Extreme Dating

Home. Every student, no matter how much they adore Cardiff, will want to go home for the weekend at some point during the hectic term. Last Friday, I made the train journey to Oxfordshire excited by the prospect of a non-pasta based dinner and a bath room that does not have the occasional slug lurking around.

In a post roast dinner euphoria I even agreed to go shopping the next day with my Mother. To justify this statement I need to tell you something about my mum, the affectionately yet appropriately nicknamed ‘Crazy Sally’. As soon as I buckled my seat belt I released my error. Crazy Sal uses the Car as a prison chamber to trap me into talking to her about my life and quiz me on my lack of boyfriend. The statements she makes range from the mildly insulting “I can’t believe that in ALL of Cardiff there isn’t ONE boy who fancies you” to the emotionally traumatic “When I was your age I was out with a different boy every week and they all had motor bikes and leather jackets”. At this point I’m normally debating whether jumping from the car would kill me and whether that would be preferable than listening to such classic Sal comments as: “I would only ever go camping to sneak into boys tents”. No.

Before you imagine my mother as some sort of Stiflers mom let me just clarify that she is a children’s librarian, an avid Star Trek fan and her wardrobe mainly consists of charity shop ‘bargins’ a.k.a a wide range of floral floor length skirts. (I also know that, despite warning her that if I caught her on my Facebook stalking me I would punch her in the face, she does. So she might read this. Hey Sal. Love you. Mean it.)

My darling mother

So coming back from a weekend of slight emotional scarring and the attitude that if I didn’t bag myself a boy in the near future I would end up, as Bridget puts it, dead with my face being eaten by Alsatians, I agreed to go on five blind dates in five days. I’m not very good with the whole dating thing. I have really only been on one date with my first boyfriend which consisted of going to the cinema with four of our other friends, awkwardly holding hands and then being asked out over MSN later that evening.

In fact, since I agreed to this, I have genuinely had sleepless nights. I rang my friend Ellie in a fit of blind panic and her response to my cries of “this is going to be the most horrific experience of my life” was “don’t worry babe, I don’t remember that show ‘Blind date’ ever going badly….”. This triggered images of the whole of Gassys chanting “DITCH, DITCH, DITCH” whilst I cried into my drink.

So next week, you will read all about my five dates in five days… Wish me luck Tab readers – I seriously need it.