Postponement

How disappointing. The Matchmaker has just texted to say that my date needs to postpone till next week. It's a shame, but the text she forwarded from him was suitably apologetic and lovely, so that's ok.

I realised the other day that this is the first time I've ever been on a totally blind date - i.e. with no idea of what the other person looks like, does, is interested in...nothing. I like firsts! Literally all I know is where he goes to church and that we have mutual friends. Bizarre.

In other positives, while I'm still holding firm to the 'no checking on Facebook' rule, I did mention his name to a friend at church this week. Her response was more than reassuring - "Oooooh, interesting! I'm impressed, that's a surprisingly good match...". I'm not getting excited by this, it's more to do with her having previous experience of The Matchmaker's good intentions than anything else.

Another bonus of the delay is that it gives me more time to work out what to wear, how to blow-dry my new (two day old) haircut properly and possibly buy some new shoes. Fun times.

First Date

First New York style date took longer to organise than anticipated, but it's in the diary for Thursday next week at a mutually agreed central location. It feels rather odd organising a meeting via a medium (i.e. the matchmaker, as opposed to a spiritualist) rather than actually communicating with the person you're meeting, but at the same time kind of nice.

Matchmaker suggester a restaurant, so neither of us had to think of that and, as an added bonus I went there just last month so not only do I know where it is, but also what I like on the menu. Here's hoping they won't make me try Mexican street food from the weirder end of the spectrum...

Oh, and the other great thing about this matchmaking business is that Matchmaker already has her next date for me up her sleeve - so if Thursday is a disaster, it really doesn't matter - there's another guy already lined up for a date. I could really get used to this and, compared to all those online dating sites, this is incredibly cheap - all it's costing me is sporadic coffees for the Matchmaker...

New York style dating

This afternoon, I was unusually referred to as Carrie Bradshaw several times during one coffee date (I use date in the context of two friends meeting for a hot beverage at a scheduled time). This friend - lets call her Singer Friend - and I meet regularly for coffee and she is a seasoned listener to my men woes. This friend is also something of a matchmaker and had alerted me a couple of weeks ago that after a dry patch, she was ready to get going again and had me firmly on her list of potentials...

For 2011 she's decided to encourage 'New York style dating' amongst her friends and acquaintances - dates that don't necessarily mean either party is massively interested, but that are a way of getting to know people. Thus, she is in the process of setting up several couples on blind dates (I am the fourth this week) with no strings attached. She compared it to Sex and the City (though insisting that as we're good Christians there'll be no sex) and likened me to Carrie. Honestly, Carrie and I don't have much in common - except for blonde, sporadically wild hair; something of a shoe interest; and a passion for writing - so this was really quite a compliment.

Singer Friend is so into this that I joked that she was like Sally's friend in When Harry Met Sally who had a rolladex containing possible men - her response was that as she'd walked through the bookstore in which we were drinking she'd browsed the nice notebook section with a view to using one for such a purpose.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that I have a date - next week in fact. Exact date is to be negotiated via Singer Friend, but it's very much on the cards. I have his name, but he doesn't know mine (she thinks that women prefer to have at least a little bit of info to go on), I've also sworn not to look him up on Facebook. I recognised the name (it's a guy from church) but though I can't recall what he looks like, have a vague recollection that I've seen photos of him & been vaguely intrigued. But it's just one date and already she's planning more...

I just hope that it's more successful than the last time she tried to matchmake me. She'd mentioned a guy who'd met me at her engagement party and circumstances meant that she didn't have chance to organise a date before her wedding. So what did she do instead? Seat us together at the reception, of course! On a table with no one I knew - without any of my many friends who were present - I was stuck next to a guy with an unfortunate first name who's most interesting topic of conversation was a recent translation of the Bible from Hebrew into Spanish. We had nothing in common and I spent a lot of the reception trying to escape him (while one dear, dear friend sniggered from a neighbouring table). Since then she's apologised profusely and now I'm ready to trust her judgement. Let's see what happens.

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!

Always play nice...

...otherwise one day, karma will jump up and bite you on the ass.

Life is far too busy for online dating at the moment. Given as I average one free evening a week at the moment (and need that to do laundry) I have little time for seeing the people I like to see on a regular basis, let alone anyone new. [Having said that, I would of course drop all plans should certain men suddenly become desperate to spend time with me.]

That's not to say that there are no stories to tell. As with many of the stories I seem to share here, it's one of living in a very small world and, in this specific case, bad karma.

Yesterday, I saw Good Male Friend while he was working at a decidedly chilly Christmas market with a colleague of mine (well, we do the same job but with different organisations) and someone I'd not met before, but had heard a lot about. GMF and I don't have many mutual friends, but our social circles often collide in exceedingly random and coincidental ways. I was therefore not surprised when he said "I met someone you know at Thanksgiving dinner yesterday..." What I wasn't expecting was the response I got to my question of who it was. Apparently I "went on a blind date with him in the summer and never called him back - he seemed rather miffed about it".

Oh yes, GMF had met Mr Long Replyer. (Why I didn't respond in the end is chronicled here and here.) Oh good God, how does this stuff happen to me?!

It was, of course, owing to my unfortunately unusual surname. Apparently I'd come up in conversation (I knew a few people at the meal) and as soon as my surname was mentioned, Mr Long Replyer made the connection. How I cringed! Not least because it means that there's a possibility I may run into him again in the future - eeek.

I tried to explain to GMF and colleague why I'd not replied in the end - without making him sound bad. GMF insisted that it probably wasn't such a big deal and it was just one of those things. Colleague pointed out that they'd agreed at the meal not to mention it to me, but GMF couldn't resist.

This leads me into an interesting position, in a variety of ways:
(i) GMF had no idea I was dipping my toe into the dating scene and seemed somewhat surprised that I'd not told him about it or this date. [To be fair, not only was it a month after he told me he wasn't interested, he was also in America.]
(ii) GMF now knows that this blog exists and what its about - yet is disappointed that I won't give him the link. Hmph.
(iii) One of the negatives of Mr LR was that he was very like GMF, yet wasn't GMF - I wonder if GMF spotted this?
(iv) What if I meet Mr LR again? That will be quite, quite embarrassing.

In the mean time, I will simply hang my head in embarrassment and shame and pray for forgiveness. Never again will I not reply to someone's heartfelt missive. I am a bad, bad woman.

The danger of complaining

Over the summer, the Christian dating site re-launched itself and as a result all members got full access for a trial period. Unfortunately, this coincided with my holiday away with several thousand Christians, so I missed out.

A few weeks later I spotted a couple of glitches with the new set-up (it was around the time I was considering returning to it as a fully paid-up member) so e-mailed to let them know. At the same time I threw in a minor complaint that I'd missed out on the free trial, kind of hoping to be given another. 

I was, though sadly this trial clashed with Christian festival weekend, so again I couldn't use it. Once home, I considered e-mailing again and opened up the message I'd been sent. That was when I realised that it had been written by someone I know. Someone whose husband is in the same kids church team as me, who I was next to during the service a couple of weeks ago...

Yes, I was vaguely aware that she worked for this site, but I didn't really know what she did! Does she know it was actually me? Probably? Am I embarrassed? Yes.

I shouldn't be embarrassed, it's just a dating site, but still. Stupid small world. 

An update:

I haven't re-joined the Christian site properly, but I have cancelled my eHarmony subscription. Actually, I've not been thinking about online dating much because, well because an idiot boy's being an idiot. I should probably stop letting that be a distraction and jump back into the game in time for the nights drawing in. 

It's a small, small world after all...

My last post mentioned Guardian Man - he was the man that prompted me to shell out actual money to join Christian Connection - ticked a lot of my boxes - but sadly, never replied to my initial e-mail. (Was it because I mentioned my dislike of the Guardian website's re-design? Quite possibly.) My colleague's friend was using the next Christian festival as an opportunity to meet up with him.

The end of the summer Christian festival is usually good for a bit of speed dating and a lot of the Christian Connection men state that they're fans - in fact Mr Long Replyer and I had a long chat about it on our date. I've dabbled in the speed dating events, but otherwise there aren't a lot of opportunities to get chatting with potentially interesting men. To be honest, a little bit of me regretted not having had the forethought to try and set up some dates in advance.

On the drive down to the fields of green, the driver (another London based Christian singleton) and I were chatting about this story and the fact that it's quite brave to set something like that up - I mean, what if the date was a total disaster and you kept bumping into them throughout the event? [Because of course we all know that it is those we wish to avoid who we bump into at every opportunity.]

Anyway, in my telling of the story I mentioned that this was a guy I'd e-mailed owing to his Guardian connections. Her ears pricked up at this and asked if I knew his name - I did and she laughed - it turned out she knew him (went to the same church). The small, small Christian world strikes again!

This in itself was amusing enough, but on the last night she orchestrated a move that I wouldn't usually consider her capable of. At literally the final event of the entire festival, he appeared - it turned out he was involved behind the scenes. He spotted her, she waved and he came over - so she took the opportunity to introduce us.

I should at this moment mention that it was now 1am on Tuesday morning. I'd been camping since Friday - my last shower had been Friday morning. I was sun and wind burned. My hair had been in a hat for quite a while. I was wearing my 'camping ocassions fleece' (possibly my least attractive item of clothing) and had just had a little nap during a rather dull female guitar folk session.

After the introduction, Guardian Man looked at me a little oddly and asked what my surname was. He had that look that said "I recognise you, but I can't think where from" - of course, I wasn't about to say that it was from an online dating site! Then, either tiredness, embarassment or nerves kicked in (actually, probably a combination of all three) and I was afflicted with logorrhea [a new word learnt last weekend meaning a pathological inability to stop talking].

My friend mentioned that I was sleeping in her tent tonight and I piped up with a story about the late night films I'd been making with my previous tent-mate who had left that evening. He seemed a little mystified as to why I should be so excited by this and what the point of it was (indeed, many of our friends had exactly the same thoughts). I can't remember what else I managed to come out with, but needless to say, I did not do myself justice - much to my friends' amusement.

And what of Guardian Man himself? Moderately cute, beardy, interesting clothing (though one mustn't judge at festivals, unless it's a very unique form of festival chic - i.e. anything tie-dyed or batikked). and an interesting job. Just a shame that he probably came away wondering who on earth the freak was that his friend introduced him to...