The Ladies

The ménage-a-trois

It’s 65 minutes and four Skinny Ginnies into the ‘date’, and gone are the optimistic delusions that I’ve been anything other than stood up. I’m on first name terms with the barmen, I have a drink in each hand, and in short, am the epitome of every tragic stereotype of spinsterhood. Bridget Jones, eat your heart out. At the point when I’m seriously considering giving the flirtiest of the barmen my number, I make the acquaintance of a particularly dashing PhD student who has also been stood up. How incredibly serendipitous. We bond over our mutual rejection and agree to have our own date, and, frankly, it’s the stuff of romance… until my original date shows up, dishevelled and profusely apologetic, and the three of us settle down to a lovely - if somewhat cramped, and mercifully inebriated - ménage-a-trois.  In the roiling hotbed of romance that is Cindies, PhD dude reveals his latent homophobia, and my actual date emerges victorious. So the night had a wobbly start, admittedly, but I did enjoy the progression from being someone who couldn’t even get someone to date me in the name of charity, to feeling like a female lothario, juggling my fellas. So for the gift of that illusion, RAG, I thank you, even if was only for a night.

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The counselling session

Post date, my girlfriends and I could only conclude that our dates were just typical English guys temporarily suffering from feelings of inferiority because they’re making comparisons between themselves and the rugby players on campus. I spent the three hours explaining to my date why he shouldn’t worry about not having a girlfriend, because the minute he steps out of Cambridge nobody will care about his pot belly and girls will flock around him like it’s waffle morning at Pembroke.

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You say potato, I say…potato

All I had to go on was that my date liked potatoes, specifically Potato Porn.  Eventually, after convincing myself I’d been stood up, I found a lost looking Irish boy. Luckily, not much small talk was needed, as it turned out Michael was (had?) “great craic” (definitely using the wrong terminology here), and the conversation flowed. On to Cindies as The Vaults emptied out and I managed to impress by walking straight into a group of people from my college, thereby giving the false impression that I knew everyone in the club. Marking things out of ten are for mathmos and weirdos but a better evening than I expected that certainly gave me faith in the Cambridge Irish community.

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The woman of few words

I couldn’t find his Facebook beforehand, but found his Linked In just fine. Enough said really.

 

The Lads

The token ‘taken’

I was slightly put out when I initially received my blind date form and realised that the lucky girl was 'attached'. My form said 'single' but really should have said desperate. Predictably I quite fancied her, but she spent the whole evening talking about friends of hers that she wanted to set me up with. Every time I joked about the prospect of me and her getting together she would become very stern. We parted amicably, however, and she gave me her email because she is taking one of the papers I took last year and requested that I send over some notes. I'm currently debating whether or not to put some saucy annotations on the notes in question. I've heard of the long game, but this is just ridiculous.

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The better late than never

Just as I got to the pub, I received a very apologetic text from my date, who would be 15 minutes late. This gave me the chance to be the ‘mug in the corner on his own’, but luckily there were several other unlucky chaps whose dates clearly hadn’t liked what they saw during their Facebook stalking. After this little hiccough, things got better and my partner was good fun. We helped rescue one of her friends who had pulled the short straw and was currently dating Cambridge’s most boring man, and then headed into Cindies for more festivities.

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The no show

I generally try not to be a terrible person, but the night of RAG blind date was an exception: I was the guy who didn’t show up. But hear me out. I gave £5 to charity on the understanding that I’d have a casual (and probably meaningless) drink with a stranger, and last year my date was really good so I had fairly high hopes. But my form comes back and someone has organised dinner for two at a not-particularly-student-priced restaurant right next to their college, which is not exactly in a convenient location, so I emailed my excuses. I know that a lot of people will read this and see a typically disappointing, tight, lazy boy, but at least I’ve saved one lady from having to sit through dinner with someone she probably would have seen in exactly the same way.

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The man of even fewer words

I couldn’t close a book.