Cold feet

A week or so ago, I discovered by chance (Fate giving me another playful dig in the ribs?) that there was a speed-dating event happening this weekend, in a nice little restaurant just a few minutes down the road from my apartment.

I had thought I might give it a go. However, it kept slipping my mind (I've scarcely had a day off - weekends included! - in the last 3 weeks; and I'm still sleeping terribly because of the plague of builders hammering away all night in the park outside my window), and I didn't get around to trying to pre-register for it until Sunday morning. Since I hadn't heard back from the organisers, either by phone or e-mail, by about 4.30pm, I decided to give up on the idea and find some alternate means of entertainment. About an hour later I received a text message that they had enrolled me and were very eager for me to come in order to balance up the numbers (did they really have more girls than boys on their hands? It usually works out the other way around, I think!). My new plan for the evening was neither very fixed nor very sociable - going to a film on my own - but I found myself feeling strangely committed to it. I suppose I had just "talked myself out of" the speed-dating idea.

Why the decisive waning of enthusiasm? Well, my image-confidence was not high: I'd spent most of the day in bed, having had a truly awful night's sleep; I have a filthy cold; I am about a month overdue for a haircut; and I really don't have any decent smart casual clothes to wear at the moment (I am long overdue for a major shopping expedition, but I just never seem to find the time). No, I looked like shit yesterday. Moreover, I have another very heavy week ahead of me in the recording studio, and I really can't afford to risk losing my voice - something which, in present conditions, trying to maintain an hour or two of sustained conversation would be very likely to cause. (My drinking buddy The Weeble has taken to mocking my perpetual drama-queenie anxieties about the state of my voice, my reluctance to spend time in any bars that are too noisy or too smoky. "Is your 'instrument' bothering you again?" he'll tease.)

But I think I had also suffered a resurgence of doubt about - not to say scorn for - the very idea of 'speed-dating'. It just doesn't feel like 'me' at all. Rather too much of an air of desperation about it. And perhaps also rather too much of a sense of ruthless cynicism, of impatient time-management ( "I want to find a new boyfriend/girlfriend this week, but I'm only prepared to devote a couple of hours out of my busy schedule to accomplishing this...." ). As I think I've observed somewhere on my blogs before, I don't really like the word 'date' in the first place. It's an American concept rather than a British one; and it seems to me to be both more pressureful (you can't just hang out with a member of the opposite sex to try to get to know them a bit better; any encounter, at least any one-to-one encounter, has to be a 'date' - with a fraught romantic/sexual subtext) and at the same time strangely more provisional, less committed (it is apparently possible to 'date' people casually, or to 'date' several different people at once - I just don't get how that's supposed to work). Moreover, I recall that my favourite soused magazine columnist, Jeffrey Bernard, once wrote that he abhorred the notion of speed-reading; he relished being an uncommonly slow, meticulous, thoughtful reader; and he facetiously added that he might possibly pay someone to teach him how to read even more slowly, so that he could enhance his enjoyment of reading still further. I'm much the same with women: I like to take my time in getting to know them. I'm deeply sceptical as to whether you can reliably make up your mind you'd like to go out with someone (the favoured British term for 'dating') - or even if you'd like to see them again, on however cautious and provisional a basis - in just 5 minutes (5 minutes of probably rather forced and phoney chat, at that).

And then, of course, there's the strain of finding new things to talk about. This event was threatening to provide 15 micro-introductions for each participant. I doubt if they hit that target, but..... even 8 or 10 would be maxing out my tired little brain, overtaxing both my memory and my creativity. I don't think anybody has that many upbeat, amusing, stimulating short conversations in them. But I'd hate to be repeating myself too often; I fear you're bound to seem a bore to others if you're starting to bore yourself.

A lot of people evidently find these events amusing, and a good way of making new friends, if not necessarily of finding suitable life partners. And I was really trying to lay aside my scepticism, to be more open-minded about the possible positive aspects of such a social get-together. Alas, participation would have required a greater level of energy and creativity than I can currently muster. Maybe next time.....

I would rather like to find myself a new girlfriend, now that the cold and gloomy Beijing winter is practically upon us; though I'm afraid I rather doubt if a speed-dating evening is going to produce very many suitable candidates.

But it's not as if I have any difficulty meeting fairly large numbers of interesting and attractive women in this town - it's just that most of them are not single, stark raving bonkers, or don't fancy me. Sigh.

I've just got to keep plugging away. One day, the right woman will come along. One day.