Remember we finished off the last #3dates3mths with the whole “perfect date” with Danny Dyer and you were all left waiting with breath that was baited to find out how it ended?  Well lets just wind the whole thing up with a big fat raspberry blowing and be done with it/pretend it never happened/hope he stands on lots of upturned plugs.

 Challenge 2.  The Grass is Greener

I’m not saying I’ve dated all of the men in Stoke-on-Trent, infact, I’ve probably dating 0.00001% of the men in my hometown but the experience so far has been pretty underwhelming.  Remember the saying “if at first you don’t succeed, try try again?” well I’m going to change it to “if on dates you don’t succeed, try another city” and that’s exactly what I did.

 Unknowingly so.

A night of prettying myself up, partaking in a couple/few drinks, laughing till my cheeks and completely ignoring my phone was exactly what I needed to get myself out of the post “Danny Dyer” date and subsequent mess that went with it.  I wasn’t on the prowl, I didn’t want to throw myself into another situation where I’d be left disappointed and wondering “is it me?”  My confidence had taken a kicking and a weekend of licking my wounds in the city which is the home to rollers, scousebrows and The Beatles was exactly what I needed.  Liverpool (baby).

That was until I found myself drinking pints of Guinness (nothing new there) in an Irish bar, feeling like Kate Winslet circa Rose Dewitt Bukater partaking in below decks excursions in Titanic,  dancing to the sound of the emerald isle when in walked my “type” in.a.nutshell (not an actual nutshell, that would have been a well sweaty outfit).

I bowled him over with my usual aggressive and highly sarcastic (but charming) wit and he had me swooning at his birds nest hair and facial hair.  We spent the remainder of the evening (a good 2 hours!) at one others side and we talked, laughed, mocked and shared a couple of those first kisses that give you butterflies in your belly (ooerr!)

 The best part?  He was a gentleman.  Meeting a guy after the consumption of a considerable amount of alcohol usually involves some drunken messy kisses, fondling, a rendezvous which you’d rather forget followed by a morning of trying to remember what he looked like whilst simultaneously “urgh”ing all over yourself as you shovel paracetamol and Sprite into your body (don’t judge me, we’ve all been there).

But this was different.  At the end of the evening we exchanged phone numbers and begrudgingly went our separate ways.

This chance but lovely meeting didn’t end in “a date” unfortunately.  Despite discussing the possibility of meeting up either in his hometown or mine or doing a Black Eyed Peas style “meet me halfway” scenario, we both agreed that a long distance relationship just wasn’t really going to work, however much we liked each other.

 What it did go to show me is 2 things:

1)      sometimes the grass can be greener on the other side and maybe you do have to fish a little outside your usual dating pool in order to find a catch.

and more importantly…

2)      you shouldn’t allow a bad experience affect how you feel about guys in general or allow it to put you off wanting to date again.  I was shown when I really needed it that there are good guys out there… they might just unfortunately live a little out of reach.