Flirt School

 A while back a friend of mine was telling me that he’d been to a ‘Flirt Course’. I immediately thought that this was a great idea – not to learn flirting, but to run one. Most people I know are either single or due to be single shortly. So I decided to find out what the contents of the course were so that I could run one myself and clean up financially by getting a dozen or so desperately single people to pay money in the hopes of charming the opposite sex.

My friend told me that the first tip was never to talk about health or money on the first date, but that was all I found out about this particular course because on foot of it the guy started dating a girl who’d been on the course too (probably the real reason people go to these courses) and since then he hasn’t had time to do anything other than gaze lovingly into said girls eyes.

So I checked out some websites for online dating, put up a photo of myself as a young adult, pretended to be younger, thinner and basically an awful lot nicer than I really am, and off I went. The guy I met was handsome and in fairness, his face didn’t drop when he saw what I was really like. But then, within the first minute of meeting him, he took out a tissue, wiped his nose and began to go into detail about the terrible cold that he was getting over and would I like a drink. I decided that this information was only annoying because I’d now been trained into believing that a man should not speak about his health on the first date, so I gave him my sympathy and said that yes, thanks for offering, I’d have a glass of white. He came back with the glass of white and some horrific smelling herbal tea for himself, for his terrible cold that I knew all the details of at this stage. I thought to myself ‘I’ll let him off for slurping like a pig, cos after all, he has an awful cold’.

But then he started talking about money. And it wasn’t just about money in general, it was: ‘Now don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to buy a lady a drink, but don’t you think €6 is quite pricey for a glass of Pinot Grigio?’ I can’t remember what the exact answer was that I gave him, but I do remember that I didn’t stay for a second glass. Nor did I ever get around to opening a Flirting School.

 But is there a rule? Not long after that date I met my beloved. I can’t say what the chat up lines or the flirting entailed, because we didn’t meet on a dating website, and we never asked one another out for a date. But I suppose you’re more likely to stay long term with somebody who you say things like ‘stick on the kettle’ to, or ‘get up them stairs’.

Going right off the topic though, have you seen the little tracker thingy up in the right hand corner where I track my weight loss? I’m down 15lbs at this stage, and the group leader is giving me a pain and I’m at the bit of the diet where it takes ages and ages to lose half a pound and I’m kind off gone off salad. On top of that, Lidl’s have opened a real German bakery on their premises, and they have my very favourite pumpkin seed bread. I think one bread roll is equal to the amount of points in a glass of wine, which means that a bottle of bread rolls is 22 points.

I’d say at that flirt course that they told the women never to talk about diets on the first date.