Alice and Joe

They say youth is wasted on the young, don’t they? That if we, at our advanced age, could snatch it back and do it all again, better, we would.

I’ve always said that youth is, in fact, a punishment meted out retrospectively. Youth exists only for us to have something to look back on and regret when we’re older. All these people who become millionaires at 21 because they invented a social media network for people to share pictures of peg bags, or apps that tell you how fast your hair is growing, are missing the point of being young. You are supposed to screw everything up, throw it all away, so that when you’re older you can learn from it and try to be successful and responsible before it’s too late. Start early and get yourself sorted before 30 and, well, you’re staring into the abyss of an early death in the bath with a coke-clogged nose when your inevitable midlife crisis rebellion kicks in.

Two people who are definitely going to sit in their rocking chairs and wish they’d partied a little bit harder are today’s Guardian Blind Daters. Read what happened on the date between Alice, 23, an arts fundraiser, and 25-year-old musician Joe, before I unwrap a set of Werther’s Originals and get chewing.

Alice | Joe

What were you hoping for?
A nice dinner and the chance to meet someone different.

Bad luck, then, Alice, that the Guardian has set you up with a musician, as I imagine being an arts fundraiser you must meet quite a few of those.

“A nice dinner.” Readers, my nana is back from the dead and cutting up a Mars bar into slices if you want some?

What were you hoping for?
A good meal in good company.

“A good meal in good company.” The sort of answer you’d hear from a 74-year-old contestant on Challenge TV reruns of Mr & Mrs, not tumbling from the mouth of a 25-year-old musician.

First impressions?
Friendly and chatty.

I love it when the woman describes the guy as “chatty” because it is almost certainly a diss in every instance. Anyway, Alice thinks Joe is friendly, which is nice, although it’s probably the kind of word your auntie would use about the most vicious of her cats in an effort to get you to pet it.

“No, it’s OK, Tibbles is really friendly, go on stroke him.” Seconds later:

First impressions?
Articulate and well-spoken.

We are playing Jeopardy and the question is “What would your basic, middle-class friend’s mum say about Kate Middleton?”

What did you talk about?
Our jobs, living in London, baking, pottery, museums, being valued for what you do.

Baking, pottery and museums. See what I mean about youth being a punishment? 60-year-old Alice is going to look back on this and think “fucking hell”.

“Being valued for what you do” = two millennials wang on about how annoying it is that the world doesn’t see just how totally brilliant they are and kiss their feet for it every day.

We have all worked in an office with one of these, haven’t we? Strolling in late and taking 20 minutes to turn their computer on, flicking through BuzzFeed or Vice or MailOnline for another half-hour, wandering off for a coffee break and then, when you finally ask them to do something, they tell you they feel undervalued and need to do something more exciting and creative, and sign themselves off with stress to go home and watch Homes Under The Hammer, ironically.

Our Christmases, drinking in parks as teens, Nazi art theft.

“Drinking in parks in teens.” Adele’s 25 album has come to life! I don’t imagine the parks these two drank in while teenagers will have been the rough kind with broken glass everywhere, vandalised tennis courts and odd, random pages of pornography strewn in the bushes. Alice and Joe look like the kind of teens who’d smuggle “a half-pint of shandy booze” into Proms in the Park and think they were Iggy Pop.

I could be wrong.

Oh, and “Nazi art theft”? Hmmm. Have you noticed that Joe looks a bit like a taller, less slick Moriarty from Sherlock? I don’t know why he’d be talking about Nazi art theft but whoooomp – there it is.

Any awkward moments?
No, not really.

The evening was awkward-moment-free.

THANKS FOR COMING.

Table manners next. I wonder what they’re going to pull out of their (Anya Hindmarch) bags for us, eh?

Good table manners?
Perfect.

Very much so.

This is like watching two “Speak Your Weight” machines bag off with each other.

Best thing about Joe?
His passion for his career and hobbies. It was great to meet someone who genuinely enjoyed pottery and learning to speak Japanese, and who wanted to talk about it without being patronising.

This is nice. This is a nice thing to say. It’s nice. She was nice about him. This is good. They’re in a magazine, after all.

You don’t want someone to say, “He bored on about his pointless, dogged determination to learn Japanese, which he will probably use to chat up bored bar workers in Tokyo, before driving me into a coma with his witless musings about pottery, which he took up to give his hands something to do other than play the guitar and pull himself off.”

Definitely not.

Best thing about Alice?
She was really engaging.

ENGAGING! Like a PowerPoint slide! Like a corporate health and safety video presented by Ant and Dec! Like a specially commissioned abstract painting in the reception at Deutsche Bank! ENGAGING!

Describe him in three words
Talkative, creative, engaging.

ENGAGING! Like a brochure for a day spa! Like a display of hair gels in a hairdresser’s window! Like an instruction manual for a George Foreman grill! ENGAGING! Like pretty much anything other than the answers these two have given so far.

If these two haven’t been emailing each other, proofing their answers and making sure everything is “on brand” I will be very, very surprised.

Intelligent, funny, interesting.

“You had to be there.”

What do you think he made of you?
Hopefully that I was chatty and interested in what he had to say. Oh 

He thought you were engaging! Like a… oh, you get the idea. Alice seems nice. They both do. They just deserve to have a night out with a little more kick to it than this boring old trundle round the crematorium.

They are 23 and 25. Fifteen years from the future – a dystopian future featuring osteoarthritis, grey hair and an overwhelming sense of underachievement I like to call BEING 40 – my soul is shouting itself hoarse. Do something, anything, before the elasticity in your skin, and your pelvises, is gone for good.

What do you think she made of you?
I have no idea.

THANKS JOE. Saving all your words for your lyrics, I guess.

Did you go on somewhere?
No, but things might have been different if it had been the weekend.

Oh, might they, Joe?

If you could change one thing about the evening, what would it be?
I was happy with how it went, but it would have been nice to have gone for a drink somewhere else after.

“I was happy with how it went” sounds like something from a customer testimonial in a brochure for double glazing.

If they both wanted to go on somewhere, why the HELL didn’t they? “If it had been the weekend” – fuck the weekend, it’s now. There will never be another now.

So you’ll be tired at work tomorrow, so what? So you might find yourself buying out-of-date condoms from a machine in a dodgy pub staffed by the living embodiment of emphysema, so WHAT? Live this life that’s been bestowed upon you. Stay out a bit later than usual. FUCK someone you just met. Appear in a magazine. Make your autobiography a page-turner. You owe it to yourself, AND us sitting at home, reading this ab-so-lute trivia.

Scores:

8.

8.

Eight. The beige, non-committal, “twirling its hair round its finger in faux-seduction because it’s desperate not to appear too… well, desperate” number that says absolutely nothing. They appear to have got on quite well – he could put Alice’s description of him on his CV, let’s face it – yet their scores seem businesslike, doled out with all the sexual anticipation of a warning label on the back of a bottle of bleach.

So they’ve talked about pottery, she’s pretended to care he’s learning Japanese, and they both wish they’d stayed out for another Diet Coke – will they be meeting again? Alice?

Would you meet again?
We exchanged numbers and said it would be nice to meet up again soon.

Joe? You got some final words of wisdom to impart? Wanna tell the world just how much you can’t wait to see Alice again?

Yes.

Stick a fork in me. I’m done.

Note: All the comments I make are based on the answers the Guardian chooses to publish, which may have been changed by a journalist to make for better copy. The participants in the date are aware editing of answers may happen, I assume, and know these answers will appear in the public arena.  This isn’t about me thinking these two people are dicks – I don’t know them. I am sure, in real life, they are cool people, despite the fact they give as much away of themselves as double agents. I am critiquing the answers, not the people themselves.  If you are the couple in this date, please do not take this personally.  If you want to give your side of the story, get in touch and I will happily publish any rebuttal. 

Photograph: James Drew Turner, for the Guardian