The Guardian Columnist; Round 2.

Neither of us are as beautiful as these cinema-loving smiley people.

After our previous date, I didn't hear anything off MyLifeYourHands for a few days, until he texts me one night asking if I want to see a film the following evening. He had been invited to a press screening (glamorous lifestyle, jels) so wondered if I wanted to be his +1, and was I free? Yes I was... so I agreed, and then asked what film it was. Probably should have asked what film it was first, in retrospect. Turned out to be Friends With Benefits - you know, the one where the impossibly and depressingly beautiful people Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis agree to be fuck buddies with hilarious and poignant consequences. Ho ho ho, retch retch retch. But, I'd already said yes, and, I secretly enjoy terrible romcoms. A lot.

Actually, the film wasn't half bad. It was quite self-aware, knew that it wasn't breaking any new ground, had a funny, fresh script and made me laugh. I generally hate seeing romcoms on dates (oh the pressure), especially if there are sex scenes - I think I'd rather watch a sex scene with my parents than with someone I hadn't yet, but potentially could have, but you're not quite sure if you will, had sex with. Minefield. Field of mines.

It was fine though. He didn't do any lean-y over, hold-y hand shit during it (although didn't even attempt to... sulk), in fact he seemed slightly more interested in his phone. And this continued throughout the date actually, which perhaps should have set off more alarm bells than it did, but perhaps I am naive, or gullible, or just not as observant as I should be during a date with someone who writes about dates for a living.

It sort of went like this. He took a call straight after the film, from his editor or some such, (which is fine - phone calls are allowed...) and then apologised and said he had to tweet about the film for a bit, as that was his end of the deal for seeing the film for free. Fine, I said, no problem at all, especially as he explained there was no signal in the screening room and he was supposed to tweet throughout the film, so he had some catching up to do. Aha, that explained the phone checking.

Between the tweeting, our conversation was as engaging and interesting as ever, and I had a good time. We went on to a nice pub, had some nice wine, etc etc. I assumed the phone activity would stop after a while (how much can you talk about Justin Timberlake? Jeez) but it didn't. One minute we'd be talking quite animatedly about some topic or other (orange juice I think was brought up at one point) the next he'd literally trail off mid sentence to check his phone.

Most people would probably be like 'Yo, dude, what's with the phone?' (if they were ghetto), but I am not ghetto, nor am I particularly brave in social/date confrontations. What was I supposed to do? So I sort of ignored it, after all - it wasn't particularly annoying me, he seemed fairly interested in what we were talking about, but at the same time thinking, well, I can't say anything, otherwise he'll write to all his Guardian readers (there are a lot) and say I was some kind of whiny phone-hating orange-juice loving romcom-cynical short irate blonde girl. Or something.

Like I said, the actual date, minus the phone situ, was great again, but I quickly realised he definitely didn't like me - and that I was just someone available for his +1. Which was fine, really - I have been on many dates, you don't want to marry them all. The phone usage confirmed this to me. So imagine my surprise, my shock, when at the end of the date, he went to kiss me. I know! And, because of this confusion, it turned into a weird side of mouth kiss, then cheek kiss, and oh god he did actually try to kiss me and I didn't kiss him because I thought he hated me but he doesn't and wtf boys are WEIRD.

I got home, and check twitter. This is a usual thing, just as a pre-bed, oh good the world hasn't ended, I can sleep, sort of thing. This is my main twitter account I'm referring to by the way, not my @SingleGirlStory one - I hadn't started this blog back then. And what do I discover as I scroll through the past few hours? Mylifeyourhand's tweets are quite frequent tonight. Very frequent. He's talking about a date. He's talking about OUR date. LIVE. That's what he was doing! He wasn't just talking about the film, he was discussing me and the things I was saying! With his scary Guardian twitter followers! This was not in the contract. I was fine with being written about in the column (as was clearly not going to happen here, and never was) but this was live - and, by very virtue of twitter, conversational. I usually have no problem with strangers listening to my musings (case in point, this blog) but on my terms. Not secretly! Argh!

If he had said beforehand, listen I have to live tweet our date, I would have been a bit, hmmm... ok, and I would probably have been fine with it - I understood his column totally and was quite willing to be part of the circus of it. I would just say, can you let me know what you're writing or let me know when you're tweeting, so I don't think I'm boring you; or, more importantly, I wouldn't have said all these stupid off the cuff kooky things that make me look like a crazy, in the first place. Not so cute now is it, single girl? All these things you were saying to what you thought was one person, but was actually about 2 million! (Slight exaggeration. I don't actually know how many followers he has. More than 10. Less than a million. Probably.)

He said some nice things, yes, I won't deny that - something about my shoes matching my glasses (totes intentional, er.. yeah) and how hot I am (may have made that up) etc, but also berated me for drinking my wine too slowly (it's a worknight, I'm not an alcoholic?) and also twisted a couple of things I said - I assume to make it more interesting for his followers. I recall the hashtag #shouldIbeworried? being used.

Oh yes, you bloody well should. Fuming, was I. He hadn't referred to me by name, or twitter handle, at all, which was good obviously, but it was more the fact that I seemed to have been used for entertainment for his twitter followers. As far as I could tell, I was only good enough for a second date if various people throughout the land could all get involved and share and discuss my quirky conversational strategies. Fail, utter utter fail.

Anyway, reading through, he also tweeted about the disastrous end of date kiss, admitted it was disastrous (thank god) and asked his followers whether he should text me now to apologise or wait til tomorrow? This was weird. Should I just watch and wait and see. Should I just text him so taking the decision off his hands? And why was I stuck in this vortex of weirdness? Why?

I figured I may as well text. I didn't want to launch into an angry text tirade (I wasn't that angry - just a little shocked I suppose) so just went for the softer approach - said that I've just seen your twitter, I didn't realise you were live tweeting, that's why I didn't kiss you because I didn't think you were interested. And yes the kiss was weird but if I thought you liked me I would've kissed you back. Maybe next time. Or something along those lines. He replied, apologised, the usual. The end.

I went to bed in self-annoyance and a little alcohol-induced upset, cursing my bad luck with these strange men and strange dates, and cursing this stupid hellhole people call 'being single'. It's bloody difficult, that's what it is!

The next day I woke up and I was fine. Silly me.

I'm still confused as to why he tried to kiss me though - because he can't have liked me that much if he was tweeting about me - but I guess I'll never know. I was annoyed at him for a while but I forgave him because I think he is actually a nice guy; just perhaps got taken in by the power that his column gave him. And I got an amusing story out of it too, didn't I? Maybe he was forced into doing it and felt guilty and that's why he kissed me. Aren't boys strange?

Moral of the story: Don't go on dates with boys who write about their dates. I realise this is ironic. Maybe, don't go on dates with boys if you know they write about their dates. Ignorance is bliss.