#2 - Standing myself up in public...

I'm a fairly sensible person most of the time. I like watching Cash in the Attic, and own several pairs of flat lace up shoes for a variety of eventualities and occasions. Most importantly, I have a private facebook page and don't give out my phone number without good reason. This means that for the majority of the time I behave at least moderately well, and even when I do do something naughty I don't get caught. I've protected my social media privacy for a long time, as I was lucky enough to grow up without facebook, twitter et al encouraging me to spew every thought that dropped into my head on the internet. By the time I was technically savvy enough to do so, I had worked out that no one cared.


And so when I joined my first (yes, there are more to come) dating website, I was adamant that I would only meet up with people if I was absolutely convinced that they were a) normal, and b) likely to turn up. This did limit my options slightly, as my predilection is for sexually aggressive commitment-phobic men with tattoos and an angry glare. Once I had ascertained that very few of these were available to me on  mysinglefriend  I began to broaden my search, hoping against hope that I would meet at least one reasonably sane, reasonably attractive man.


After a few non-starters, and one exceptionally rude Irish man (see #3 - Buying my own drinks...) I had begun to lose patience. After all, I'd been on this website for a week, and hadn't met the man of my dreams yet! I'd certainly met men who fitted my former idea of male perfection (again, see #3), but I was determined that somewhere there was a lovely bloke who would change my mind for the better (whilst ideally still having either a beard or some tattoos. Old habits die hard) Then out of the blue, I got a really, really great message. The man in question had a hilarious profile (all the profiles on mysinglefriend are written by the dater in question's friend(s)) and in his picture looked both happy and interesting, as well as being rather attractive...in a beardless sort of way...


We exchanged messages for a week or so, and discovered we had a lot of shared interests: the same films, books and even a passion for sightseeing, which we planned to put to full use on our first date. Despite my slight (severe) fear of heights (and all overly large things) I agreed to go up in the London Eye for our date, and agreed to supply a picnic for two with blanket and plastic wine glasses in return for him buying our tickets (I know - what a gentleman) We agreed a rendez-vous point on Millenium Pier at 11am, and agreed that it was going to be an amazing day.


It's at this point I should remind you that I don't give out my personal details to random men I meet on the internet (and again I refer to #3, who is really not coming across well so far...), and because he seemed like such a nice man it didn't occur to me for a second that he would not meet me at the designated time and location.


This was, in hindsight, an oversight on my part. 


I don't know if any of you have ever stood at Millenium Pier before? It's fairly big. And full of people. And boats. And after about 20 minutes of waiting around wearing a very gaudy unicorn rucksack that you were assured would make you stand out from the crowd, it's only natural to wonder if there are TWO Millenium Piers, and that maybe you're standing at the wrong one? I ended up waiting for nearly an hour. I was not impressed. I went home to send a very angry message about how incredibly rude it is to stand anyone up, let alone someone who went to the trouble of making you a picnic, only to discover a message waiting for me. Telling me off, for standing him up. 


There is definitely only one Millenium Pier. And I was standing on the other side of the river to it.


Lesson learned. Ask for a contact number before agreeing to meet anyone at a large monument with limited access to maps.