A motorcade of meant-to-be's

I commented in a recent post how I had been talking to a young lady online and we were going on a date. I realise I haven't mentioned since then how it went. The truth is, I haven't really known too well what to say.

We arranged to meet for coffee in Notting Hill last Friday night. Unfortunately, after seemingly walking the length of Notting Hill Gate in both directions -- which although it was very cold was still quite a nice thing to do -- we couldn't find the coffee shop Rebecca had intended we go to. A few people had mentioned to both us that they might not be open anyway, so we concluded it was either closed or gone. So despite planning on going for coffee and not drinking, we ended up going to the pub anyway.

Overall the evening was very pleasant. She was good company, but the word I keep returning to describe it all is "pleasant". She was "pleasant", her company was "pleasant", the evening was very civilised and polite and, yes, pleasant. Unfortunately, what bothers me is that didn't seem to be any chemistry. I enjoyed the evening, but I didn't feel any sort of spark between us. Not just for me, but for her either -- maybe I was reading too much into it, I don't know.

What this means I don't know. Maybe she was just shy, maybe I wasn't outgoing enough. Maybe she did like me and didn't know how to show or express it. Maybe she didn't like me in that way. I don't know. But unfortunately I was just left with a slightly deflated disappointed feeling.

Thinking back, I can recall first meetings with all sorts of people -- Zero Sum and China Blue in particular being among the bloggers I've met, and with both there was definitely a feeling that I wanted to spend more time with this person. Not in a romantic sense, but still a feeling that was noticeably absent after last Friday. And there's others, like Fi and San, both I had romantic designs on after only one meeting. There's many more bloggers that I really want to meet and plan to meet, and am sure we will get on famously. I have even started wondering if blogging might be a more reliable way of meeting someone you like than dating ads...

Since then, I received a text message almost 24 hours later just saying that Friday night was fun and she hoped I'd got home safely -- I noticed there was no mention of "we should do this again" or "hope to see you soon". Perhaps because I didn't reply at the time (I was just going into the cinema) I got another message later -- a very odd picture message. It seemed to be a photo of two people standing in a kitchen, the caption just a random combination of letters. It seems very unlikely one could take what appeared to be a meaningless picture, unknowingly caption it with just presses of keys, and then send it -- all without realising. Even when I did reply to the text I didn't hear anything else.

There have been no more emails this week. Maybe she was waiting for to email her, maybe she's out there feeling sad I haven't -- or maybe it just was one of those things, where we didn't do a whole lot for each other. I have only good things to say about her, she was funny and smart, and good looking, and we had lots in common. She was very pleasant company, but I just didn't feel like either of us really felt...anything.