It was the day of the big date. If you can call it a ‘date’. The word ‘viewing’ may have been somewhat more appropriate. If you’ll recall Tuesday’s entry, the plan was to meet up with my friend, who would act as a marker for my potential date to approach us, should she not find my physical appearance nauseatingly repulsive. This matchmaker stuff is not the sort of childish antic I would normally dream of indulging, but for the sake of this blog, I am trying to develop a ‘say yes’ attitude (which you may recall being employed when I arranged to meet my financial advisor). Otherwise, each entry would run something along the lines of “Went to work. Got home. Cried myself to sleep”… ad infinitum.
Now - I appreciate that meeting a financial advisor or being ‘match-made’ are hardly the most spectacular of human triumphs. In fact these are just things that normal things that human-beings manage to achieve on a day to day basis (thinking about it, technically I never even actually ended up meeting my financial advisor in the end, did I? But at least the thought was there). Basically before attempting anything too spectacular, I figure I first need to catch up on the basic skills of social interaction that all you lot seem to manage so effortlessly. It’s best to start with small incremental steps – there’s no sense in drastic recklessness.
I was due to meet my friend in the pub at 6pm. By 6.45 I was still sitting alone nursing an empty bottle. To be stood up by a date who may naturally be acting with uncertainty might be a bit damning to a fragile ego. But when even the matchmaker who is supposed to be your friend fails to show – well -should that be considered even more damning?
I had been sitting in the pub like Billy No Mates for close to an hour before my (now-borderline) friend finally arrived. We sat together a-while engaged in frivolous small-talk, whilst my eyes fidgeted nervously around the room, wondering exactly who this mystery woman might be. There are fewer things to make oneself feel so self-conscious than to know you are under scrutiny, but not know who your scrutinizer is. Even simple acts like subtly picking your nose become minefields of paranoia. But I needn’t have worried. All the nose restraint in the world could not inspire the young lady to come forward and introduce herself.
“She’s just a bit busy at the moment.” my friend sympathetically proffered, as I faced the abyss of my failed prowess. Naturally I assumed her words were intended to make me feel better about my rejection. But when the mystery woman’s identity was revealed, I realized my friends words had actually all been rather too literal. I also became aware that I’d already approached and spoken to this woman previously; specifically with the words, “One bottle of Corona please”. Yes, that’s right - it had been a set-up with one of the pub’s bar staff.
I’m sure I don’t need to point out the flaw in the conception of this plan. It’s just plainly wrong on so many levels. I’ve always been under the impression that when a gentleman takes a lady on a date, he is supposed to buy a drink FOR her, not FROM her. Due to the constant queue of people waiting to be served, it would be difficult to procure even the most rudimentary conversation, never mind a date. Surely a man trying to seduce a bar-maid in a busy town centre pub cannot be definined as a romantic liason. If anything, this scenario appeared more accurately, little more than a man sitting a busy town centre pub, trying to lech at a bar-maid.
Given the evident futility of the situation, I left shortly after, assessing the sum total of what I had managed to achieve this evening - specifically making any future uses of this particular establishment slightly more awkward. The barmaid clearly had not been interested in me, but would henceforth know who I was, and my intentions in turning up there with my human ‘marker’. For this reason, I imagine it is not a pub I will so readily frequent when drinking in town. It’ll just be slightly embarrassing now whenever I want to order a drink. I suppose I could try to discover her shift patterns in order to avoid her, but this type of behaviour would only arouse an impression that I am somehow obsessed with her.
I bid my friend goodbye and headed out of town and into the village my Dad and his friend were out for drink. When I found them, they were propped on barstools talking to a woman in her early-thirties behind the bar. My Dad was trying to tell her how much he reckoned she looked like actress Jenny Agutter. Unsurprisingly, this flattery was received with a degree of uncertainty, since the young girl had been a bit too young to remember Jenny Agutter. As I took a seat alongside them, I immediately felt more at ease. If I was fated to spend the night leching at barmaids, at least it took away the impending sense of loneliness to have a bit of company whilst doing so.
I tried to order a drink, but irritatingly, the young girl seemed too preoccupied by the screen on her phone to bother serving me. After waiting patiently for a while, I tried grabbing her attention with some subtle harrumphs. She looked up rather sharply, but it was not my presence which had aroused her attentions. She suddenly stormed over to my dad, holding her phone out at towards him.
“Well THANK YOU VERY MUCH! You saying I look like THIS?” she exclaimed in an insulted manner.
On the screen, there was a ‘Googled’ picture of the Jenny Agutter - except it was a picture of what she looks like now, rather than in her 60’s and 70’s acting heydays. Inevitably she had interpreted my Dad’s intended flattery as being told she looked like an old woman. His comments had been met with much chagrin, which she was not too shy to address rather publically.
At least I now know which side of the family I have inherited such hapless flirtation abilities from.
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