The course of true love never did run smooth. Although sometimes, this footpath is beset with an overabundance of obstacles – stingy nettles, fallen trees, bears, vampire pigeons… and then a wall so impenetrable that one is forced to turn back. And occasionally, all of this peril is condensed into a particularly short space of time – the disaster date.
We asked the staff at Confused.com to tell us about their dream dates. However, they seem surprisingly devoid of romance, and we were told not one story. Yet when instead they were asked to regale us with dates that had gone entirely askew, we couldn’t shut them up.
Runner!
One young lady told us that her date “turned up late, made me buy the drinks, got drunk faster than me, shared his penchant for Ann Summers underwear, then refused to let me go home. I did a runner the moment he went to the toilet.”
Another told us that her husband bought her a Dyson as a Valentine’s gift. A new superhero is born – Captain Subtle!
A certain hapless chap was beaten up on a ‘romantic’ evening out. He might have thanked his date had she warned him in advance that (a) she had a boyfriend, and (b) he was likely to also be at the venue in which they chose to meet.
Queasy!
One member of staff was on a first date, in a pub, and things seemed to be progressing fairly well. The pub grew busier, and some more people sat by the recently-acquainted pair. Alarm bells began to ring however for the lady when she was introduced as the fellow’s “girlfriend”, and he suddenly began being overly tactile, as if they’d been together for years. How did she get out of this situation? “I might have said I was unwell. Which wasn’t entirely untrue – I did feel slightly queasy by this point…”
One member of the team said that she was taken to her date’s house, where he cooked her a meal, hired a romantic movie, and there were candles lit all over his bedroom, rose petals all over the bed with a big teddy, chocolates and a dozen roses in a bouquet… She then thanked him for the effort he’d made by calling him the wrong name – the name of her best male friend.
The same member of staff also once left a Thai restaurant with her date (unsurprisingly, a different one), and went with him to his car. She tripped at the kerb, and scrabbled to catch some sort of grip on the car itself. Unfortunately for her, cars are usually designed to be fairly smooth, and she was unable to get a purchase before crumpling to the ground at the side of the car. “I had scabby knees for weeks!” she said. Although the relationship, contrary to expectations, lasted much longer.
Swear Word!
Although, despite this valiant effort, she comes in second place to our queen of disaster dates, Ms X. On one date at a restaurant, Ms X’s suitor left to go to the bathroom, and in the meantime she swallowed a fly. I don’t know why she swallowed a fly. Or – more specifically – inhaled it. When the chap returned from the bathroom, Ms X was fortunately not dead – although she was “covered in tears and snot”.
On another date, she was having a lift in her suitor’s car, and he accidentally closed the electric window on her hair. As she was stuck with her head against the door, she could not quite reach the button to free herself, and was too embarrassed to ask her suitor to do it for her.
As if this wasn’t enough, we shall allow Ms X to tell you about her third disaster date herself:
“I went to a really posh restaurant once – it was our very first date too. I had duck and the guy had never tried duck before, so I cut a bit off… romantically placed it on a fork and into his mouth… then screamed a swear word really, really, really loudly. My arm had burned because it was over the top of the candle. I still have the scar!”
There’s a lesson in here somewhere… Possibly ‘never date anybody from Confused.com’!
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