Mason, a cement layer from New Zealand who had moved to Cumbria to play rugby.
Now, when it comes to dating, I’m not very good at playing games and am much more of a fan of straight-up honesty (apart from being honest about the fact I intend to blog about these people, obviously). When it came to Mason, however, I had met my match. I feel that in general, 6:30ish is the earliest possible acceptable time for anyone with any sort of job to arrange a date, but erring on the side of caution I had suggested 7:00PM. I was a bit surprised therefore when Mason messaged me at 4:26PM: ‘Hey, I’ve just arrived. Happy to keep myself entertained until you’re free’. I’m normally the first one to applaud eagerness but I feel arriving two and a half hours early for a date is really a bit much.
I suggested Mason spend some time exploring the extensive tourist attraction ‘The Great Border City’ has to offer and eventually headed in to join him. Keen to continue my search for the ideal date location in Carlisle, this time I had opted for The Last Zebra. Unsurprisingly, Mason had already arrived and was waiting for me outside. I was pleasantly surprised. With only two pictures on his Tinder profile, I hadn’t had much to go on but Mason proved to be more attractive than his profile suggested. He was definitely on the lower end of the tall scale but could easily pass as dark and handsome - two out of three isn’t bad.
Walking in to The Last Zebra, we were again greeted with exposed brick-work and reclaimed furniture. Unlike Hell and Below, which was a lot smaller and full of little nooks to sit in, The Last Zebra consisted of one large open space with amazing high ceilings. Although this is very impressive, Tuesday didn’t seem to be their busiest night. We were in fact their only customers and without the background of other chatting customers I felt very self-aware. This issue was worsened in true Cumbrian style when I recognised the waitress from the gym. I was relieved that Mason was new in town and therefore still anonymous, meaning the tongue wagging could only go so far.
In reality, I needn’t have worried. Even if the waitress had been listening to our conversation, she would have struggled to glean enough from it to form any sort of juicy gossip worth listening to. Asking Kiwi Bae what he thought of Cumbria so far, I was met with the response, ‘I like it, motorways are pretty exciting, eh?’. Once again, my upbringing let me down. How is one meant to respond to such a statement? I plumped for an indeterminable noise of agreement and took a large slurp of my drink.
I was relieved when Mason took control of the questioning at this point although felt the situation hadn’t quite got awkward enough to bring in the heavy guns as he did with his next question… ‘Sooo, do you like films?’. To me this question suggests an acknowledgment of the fact we were running out of mutual territory so he had therefore selected a topic that was broad enough to spark universal interest. I responded that I did indeed enjoy watching films, did he?. ‘No’. So not only had he launched out on the ultimate in awkward small-talk, he had then managed to kill it stone dead. I felt the only way to salvage the date from this point was to pander to his interests. I was suddenly grateful to Goat Bae for his tales of Dicko and Cocky as he had inadvertently supplied me with insider knowledge on rugby club culture. I launched into this topic only to learn that, despite coming to England expressly to play rugby, Mason wasn’t actually very interested in the sport. He had only used it as a vehicle to get to Cumbria. I had no idea that Cumbrian visas were in such high demand but duly ticked off another conversational topic that Mason had successfully slaughtered.
As the conversation progressed I added honesty to the dwindling list of Kiwi Bae’s positive attributes. He really didn’t like films. Having mentioned that I was heading down to London in a few days time, he asked me what I was planning on doing whilst there. I mentioned that I was really excited to be going to see a play with Ian Mckellen in.
‘Who’s he?’, Mason asked.
‘He’s an actor. He’s the guy who plays Gandalf in Lord of the Rings.’
‘Oh cool… Which one is Gandalf again?’
This guy is from New Zealand! The country where they filmed Lord of the Rings! The country where it is impossible to walk more than five metres without bumping into a statue of an ogre or a sign written in elvish. How had this multi-million dollar global franchise, focussed on his country, entirely passed him by?!
Having exhausted all mutual territory we had which largely consisted on his views on Cumbria, my views on New Zealand, and a comparison of the two, I politely declined Mason’s offer of walking me back to my car. Somewhat demoralised by a second attempt and failure to find Bae, I returned home to seek comfort in my lonely Itsu instant noodles for one and returned to the drawing board of swiping and cyber small talk.