Mike and Ailsa

Is it better to have a terrible time when the sun is shining, or in the driving rain? Does the contrast of hot weather/everything is awful offer a sliver of cheer, or make you resentful that you could be enjoying the sunshine but can’t, because you’re miserable?

Anyway, sliding into our sunny Saturday morning are Mike, a 35-year-old paralegal – lawyer who descends into meetings in a parachute, perhaps? – and Ailsa, 35, a systems engineer. You know, I long one day for non-Linked In people to show up here. Someone who smears icing onto the yum-yums in Greggs; an area manager for SportsDirect; a former member of O-Town.

Go read the full account of this date – warning: as romantic as changing the fuse on a hairdryer plug – before returning here to dutifully smile at my jokes.

First, let’s get a squiz at the footwear.

Oh, this is doomed. Neither of these pairs of shoes will ever know the bedroom carpet of the other.

Mike | Ailsa

What were you hoping for?
Good conversation with someone interesting.

Mike’s first day on Earth, perhaps.

What were you hoping for?
Some good craic and a nice free dinner.

Craic! Is O’Neill’s still a thing?

First impressions?
Ailsa arrived with real energy – she bounced in smiling and warm.

Bounced in? On a space-hopper, perhaps? No wonder she was warm.

First impressions?
We were both early so I figured we must have something in common. I wish he had stood up to greet me though.

Oh!

He should probably have stood up. I would’ve. Unless the restaurant had a thick carpet and easing the chair out would’ve turned into a clown show. In fact, even better, wait in the lobby/waiting area/bar until the date arrived and then be seated together.

What did you talk about?
Family. Jobs. Travel and culture. Ailsa is really passionate about live music in a way that I’m simply not, although she lit up when I shared my brother’s theory that all indie music sounds like it belongs on The Inbetweeners.

Our families. Travel. Work. Our unpopular opinions.

Family. ✅
Travel. ✅
Jobs/work. ✅

So many matches and yet I can sense the smell of death around the whole thing.

Ailsa is really passionate about live music in a way that I’m simply not. I suppose when you’re not into something and hearing all about it, it’s a bit like being shown someone’s holiday photos to a place you’ve never been. You just sit there waiting for your turn to speak. It can be very dispiriting sitting opposite someone who doesn’t give a rat’s balls what you’re into too, though. Interested in the ‘lit up’ comment – she laughed at his joke! Except it wasn’t his joke, it was his brother’s.

Unpopular opinions. Perhaps the internet’s most poisonous legacy other than all the bigotry, radicalisation and front-facing-camera celebrities is the edgelordian desire to make yourself sound interesting by pretending your really very mainstream take on something popular makes you an outsider, a maverick, a regenade, a… you get the idea.

Most awkward moment?
The times when conversation dipped. We both made an effort, but you know you’re low on ideas when you ask about someone’s weekend plans.

Most awkward moment?
He tried to shake my hand at the end of the night – I went in for a hug. Or maybe when he told me his family had organised the whole date for him.

‘Don’t forget to say the thing about The Inbetweeners.’ – Mike’s brother

This is like when X Factor contestants used to claim – with startling regularity – that a family member had applied to the show on their behalf and then immediately keeled over and died. It absolved them of all responsibility of doing something embarrassing like wanting to go on TV (or be in a national newspaper column) and also gave them a ‘story’, and perhaps something to stir pity in the judges and the hapless viewers voting in droves for someone whose records they wouldn’t buy in a million years.

However, this is not TV, and Mike is a single, 35-year-old paralegal not someone with a perm and a ‘big heart’ who does ‘Black Velvet’ at karaoke down the Grapes every Friday.

Best thing about Ailsa?
Her positive energy. She never stopped trying to make the evening work.

I am knackered just reading this. What’s different about the way I lay out the reviews and the how the original dates are presented in the Guardian, and online, is you read one person’s full account before the other is shown to you. So when I was reading Mike’s version of events, which made me want to stand in a corner and count the hairline cracks in the wall, I was expecting an evisceration from Ailsa but (spoiler alert) it just doesn’t come at all. This is either very kind of her or it all appeared worse in Mike’s head, or perhaps in his answers Mike was also expecting to be dragged and tailored his responses accordingly.

‘She never stopped trying to make the evening work’ is devastating stuff. I can practically hear each of them grinding their teeth. Maybe she should’ve stopped. Called time of death, so we can all move on, like they do on Casualty.

Best thing about Mike?
He’s had a lot of diverse experience in life and that makes for good stories.

See? It can’t have been that bad. Can it?  (I suppose women are used to papering over cracks to spare blokes’ egos but in this column if a woman has a bad time, she will usually tell you.)

Would you introduce them to your friends?
Probably not – we move in different orbits.

Absolutely. He’d fit right in.

ORBITS. This *has* to be damage limitation that has gone horribly wrong.

What do you think Ailsa made of you?
I think she found me pleasant, but not quite what she was looking for. She had hoped to meet someone quirky like herself.

She wears cowboy boots and goes to see bands, not exactly Isabella sodding Blow. But I would hazard a guess she has her sights set on someone who would be happy to go to the bar for her during one of the slow ones.

What do you think Mike made of you?
I couldn’t really say.

Expertly swerved.

Did you go on somewhere?
No. The evening reached its natural conclusion.

As has my patience.

Did you go on somewhere?
Nope. It was a school night and we’d already had rather a lot of wine.

Sounds like you both needed it.

And … did you kiss?
No. I didn’t feel like there was a moment during which kissing might have made sense.

If you could change one thing?
A corner seat rather than a booth might have made the conversation feel more relaxed.

You could’ve been on plush sofas being fed grapes by all present and past members of both Sugababes and Another Level and I don’t think it would’ve made a blind bit of difference.

Marks out of 10?
7. A decent evening with someone genuinely different from me.

8.

Nice to meet someone different. Someone who broadens your horizons. Exceptions: serial killers; anyone knocking at your door Tuesday morning talking about God; a guy who is just back from doing ayahuasca in Venezuela; a woman waving a bag of ‘something’ at you at 4am that she says is ‘probably coke, I found it on the 176’.

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Something to remember about the review and the daters that I put at the end of every post

The comments I make are based on answers given by participants. The Guardian chooses what to publish and usually edits answers to make the column work better on the page. Most things I say are riffing on the answers given and not judgements about the daters themselves, so please be kind to them in comments, replies, and generally on social media. Daters are under no obligation to get along for our benefit, or explain why they do, or don’t, want to see each other again, so please try not to speculate or fill our feeds with hate. If you’re one of the daters, get in touch if you want to give me your side of the story. How bad? Come on. On a scale of ‘bumcrack visible in shorts’ to ‘trip to the toilet live-streamed on one of the screens in Piccadilly Circus’?

Ailsa and Mike ate at Chargal, London W1. Fancy a blind date?
Email blind.date@theguardian.com