Finding Love in the 21st Century

So, what’s this speed dating malarkey all about then? BBC Wiltshire finds out….

Having been, ahem, ‘on the shelf’ for some months and being an adventurous chap, I thought I’d try my hand at this old speed dating lark that has recently taken the country by storm.

Unsurprisingly our outgoing and inhibition-free American cousins invented this unique, new method of finding the perfect partner. Recently it has caught on big time in the UK and Speed Dating events are now being held up and down the country with increasing regularity.

At a typical Speed Dating event an equal number of singletons of the opposite sex get to meet each other in an informal and relaxed environment. Ladies are seated at numbered tables and the men are paired off with them at tables of two.

The couples then get four minutes together to get acquainted ask those vital questions and make an impression. As the evening progresses, the Speed Daters make a note of who they might like to see again.

If anyone they selected also likes them, they are notified by email shortly after the event with the full details of their admirers. Hopefully a full diary of promising dates will ensue! At the very least, daters will have met new people and enjoyed a night of fun and flirtation. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I thought to myself as I tentatively made my way to Edwards bar in Swindon.

The intimately lit, comfortable upstairs bar has been exclusively booked for the event and was the perfect relaxed environment to put you at ease. After the organiser checked everyone in and ran through the drill, I sat down with the first of my ‘dates’. Four minutes is probably just the right length of time to spend chatting to someone to decide whether you’d like to see them again. It certainly went very quickly and I didn’t once find myself wishing the time away with any of my fellow daters. On the contrary I was struck at how normal, well-adjusted and interesting almost all of them seemed to be.

I suppose in the back of my mind I expected some of them to be, how shall we say, aesthetically challenged, socially inept or laden with baggage. But then why should they be? I guess it’s just a silly stigma a lot us have in thinking that the lonely-hearts circuit must be the preserve of the terminally sad. In the 21st century it’s certainly not.

In this busy, stressful day and age, many people simply have no time outside of demanding careers to meet that certain someone. Others may find pubs and clubs intimidating and distasteful or time and again miss the signals which say someone is interested in them.

It soon became clear this selection of ladies came from all walks of life. As I moved from one table to another, I met a nurse, two accountants, a yoga teacher, a stained glass artist, a primary school teacher as well as a girl who quite cheerfully revealed her job entailed working in a clinic lancing the boils off the feet of diabetics! “Just a bit too much information love”, I thought to myself as I pondered whether perhaps this extremely attractive young woman’s malfunctioning inner monologue is the reason she’s single!

I did find it slightly hard to think up new and interesting questions for successive girls when after the bell sounds to move to the next table you are furiously, not least covertly trying to scribble down notes about the previous one. When you’re meeting 16 possible matches in such a short period of time you have to jot something down in order to jog your memory when it comes to selecting (via the company website) who you’d like to see again the next day.

So, after nearly two hours with a short break in the middle, it was all over. Being the fussy type, I’d only ticked one or two girls I wouldn’t be averse to seeing again. My Speed Dating expectations had been low but as it turned out, I had an interesting, pleasantly unusual evening and met some interesting new people.

Finding true love at an event such as this may not be wholly realistic but it’s got to be better than a random liaison in a night-club, which for years seemed to be the typical way to meet a new partner…