I’ve written some about my best dates, my really promising dates, first dates. But I thought today I’d share with you my actual worst date (those dates that involved me feeling unsafe don’t count!).

I started messaging this man and straight away we had a million things to talk about. I really love people who are passionate about things even if they are things I’m not hugely familiar with. And this man had a real passion for animals, for insects, for plants and trees, for dinosaurs. I ended up following him on Instagram fairly early on to see some of his animal photography.

And it was fairly one-sided with some of the scientific facts but I enjoyed it. He would be telling me fairly specific things about different wild grasses (that I had asked him about and wanted to know more about!) and in turn I’d tell him I had a lenticular ruler when I was little that had T-Rex and stegosaurus fighting each other and I felt really sorry for stegosaurus because all my friends were rooting for T-Rex to win that fight.

He was working near to a river that had some great areas of natural beauty with loads of wildlife. I said to him, maybe one of these days we should go for a walk, see these pretty sights and he can point out any cool animals. He agreed. I let him know when I’d be available and told him that I’d meet him anywhere as long as I got to see and hear some interesting things.

In the end, I met him in the car park at the entrance for a local park. I was really excited to meet him and I’d even bought him a book that we’d talked about and said that he was hoping to read soon. So certain was I that we’d be friends that when I saw it, I bought it and hoped it wouldn’t be too weird of a thing to give someone on our first date.

When I got there, I sent him a text message to say I’d arrived. And he got out of his van where he was parked. I’d seen pictures of him and he looked just as I thought he would… the only difference is that being close to him, I could smell him too. And he was letting off a rather strong smell. Like what I imagine patchouli smells like.

He had a big smile on his face when I met him and he kissed me on the cheek as a hello and I thought I would reserve judgement. Then we started to walk. I was maybe expecting more than I got. We were near a river, but we just couldn’t see the river through a massive amount of hedges in the way. I could catch glimpses of it at times but I figured maybe we were walking towards something that would bring us closer to it? Only we didn’t.

We ended up walking through a muddy field for 30 minutes. And then it started to rain. Not heavily at first but then quite heavily. So we turned back and walked back to our cars. He offered to let me wear his jacket but I cringed at the idea of being enveloped in his scent and declined. My hair ended up clumping together around my face from the rain and I was cold and feeling fairly miserable.

And I think if we were talking about interesting things I might not have minded so much that the wet had seeped into my shoes and my feet were icy cold. Or that I never once saw the river. But conversation was also not good. He had told a story about his parents celebrating a big wedding anniversary in the next week and asked me what my parents’ relationship was like. I laughed awkwardly and said that wasn’t really first date conversation. But he insisted. Was absolutely adamant to know so I told him the story in the most blunt, gruesome way possible. Like I was trying to teach him a lesson for organising such a poor date? Serves him right to force such a conversation? I started to hate who I was becoming with this man, truly.

The rain didn’t last long and by the time we’d gotten back to the car park it had stopped so he asked if I wanted to sit on a bench with him and continue talking. I really didn’t. But I thought I’d give it 5-10 minutes before I made my excuses and left.

He started telling me stories about dates with other women. It might have been tacky but it quickly became relevant. The story he was telling was about eating at an outdoor sushi restaurant when a homeless person started asking for money. This man didn’t know how to draw a boundary and say ‘no’ so, as the story unfolded, this meant that my date eventually took the homeless man to a Robert Dyas and bought him a phone charger and some other things. Not because my date was particularly civic-minded and compassionate. No. It was because he didn’t know how to say ‘no’ to him.

And I was able to witness that in person when just as this story was ending and I was about to start saying goodbye, my date says to me, sorry that’s my colleague over there walking towards us, he’s going to ask questions about you, what would I like him to say about me? I was so caught out by surprise by this that I didn’t have time to say more than ‘just tell him it’s none of his business’ before the colleague stood in front of us saying ‘hello’ to my date.

‘And who might this be?’ he says to me. And my date says my name, says we’re friends, that we’ve been on a walk. And that he’d see him tomorrow. But his friend doesn’t pick up on this subtle dismissal and starts asking me things. Where I live, what I do for work, how I met my date. I answered some things but ignored most of it. I wasn’t on a date with him, I wasn’t putting any effort into this strange man. My date ended up answering all the questions though and they talked about work for ages. It seemed likely that they would continue talking until this other man got bored or had to be somewhere else. When he said ‘do you mind shifting over?’ to me like he was going to join our date is when I ran out of patience.

Yes, I did mind. We were on a date and I wasn’t here to get to know him, did he mind catching up another time? Or, I said, and I looked at my date to include him in this nonsense, I can just leave you two to it if you’d prefer? And something in that spurred both of them to remember their manners and the colleague left.

I got up and walked back to my car. He followed me, looking a bit embarrassed. He apologised for his colleague but his colleague didn’t concern me. He did. The terrible walk. The lack of any kind of beauty. The rain. The pushing of topics I didn’t want to talk about. The intrusion of his colleague into our date. It was all bad. And I couldn’t wait to get in my car and drive away from this mess.

He does take really nice pictures of animals though.