Rather a bust.

Yesterday's date was rather a bust. The Tory boy was more interesting than I thought he would be and turned out to have lots of lovely interests such as collecting vintage champers and being obsessed with Doctor Who, but despite my repeated attempts at book chat he just isn't good at talking about books. I found him to have the same problem as many of my acquaintence: he has read a good deal but when it comes to actually discussing the books he has read he falls way short. So there was a little Wodehousian talk (the only author I could find that we both adored and so I fell back on him a good deal) but mostly we chatted of other matters.

The date lasted into the evening but eventually I just became bored of him and called it a night. Like all good Tory boys he walked me home but I did not invite him in. He clearly likes me a lot and would like to see me again but I will not be agreeing to a proper date for three good reasons.

1. He expected me to pay half during our date! I do not like that sort of thing in the early dating stages and certainly not in the way he did it. He is well off and so it was not about economy but rather seemed to be part of his lets kind of go on a date but not entirely do so strategy to avoid him asking me out in any official way in case I turned him down. We went to three different wine bars and had we taken it in turns to buy drinks I would have objected far less but each time we had to split it. Such behaviour is messy and annoys me. While actually in a relationship I don't mind us taking it in turns to pay for things etc but when a boy asks you on a date I strongly believe he should pay the bill.

2. He is not charming and while I could accept that he was so graceless that on a couple of occasions he was practically insulting. He referred to us having known each other several years ago by exclaiming towards the end of the evening that he had had no idea I was so interesting and knew so much about whatever we were talking about. Ever so subtly screaming out that I had seemed jolly boring and not worth bothering about two years ago. Not a big deal but hardly appealing. He could have erased this by an easy compliment but instead just apologised a fews times which made it rather worse and just led to me remembering the incident.

3. He bored me. My one over-riding rule of dating is never to be with a man who bores me. To his credit Germanicus managed for years to avoid doing so, so it is possible. I find that some men have the ability to bore me within the space of an hour let alone a whole date and anyone who bores is never to be dated again.

So that particular boy is not going to be seen much of again except in group situations. Ironically I think he may have enjoyed our date rather more than I did for I have just been invited to his birthday party!