Well firstly, apologies to those of you I confused by reposting an old blog post this morning…it was from October last year which is why TTB suddenly re-emerged!

Tonight’s blog though is about another date – the one I was leaving for when I wrote on Friday.  And as some of you already know, it was a terrible, terrible evening.  Almost on a par with the one where the bloke I went out with listed all the Eastern European countries in which he’d slept with prostitutes…

It was quite hard work from the start:

Him: I’ve been waiting for you in the pub, reading.

Me: Oh, what are you reading?

Him: I can’t remember the title or author.  It’s on my Kindle.

So that was the end of that conversation.

In no particular order, he then managed a monologue on the ‘awful’ people who live in council houses.  I didn’t tell him I have several good friends doing just that.  Then it was the ‘awfulness’ of those who chose to have tattoos.  I didn’t let on that my newly acquired brother-in-law is a tattoo artist and both sisters are into double figures when it comes to body art.

Music seemed like a safer topic and I mentioned a few concerts I’d been to.  I was informed that he doesn’t ‘do popular culture’ and had never heard of them.

Me: But your profile says you like 80’s music?

Him: God no.  I don’t know where that came from.  I hope it doesn’t make people think I like something terrible like Sapandau Ballet or something like that!’

The irony here is that the night before when I’d been in a bar Gold, by Spandau Ballet had come on and I’d started dancing like a bit of a loon.  Another thing best kept quiet…

He started telling me about Cambridge University.

Me: Why did you choose to go there? (I meant as opposed to any other city)

Him:  Because I am that clever

He went on and on and on (modules covered, internships taken, the differences between Cambridge and ‘the sort of university you went to’) so I reminded him that he left over 15 years ago and asked what class degree he got.

Him: 2:1

Me:  Oh, so did I.  So maybe ‘my sort of university’ wasn’t so bad after all. (That went over his head)

His next conversations starter was ‘I bet you can’t guess where I buy my flour from?’  Seriously?  I was getting bored by this stage and started trying open sarcasm just to entertain myself.

Me: Oh, do tell me.

Him: Amazon

Me: (not even a little impressed) How exciting.  And how much do you buy?

Him: 16 kilos of normal flour, 6 kilos of wholemeal.  That lasts 6 months with the amount of bread I make.

I then found out, step my step how it takes him up to a week to get his sour dough perfect.  By this stage I realised that the night was so bad it was almost funny and started taking mental notes to write this, but then, after 2 hours,  it happened…  (I should point out that one thing that I did keep from the TTB days was that I started smoking again.  I know – it’s disgusting, I’m an idiot etc etc. I asked for the Introduction lady to add it to my profile so I was completely open about it, so he knew I did from the start.)

Him: Would you like another drink?

Me: OK.  I’ll just go outside for a cigarette while you go to the bar.

Him: No

Me: Sorry?

Him: You will not go for a cigarette.

Me:  If we’re having another drink I will.

Him:  No

<pause while he turns a shade of purple and I feel lightly stunned that someone I just met feels it’s ok to try to control me >

Him: So I’ll get the drinks

Me: If you are happy for me to have a cigarette, ok.

Him:  I said ….<insert little rant here> and if I’d known you would smoke at any point while I was with you I would never have come

Me: In that case I think it’s probably best we both go home now.

So we did.  I thought bigoted idiots that far up their own backsides had died out years back.  Sadly it seems not.  Hopefully the story has raised a few smiles from you though (say it was worth the torture, please?!), and at least I never had to worry about Bradley.  If he couldn’t cope with smoking, I’m pretty sure that the idea I was a skin head would have brought on palpitations! Part of me wishes I’d removed Bradley just before we left now.  That would have been funny :o)