Dating in Nottingham

After your folks have harped on all Christmas about when you are going to settle down and have mini replicas of you, comes Valentine’s Day: the annual reminder that you’re all alone with no one to have lazy nights in front of the telly with. But why? After all, we live in an actual city with over 300,000 people rattling about in it; surely it can’t be that hard to find someone suitable in Nottingham? With that in mind, I decided to have a serious go at goading the fat, creepy flying kid in a nappy to fire a sharp object at me. I was going to try my hand on the dating scene, and have a go at a few tried and trusted methods so I could write about them for LeftLion. No other reason. Honest. 

Online Dating

Even now, dating over the internet has a stigma attached to it, throwing up images of guys in a box room, playing World of Warcraft with one hand and doing God knows what else with the other. 

Signing up to a dating site is scary; I worried that I’d know at least twenty percent of the people on there, Nottingham being the small, intimate place that it is. Luckily, there were only two, one of whom knew what I was up to. Good. 

Choosing the right username was harder than I thought. Picking the right profile picture was even harder. Would a pic of me on a night out give out the best signals? Should I use one of me doing something active? Then there’s the profile blurb; I went for some vague waffle about my job, books and films, whereas my friend (who joined me in my online dating foray) just listed one-word answers. As I was about to discover when I plunged into the pool of potential paramours, words don’t really matter in the world of online dating.

A word of advice for males with dating profiles, if I may. Never select a username containing ‘XXX’ or ‘69’. Also posting a photo of your dick, covered only by your tiny banana hammock, will not find you a woman. Same goes for constantly going on about how you “don’t do this kind of thing often” or that “this was the result of a drunken bet”. This we all know; we’re all in it together, remember.

Oh, and stop with the “I don’t know what to write” rubbish, too – tell me about yourself, and not what your best friend, who just happens to be a girl, says. In the beginning, my friend and I were having a rare old time, constantly sending texts back and forth to each other as a whole host of men came our way. We spent time discussing the best way of replying, and how to get rid of the less desirable folk. But then it just kind of got a bit boring, and more than a bit sad. Nothing says ‘Home with Mam with nothing to do’ more than  someone messaging you at 10.57pm on Christmas Eve. My favourite message was sent one cold, wet Wednesday night just before Christmas: “do you WANT TO MEET?” Now that’s a sentence to get a girl hot. I decided to pass on that occasion.

Don’t get me wrong; there were some nice guys on the website. But for every one of them, there were at least two dickheads sending messages like; “So why can’t you date in the real world? Is it because of your massive hair?” By the time I was inching towards actually meeting someone in real life, I was bombarded with horror stories from friends (my favourite: the dinner date a friend went on that ended swiftly when the guy started to cry and he had to get her to call his mum).

Thankfully, the date I went on wasn’t that bad, but we were definitely not right for each other.
Bottom line: the menfolk on dating sites appear to be 50% well-meaning guys that are hoping the love of their lives are going to spring, perfectly toned and full of wit, from the loins of their web browsers, and 50% who believe in the mantra “any hole’s a goal”. If you think you could be that springy girl, or even that hole, then online dating is definitely worth a shot – and if you approach it with the right attitude, you may even make some friends out of it. Alas, for me, it just wasn’t right. Profile: closed. E-mails: deleted. 

Speed dating

If it’s good enough for the cast of Sex and the City, it’s good enough for the rest of us, right? After skimreading an assortment of websites, I managed to work out the protocol; turn up at venue (more often than not, a bar in Hockley). Slap a badge with your name and number written in bold, across your chest (which means you’re good for a boob-peek, gents). Sit on your own table, and await a herd of men to move from woman to woman for four minutes of chit-chat. Twice.

Then, you’re encouraged to mark them as a ‘yes’, a ‘no’ or ‘friend’ (which means ‘yes, but no’). There’s also a comments box, presumably for you to enter such things as “sort your mole out” or “don’t talk about Hitler so much next time”.

At the end of the night, you submit your form. If you have any matches, you’ll be told about it the next day. According to protocol, if you picked a potential mate and they only wanted you as a friend you won’t get told but if you’re both match/match or friend/friend, you will. As the organiser put it at the end of the night, “You don’t want to meet up with someone intent on shagging you, if you only want a coffee”. Quite.

I wasn’t in the best frame of mind on the night of the event. I’d been up since the wee small hours, touring a freezing recovery facility full of used cooking oil in Norfolk (don’t ask). I’d missed my train home, so was late and was still dressed in my factory outfit, looking like a very camp Santa. 

I definitely stood out against the girls in short skirts and low-cut tops, but I reluctantly took my seat and waited for the onslaught. You could tell who of the men had been around the track; they launched straight into what felt like a preselected set of questions. You could also tell who of them had never done this before; they either had no questions and got all flustered, or - worse - had no answers.

There were a lot of questions about what I did when I was working and what I did when
I wasn’t working, which got boring very quickly; I toyed with the idea of making up a different life for myself with every person, but decided against it. And then he came. I sat there for a very long four minutes as he vomited words at me, detailing his previous speed dating experiences in minute and geographically correct detail. Then he described his recent gym workouts in the same methodical, meticulous manner. The clock slowed down. The sound of the bar died away. My insides tickled with a suppressed guffaw. I bit my cheek to prevent myself laughing. Finally, my ears rejoiced at the sound of the bell and he wandered off to the next poor sod.

He was the only guy I wanted to ditch at the end of the night, but when I went to tick that box I caught him looking at me, his depthless eyes possibly showing a hint of sadness. I couldn’t bring myself to tick the ‘no’ box, so I settled for ‘friend’ and hoped that he hadn’t done the same thing.

I’ve heard nothing so far. Thank God.  Don’t get me wrong, one of the men there did get back to me. He’d fancied my friend, was a bit narked that she hadn’t felt the same way, and could I put a word in for him?

Speed dating isn’t a bad way to meet people, if you disregard the stench of desperation that fills the room - the normal-to-weirdo ratio is heavily weighted towards the former, you’re in the same boat as everyone else and, unlike online dating, you know for sure that the man you’re talking to has his trousers on - but the question remains: how can you tell that you’d like to get to know someone better in just four minutes? I got on well with a couple of guys; maybe a wine or two later, I would have been throwing my phone number at them. Who knows?