The Colour Purple

I’d been chatting to a guy online for a few weeks. He was one of the rare men I had spoken to online who could actually work up to banter and not just banal messaging. It seemed really promising.

He was into all the usual guy stuff, he was really into racing (even raced cars in his spare time) He worked in London and was really funny and humorous via text.

We text each other for about a week throughout the evenings leading up to the date, around 50 messages a night, that’s the kind of banter I love, when you can chat about random rubbish with someone.

One thing which really made me laugh was his name, not Gary or Bob or Steve but…Tarquin. WHO CALLS THEIR CHILD TARQUIN?! – Even my spell check doesn’t like it.

Holborn, 7pm

I waited outside the coffee shop where we had agreed to meet for what seemed like an age, I went up to a man who vaguely looked like my date but it wasn’t him. Never walk up to a stranger and say “Are you Tarquin?!” you just get funny looks!

Eventually I called Tarquin to see where he was, after all I’ve been stood up twice in the last 10 months and I wasn’t about to be stood up again without giving a piece of my mind. We had arranged to meet at the coffee shop outside the station, which incidentally is a costa coffee shop, he had actually said “meet me at the Café Nero outside the station” but I thought he had made a mistake.

To cut a long story short it turns out he was not waiting at the station coffee shop as he said but up-the road-and-round-the-corner at the actual location of Café Nero. So once we sorted that little misunderstanding out we went for a drink.

Due to the dire weather and the fact that I was now freezing, having been waiting around, I suggested we dive into the nearest pub, which incidentally is the same one myself and a fellow blogger frequented on his trip to London. Sadly I didn’t have as much fun this time round.

 We grabbed a couple of glasses of wine and settled down in a corner. Looks wise he wasn’t dissimilar to his photos. Although it was now clear that they were taken a few years ago. He had made such a fuss about going home and getting changed and yet he turned up looking a little well worn. That’s the only way to describe it. His jumper (whilst clearly his best one as it had a distinctive label) was bobbly and his jeans a little too well loved.

But those materialistic things aside the banter that had once been now died a death. After we had talked about work and where we lived there was silence. Tarquin chose to fill it about as well as pinky finger in a prostitute.

“What’s your favourite colour?”   

Well since no one has asked me that since I was about 7 years old it actually threw me a bit, so I said I didn’t know.

“Everyone has a favourite colour, come on!” he said

OK, Who are you the fucking colour police?! So I said purple just to shut him up.  

“Oh that’s my favourite to….” (Eh?) and so began a long an arduous tale about how he likes the colour purple and how he has so much purple in his wardrobe that the girls at work set him a challenge, to wear purple for the entire week. So he did… I know riveting isn’t it?

After a while of talking about purple and me downing as much pink wine as I could without seeming like a raging alcoholic I asked him about his latest work projects.

Note – People who do the following really piss me off, to explain…

Tarquin worked in IT and more specifically website design. So upon asking him about his latest project he said he couldn’t tell me about it.

Was he secretly working for MI5? Was he really Batman?

“But” he said “I can tell you that it is an energy drinks company that will give you wings”

Well blow me down with a feather I don’t think I have ever heard anything so exciting that you can’t say the words Red Bull without some sort of thinly veiled clue system.

I once went on a date with a barrister who told me he couldn’t tell me about the case he was working on but…and then he went on to tell me the details of the case which was so high profile you would have had to be living on the moon not to have heard of it.

So when I guessed, not that it was difficult as the people at the next table and the waiter knew who he was talking about, he said that he could discuss it now only because I’d guessed.

I hate people that do this. It just shrieks of self-importance. I know its not a big thing but it is a really oet hate of mine. To people that do this I say this…The only person who finds your job exciting is you, unless you’re the fucking Stig.

Aside from those little annoyances the main problem with Tarquin is that he was just not sexy to me, I am sure to someone else he would be but to me he was a cross between the guy from The Undateables (the one with Asperger’s) and Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory.

Bless his purple cotton socks!

So I have now (finally) persuaded sister single to come speed dating as she has been promising me for some time.

And there is a potential date with someone who I met on St Patricks day but due to personal circumstances I haven’t been out with yet, although he sent me a very sweet message when I explained why I wouldn’t be meeting up with him for a while. Perhaps he could be a good egg?

Until next time

Love

SG

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