by Fiona Gibson
A Grown-up’s guide to dating
Dating can be a minefield as my main character, Alice, discovers – especially if you haven’t been ‘out there’ for a while. As I’ve been with Jimmy, my husband, for twenty years, I’m hardly au fait with modern-day etiquette. So I’ve asked an expert, plus my dating friends, for tips on making the whole process as far from excruciating as possible …
-For a first date, coffee is fine. It doesn’t have to be the whole dinner caboodle which can be impossible to escape from if it’s not going well. ‘Never waste a Saturday night on a stranger,’ agrees Sarah Beeny, founder of online dating site mysinglefriend.com. ‘Coffee on, say, a Saturday afternoon, is ideal. A twenty-minute chat is usually enough to figure out the cut of his jib. Make sure you have somewhere to go on to afterwards so there’s an excuse to leave if you want to.’ Back in my dating days, I once blurted out that I had to rush home as I’d left a pan of milk simmering on the hob …
-Be yourself. It’s one of the great things about growing older. ‘I no longer pretend to love bands who actually make my ears bleed,’ says my friend Jo. ‘When I meet a man, it’s like, “This is who I am – a 40 year-old woman with two young sons.” Why pretend to be anything else?’
-Scale down your expectations. It helps to take the pressure off and calms nerves. ‘If a man’s not bowled over by me,’ Jo says, ‘it’s no huge let-down as I haven’t invested my hopes in him being “the one”. I just enjoy meeting interesting men, and dating gees up my social life.’
-Remember that not every man you encounter will meet all your criteria. I couldn’t help laughing when a friend declared, ‘I won’t waste my time on ordinary men.’ So what was she looking for? ‘A pilot’s license,’ she replied.
‘I know lots of dull pilots,’ warns Sarah Beeny, ‘so it’s best to be open-minded in who you choose to meet. Take height, for instance. Lots of our members stipulate that he must be over six feet – when, actually, five foot eleven is perfectly fine.’ She also warns that photos can be misleading, ‘as charisma doesn’t always shine through.’
-Pick a neutral meeting point. ‘If it’s a blind date, or we’ve only chatted online, I don’t like to meet too close to my flat,’ says my friend Kerry. ‘I prefer a cafe that none of my friends are likely to go to – first dates are nervy enough without the fear of running into someone you know.’ Kerry also recommends establishing beforehand whether you’ll eat or not. ‘I prefer not to,’ she says, ‘as nerves kill my appetite and I’d rather avoid the bill-splitting conundrum.’
-Avoid clothes which start riding up and slipping down of their own accord. Last thing you want to be fretting about is whether you’re flashing acres of cleavage or thigh. This doesn’t mean dressing like a buttoned-up head teacher from the 1970s.
-For example, hold-up stockings … I actually wore these on a first date many moons ago. All evening, they kept slipping down – while my skirt, which had seemed perfectly demure at home, seemed to become shorter and shorter in the pub. I spent the entire evening in a terrible sweat, trying to clamp my stocking tops to my thighs.
-Pre-date nerves? Phone a friend. ‘Tell her how jittery you’re feeling and have a laugh,’ Sarah suggests. ‘The secret is to not make a date feel more significant than it really is.’
-Keep conversation light. ‘I went on a dreadful date with a man who seemed hell-bent on psychoanalysing me,’ says Ruth, a former colleague of mine. ‘Generally, I try to keep conversation in the small talk region. Personal problems are a no-no. One guy I went out with told me all about his dead mother. I felt sorry for him, but it didn’t feel right to be discussing it on a date.’
Other single friends rattle off more first-date taboos: ‘money grumbles’, ‘the awful ex’, ‘builder problems’ and ‘anything medical.’ And avoid the trigger question, ‘So how come you’re single?’ which can prompt a torrent of love woes.
-Yes, you can mention your kids. It’s foolhardy to pretend they don’t exist. However, try to resist boasting about their amazing Lego-building skills or exam results.
-Relax. Yes, truly. ‘A great benefit of being in our thirties and beyond is that we tend to be more relaxed in our expectations,’ says Sarah. ‘If a date doesn’t work out, shrug it off and set up the next one. Dating is like trying to find someone you like in a whole arena of men. To be in with a chance, you’ve got to be in the arena to start with.’
Acknowledgements
Huge thanks as ever to Caroline Sheldon, my wonderful agent, and to Sammia Hamer at Avon for being the best editor a writer could hope for. Thanks also to my lovely, morale-boosting friends: Jen, Kath, Cathy, Liam, Wendy R, Wendy V, Michelle and Marie O’Rary, and to Chris and Sue at Atkinson Pryce. Jennifer McCarey shook off my doldrums when I was holed up in a Glasgow hotel, finishing this book. I’m also lucky to belong to a fantastic writing group: thank you Tania, Vicki, Amanda, Sam, Pauline, Hilary and Xenia. We chat, we drink wine – occasionally, we even get around to doing some writing. Finally, much love to my husband Jimmy, and to Sam, Dex and Erin who I can barely refer to as our children anymore (and who bear no resemblance to the teenagers in this book).
About the Author
Fiona was born in a youth hostel in Yorkshire. She started working on teen magazine Jackie at age 17, then went on to join Just Seventeen and More! where she invented the infamous ‘Position of the Fortnight’. Fiona now lives in Scotland with her husband Jimmy, their three children and a wayward rescue collie cross called Jack.
For more info, visit www.fionagibson.com. You can follow Fiona on Twitter @fionagibson.
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Copyright
Avon
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2014
Copyright © Fiona Gibson 2014
Cover Illustration: Lucy Truman
Cover design: debbieclementdesign.com
Fiona Gibson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9781847563651
Ebook Edition © March 2014 ISBN: 9780007469383
Version: 2014-01-22
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