Cupids, blind dates and beer

I'm not entirely taking back what I said about Ok Cupid, but it did give me my first date in over a year this past weekend. Yes, the vast majority of messages are pointless, but every so often there are ones that are worth replying to.

It also turns out that playing with the site is a worthwhile and entertaining bus journey occupation. It was on my way home one afternoon that I spotted a message from 'London Guy' (an original username...) that was intelligent, amusing, referenced my profile and was worth responding to. [I'm sure my positive attitude had nothing to do with the counselling session I was returning home from.] By the time the bus reached my stop we'd agreed that meeting up was a good idea. My current attitude is that e-mailing back and forth is a waste of time and only builds up false expectations, so why not just bite the bullet and meet for coffee?

As it turned out, we were both going to be at the same Christian festival over the bank holiday and this seemed to be an even better, no pressure, environment in which to meet. I had to keep the time and location of our date secret from my friends after threats of stalking were issued, but a friendly pint in the beer tent certainly wasn't a fearsome prospect. In fact, it seemed ideal...

...until the spontaneous singing of hymns began 10 minutes after we'd sat down. Conducting a getting-to-know-you conversation while the people around you are lustily singing Tell Out My Soul is rather difficult, but we managed it. It was also slightly unfortunate that, when I checked my phone for the time 50 minutes in it turned out that a fellow camper had been trying to contact me for a while owing to emergency tent conditions. Thus the date terminated early, but with a promise of coffee in the capital at a later date. I guess that's a successful outcome.

What's also a successful outcome is that I can finally be a mature adult around Mr Long Replyer (oh yes, he's still around) and not simply ignore him. It's taken several group dinners, a week-long holiday and a weekend of camping, but we're pretty much there. He's a good guy, but soooooo not my type.

What's not been so great has been Good Male Friend's decision to join the world of online dating. His first mistake was to include me in a round-robin email asking for help describing him in 50 words for his profile. My initial reaction? Two words: thoughtless git. (I didn't send that email.) His second mistake was to decide that sending me an email via OK Cupid (once the site had matched us) would be hilarious. It wasn't. Nor was the fact that we got an 80% match - the highest of anyone I've yet found on it. Ouch.

But we move on, if not upwards. I'm still not convinced that the world of online dating is the way to go. Surely it's better to meet people in the real world and get the kick of chemistry that prompts you to want to find out more about someone? To be pursued by someone where the feeling's actually mutual? Or am I simply being a hopeless romantic?

The Christian world moves in ever decreasing circles

So, the saga (is it a saga? perhaps story is more apt) of Guardian Man continues...

A little bit before Christmas I went to a comedy thing organised by the same people involved in the end of summer Christian festival I like to attend. It was likely that Guardian Man would also be present, as it's the team he produces, but as I was going with GMF I figured I was unlikely to run into him and it was even less likely that he'd recognise me as the blithering idiot from 4 months previously. However, on the day GMF bailed and I ended up going solo.

After the event, a few people asked me to review on my regular blog, so I did and it then got rather widely distributed across the Christian web. For some reason, within my post I felt inspired to mention this possibly awkward interaction:

A particular achievement was successfully saving myself from a potentially embarrassing encounter with someone I'd met at the last [the festival] (at 1am, at the end of the festival and fairly delirious from lack of sleep) who I knew would be there.

When we'd last chatted (I say chatted, I may in fact have wittered at length) he had spent the entire conversation trying to work out how he recognised me, certain that we had met before. We hadn't, but I might once have sent him an e-mail via a Christian dating site that he may or may not have replied to, and we might also have had a mutual friend who had then introduced us in person (she thought it would be funny to see what happened). Anyway, I was anxious not to repeat what was a fairly mortifying experience and was hopeful that he wouldn't recognise me (for a start, I wasn't wearing my uber attractive 'camping occasions fleece'). He walked past me just as I was leaving and did a double-take, but thankfully didn't stop to talk - potentially embarrassing encounter avoided.

Thing was, this post was so widely distributed that I realised it was likely Guardian Man himself had read it. Then someone sent me a link to a YouTube video that was shown at the event, so I could link to it. When I looked it up, I discovered that the video had been posted by none other than Guardian Man and that it also linked back to my review. Thus, one could safely say that he had read it - whether he'd realised it was him is another matter...

This week further randomness ensued thanks to Twitter - I noticed that GMF was now following Guardian Man and that Guardian Man had reciprocated. Even weirder.

Seriously, do random connections happen like this with other people? I mean seriously, I seem to not be able to go near a dating site without it coming back and hitting me!