On Blind Dates

So, I have been on three so far, and after two of these the men were proposing marriage!! Does that mean men will start agreeing to meeting strange women only when they feel ready to settle down? Come to think of it, perhaps women normally go on blind dates looking for husbands – maybe the men think this... Whatever the case, this seems to be true two thirds of the time in my experience!

Is it men who are normally too shy to approach women? WHAT is it?

So anyway, last Friday, my cousin sets me up on a blind date – incidentally she is the author of all three dates – this last one to take place during lunch at the Grand Imperial hotel terrace.

He is a commercial farmer in Gulu, and also consults with various firms in Kampala in the area of marketing, thus splitting his time into 2 days in Kampala and the rest in Gulu each week.

On the day of the lunch it decides to rain cats and dogs so he offers to pick me up from the post office to cover the short distance to the Terrace, but on getting to the post office, he decided we go to Kembabazi’s instead – saying we were more likely to find better food there since it was already coming to 3pm.

The rain intensified upon reaching Kembabazi’s, so we stayed there most of the afternoon. Trying to apply Surrendered Single principles, I decided to really give him a chance though on first inspection he didn’t appear to be my type - for one thing he wasn’t terribly intellectual, and hasn’t seriously read a whole book in his life (those who know me are gasping at this point). On the other hand he spoke politics well enough, and spoke well on general matters, the economy, business, education, our foreign links, etc. Also, was good looking enough and was very well behaved, opening doors and all that sort of thing, and oh, taller than me (amen!)

I told him it was my birthday the following week and my sisters had tried to get me a pass to Jonathan Butler but that it had proved too expensive so he offered to buy me a ticket, which like any good surrendered single I received.. J There after he said we should move venue so that he could buy me a birthday drink seeing as I would be in TZ on the actual day, so we relocated to Dolphin suites (with a brief stop at Katch the Sun which we threw out as too cold) – that was also pleasant enough, we continued to talk about the lessons we’ve learnt in our long lives (he’s one year older than me) he told me he’d come very close to getting married 18 months ago, etc., etc.

(to be continued)