So it’s been a while since I have written one of these, I know.

Sadly it’s not because I’ve gone and found my OTL it’s simply because I can’t bag myself a feckin Tinder date for love nor money in this god for saken country. Honestly in London I could have been on Tinder dates every night if I wanted, but here in Ireland where a man wouldn’t know a date if it bit him in the arse it’s nigh on impossible. My theory is that Irish men love the chase, so the very concept of Tinder shits all over their parade. When he gets a notification that he has a match the Irish guy goes ‘Oh she fancies me, deadly, I’m a ride’ and promptly goes back to scratching his balls. Irish men are also fickle as fuck I’ve arranged about 20 dates that have all either cancelled or just never materialised on the agreed day which can mean only one thing, he’s had a better offer from the lads, or another tinder swipe… or what would be irony of ironies, he’s googled me, found my blog and decided he didn’t want to be the subject of a scathing blog post. I truly hope it’s not that latter.

So needless to say I decided to try out some other new faddy dating apps and welcomed Bumble to the collection of squares on my phone screen.

Bumble is like Tinder 2.0. Still the same swipe right if you like and left if you don’t concept. Still picture, location and age based, but this time if you match with someone the woman has to make the first move and message the guy (intrigued as to how this works in same sex relationships but anyway, I digress). The added kicker is you are on the clock, once you match the woman has 24 hours to message the guy or the match expires. Likewise he has 24 hours to reply to your message before pooft he’s gone forever. It’s like the mission impossible of the dating world, as if dating wasn’t mission impossible enough!

On Friday I went on my very first Bumble date…..

The Match

We matched about three weeks ago, likely on a Sunday evening, my optimum time for flicking through tinder/bumble….I’d combine these for sake of ease but you get Bumder and as much as I’d like to be I’m not a member of the Inbetweeners!

Anyway he looked handsome, tall, dark brown eyes, silver fox’ing the sides of his hair. His profile said he was 34 and he had a foreign sounding name so I swiped and it was a match. I messaged him there and then, well I copy and pasted the same message  I had just sent to about 10 other blokes I had matched with on my swipe right spree.

“Hey handsome face, how was your weekend”

I then promptly forgot all about him until about two days later when I remembered to check my bumble inbox.

“Hey pretty lady, nice smile, my weekend was good, how about you” was his reply.

“Hey sorry for the delayed response” I typed “I had a good weekend too, out with friends, nice and chilled, where are you from?”

He replied about ten minutes later

“Bulgaria, you”

“Oh nice, I’m from Dublin, living in Islandbridge. How long have you been in Ireland?”

“Three and a half years, nice area you live in, I love the war memorial gardens”

“Yeah me too, I go there all the time” I replied

We chit chatted back and forth for a couple of hours, he worked in a lab, lived in the north side, liked hiking, and music,  but eventually it was getting late so we signed off and said good night.

He messaged the next day saying he had a busy day in work but that he was going to be visiting the war memorial park the next day and did I want to have a drink with him if I was free .

“Oh I’d love to but I’m going on hols tomorrow to walk the Camino with my mum, not back till June 1st but maybe when I’m back we could meet up” I offered back

“Wow that will be a great trip, I’m very jealous, have a lovely time with your mum and lets catch up when you are back!”

He seemed like a decent sort and I wondered whether this date would actually happen.

On June 1st he messaged me, meaning he clearly took note of when I said I’d be back.

“Hey you, how was your trip? I hope you had a great time and have come back feeling refreshed?”

“Hi! It was great thanks, such a lovely time with my Mom, I hope you had a good week”

“I did thanks, busy with work but looking forward to the bank holiday weekend, are you free to meet up one of the days, maybe Sunday or Monday?” he asked hopefully

“Sure Monday could work, what are you thinking”

“Great! I’m thinking we meet up in one of the parks in the city go for a little walk, suss out the vibe and then maybe go for a bite/drink if we fancy it, what do you think”

“Sounds great” I replied

“Cool, St Stephens Green, Iveagh Gardens, or Dublin Castle say 6pm”

My god for a Bulgarian guy he sure does know all the parks in Dublin fairly well I thought. Also do we really need to meet in a park? I mean it’s a bit awks…maybe I’ll just suggest a bar to meet in instead. No no Ariana, stop being such a control freak, I berated myself just let the guy pick the place to meet, just bloody go along with it for once in your life. I’m always complaining when a guy doesn’t make any decisions and then the ones that do I try to take over….I breathed out and typed back.

“Stephens Green, 6pm. It’s a date”

To be continued…….