Blonde Buttercup: Dates from HELL...

I've been dating since I was 15, I'm exhausted, where is he?
- Charlotte, Sex & the City

Lets be completely honest. The attached among us often wish we were single (yearning for a moment of peace, perhaps a day of not having to put the toilet seat down - ahhh, the mere thought of a weekend without the background noise of football...) **Sorry, back on topic** whilst the singletons are obsessed to the point of hysteria with finding 'the one'.

I love a good gossip with a single friend, there's something so much more exciting hearing about the DRAMA of the meeting of eyes and flirting, the EXCITEMENT of that 'will he, won't he ask me out' the pure and complete horror of a date gone COMPLETELY and UTTERLY tits up.

I haven't had many dates, not proper ones anyway, it's been more nights out with Jägermeister than trips to Paris if you know what I mean. It's probably a good thing, based on the fact the first date I had with the current beau apparently didn't go too well. I still see nothing wrong with the fact that whilst putting his arm around me he found that my dress still had the label in (Don't judge: I hadn't decided if I liked it, or him, enough to warrant the cost, OK?)

Anyway, my mildy mortifying dates don't come close to some friends have had.

Lets look at one example:

Exhibit A:

Once upon a time....

Boy meets girl on night out
Boy asks girl out via text the next day
Girl unfortunately remembers liking said boy but (because of afore mentioned Jägermeister) not quite enough to remember what he looks like
Girl decides to get to bar early to wait and hope boy recognises her not the other way round
Girl somehow drinks one bottle of red before boy arrives
Boy takes (carries) girl to cinema
Girl falls asleep in cinema
Girl wakes up and does not recognise date
Girl tries to leave cinema mid film only to be stopped by date
"Who are you" says girl
"I'm your date" says boy
Girl sits down and watches the rest of the film
Girl still gets asked out on another date
Girl declines fearing the relationship perhaps did not start in the best of ways and would probably result in boy being a pushover (plus if hey were to ever get married the speeches would almost certainly bring up first meeting and a red face does not compliment white wedding gown)

Happily ever after...maybe not.

There are many, many more tales (but I marked this blog as 'U' rated so maybe I won't recount them here)

My love of hearing about dates from hell means that when I stumbled upon this little beauty I was joyous...

Site: First Dates from Hell

*Journalist Rhodri Marsden posted about a bad date on Twitter. Replies poured in and the collection of responses became the internet’s new favourite thing. Here’s what he learned:*

This hyper-connected internet age has given single people like myself a sliver of hope that the partner of our dreams might be around the next cyber-corner. Across forums, social media and internet dating sites, we exchange flirtatious banter, establish that we might like each other, and eventually meet up. But this approach has a colossal failure rate. We sit in a room with someone we’ve never met and know barely anything about, purely on the basis of an optimistic hunch. Wine and beer is consumed, often to excess. Unusual things happen. We experience regret. Misery. Brutal hangovers. But tragedy plus time equals anecdote. A couple of weeks ago I posted on Twitter about a bad first date I’d had, consisting of three hours of gruelling conversation that neither of us were socially skilled enough to curtail. I started receiving hundreds of stories in reply. The girl who was taken at night to a shopping centre still being built. The girl who was forced to eat all her vegetables on her plate at dinner. The man who turned up in full fencing garb, “carrying his wallet in his face protector thing”. Shorn of extraneous detail, these tweets were almost haiku-like: (“She said ‘I really hoped you’d be someone else’ and left.”) From unexpected personnel turning up (“Detoured by prison before dinner to bail out his brother, who’d stabbed his girlfriend”) to bizarre get-out excuses (“He said he had to get home to the chicken breast going off in his fridge”), 80% of these tales were grim examples of man’s inhumanity to woman. Misplaced confidence, arrogance and bizarre behaviour are rampant (eg “One gentleman took me to the pub car park to show me his motorbike. He revved it for about 10 minutes, then did a lap and drove off.”) I hearby apologise on behalf of all men, but humbly suggest women can, on occassion, be just as bad. “A date showed up with an albino ferret named Dylan. She channeled all chat through him. Dylan says…”. Of course, if you meet the right person, there is no story. What you’re doing and where you’re doing it almost fails to register. The evening slips by as effortless conversation flows, synergy is established, moments of hysterical mirth are shared. But most of the time it’s like this: “We spent 30 minutes talking about Milton Keynes station. I’ve never even been there.” This is a terrible shame. But it can make for a wonderful story.