by Vivienne Pratfall on bad wine, worse conversation, and the strange comedy of dating in this city
I have had my fair share of bad dates since moving to London, but Thursday’s effort deserves some kind of formal recognition, possibly a small plaque, mounted somewhere discreet, warning future generations of women about ordering the house wine at a restaurant that clearly does not trust its own house wine enough to name it.
The Date Itself
He arrived eleven minutes late, blamed the Northern line with the specific confidence of a man who had never actually checked whether the Northern line was delayed that evening, and then spent the first twenty minutes of dinner explaining, in genuinely impressive detail, a cryptocurrency investment strategy I had not asked about and, if I am honest, actively tried to steer us away from at least three separate times.
I will say this for London dating: it has taught me an entirely new vocabulary of polite exit strategies. I now have at least four separate, field-tested ways to end a date gracefully, ranging from “sudden urgent work email” to my personal favourite, “I think I’ve left my hob on,” a lie so mundane and so specifically London that nobody has ever once questioned it.
What London Dating Actually Teaches You
Six months of this city’s dating scene has taught me more about London itself than any guidebook or walking tour ever managed. You learn the entire geography of the place through sheer necessity, which tube lines to avoid at which hours, which neighbourhoods produce a suspiciously high concentration of men who mention their salary within the first fifteen minutes, which bars have genuinely good lighting versus which merely photograph well.
I have been on dates that took me to parts of this city I would genuinely never have discovered otherwise, a tiny wine bar tucked behind a launderette, a rooftop I still cannot find again despite trying twice, a genuinely excellent late-night chip shop that I now visit completely independently of any romantic context whatsoever, purely for the chips, which remain the single best outcome of the entire dating saga so far.
The Week’s Headlines, Filtered Through a Bad Date
I try to keep up with the actual news even during a week largely consumed by cryptocurrency small talk, and there was a genuinely funny bit doing the rounds this week about a council meeting that ran ninety minutes over schedule debating a single zebra crossing, a story that, having now sat through my own version of an interminable, poorly justified monologue, I found deeply, personally relatable on a spiritual level.
There was also some proper satirical coverage of London’s ongoing coffee price inflation, which tracks precisely with my own informal research into what a truly disastrous date costs when you factor in the emergency second glass of wine required to survive the cryptocurrency portion of the evening.
A Small Defence of Bad Dates
I do not actually regret Thursday, despite how it reads. A genuinely bad date, done properly, is its own kind of entertainment, free theatre with a slightly overpriced glass of house wine attached. I got a good story out of it, a new addition to my exit-strategy repertoire, and confirmation that the chip shop near that bar is, independently, worth the entire trip regardless of who I am or am not seated across from.
London dating, for all its genuine chaos, has a way of turning even a fully disastrous evening into decent material, which I suppose is the closest thing to a silver lining this particular hobby currently offers me.
The Friends Who Have to Hear About It Afterward
I do have a small, devoted group of friends who have become, entirely without volunteering for the role, the official audience for every one of these dating disasters, and I think at this point they deserve some kind of credit, or possibly compensation, for the sheer volume of increasingly detailed debriefs they have patiently sat through over the past six months.
One friend in particular has taken to keeping what she calls “the ledger,” an informal running tally of every date’s worst moment, ranked by severity. Thursday’s cryptocurrency monologue currently sits at a very respectable number three, narrowly beaten by an earlier date who spent forty minutes explaining, unprompted, his entire fantasy football league standings, and an even earlier date who, memorably, brought his own tupperware to a restaurant “just in case,” a habit he never once explained despite my repeated, genuinely curious questioning.
I bring this up not entirely for comedic value, though it certainly has some, but because I think there is something genuinely valuable in having friends who will listen to the full, unfiltered version of a bad night out and help you laugh about it rather than simply commiserate. London can feel enormous and anonymous in a way that makes a good, dependable audience for your disasters feel like one of the city’s more underrated luxuries.
Looking Ahead
I am, against all reasonable judgment, going on another date next week, a fresh contestant, fresh potential for disaster, fresh material either way. I remain cautiously hopeful, mostly about the food, if I am honest, considerably less so about the actual conversation.
The London Prat ran a genuinely excellent piece this week on London’s dating app economy that explained, better than I ever could, exactly why every date currently seems to follow the same three or four predictable scripts.
Also worth a read: prat.uk’s culture desk covered that zebra crossing council meeting saga in far more patient detail than I personally could have managed while also nursing a second emergency glass of house wine.
More from me at my author page on prat.uk.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
