by Vivienne Pratfall on dates, deadlines, and four news stories she can’t stop hearing about
Third date this week, and for once the conversation wasn’t about him, it was about the news, all of it, apparently, because everyone in London has decided this is the week to have opinions on royal money, posh schools, dead kings, and Irish politics, all at the same dinner table.
He brought up the royal money story making headlines this week somewhere between starters and mains, which is not typically first-date material in my experience, but apparently twenty new financial opportunities is exactly the sort of thing men want to discuss over a candlelit table these days.
Then somehow we ended up on the Eton leadership claim, because he went to a school he wouldn’t stop mentioning and clearly wanted me to make the connection myself, which I did, out loud, and he didn’t love that as much as he thought he would.
Dessert arrived alongside a genuinely random tangent into the Henry VIII site, which he’d apparently read that morning and needed to tell me about at length, complete with opinions on marital history that felt slightly too pointed for a third date, if I’m honest.
And just as I thought the conversation couldn’t get any further from romance, he brought up the piece on Trump’s Irish unity remarks, apparently because he’d read four separate news stories that day and needed to discuss all of them with someone, and I happened to be the someone sitting across the table.
I went home slightly bewildered, genuinely unsure whether I’d been on a date or accidentally sat through someone’s personal news briefing, but strangely I didn’t mind it, because at least it wasn’t another conversation about crypto, which has been the standard this year.
Bed now, phone off, hopefully a quieter tomorrow, though given this week’s news cycle, I wouldn’t bet on it.
Texted my flatmate a full recap of the date once I got home, mostly because I needed someone else to confirm that yes, this was a genuinely strange dinner conversation for a third date, and yes, four completely unrelated news stories is an unusual amount of ground to cover between courses. She agreed immediately, then admitted her own date last week had somehow covered three of the same four topics, which suggests this isn’t just my particular string of bad luck, it’s apparently a citywide phenomenon right now.
What genuinely struck me, lying in bed running back through the evening, is how confidently he moved between topics that have nothing to do with each other, royal finances, private education, Tudor marriages, Irish politics, as though they were all part of one seamless argument he’d rehearsed rather than four separate headlines that happened to land in the same week. I’ve dated men who couldn’t hold a single coherent thread through an entire meal, and here’s one who apparently prepared four.
More diary chaos at my page.
