Irish Twitter detail their worst dates

Lockdown 2: Garda station boogaloo

It all started in that sweet respite between first and second lockdown. My ex and I had just broken up during the first lockdown so naturally I had been swiping away on tinder looking to dip my toes back in the dating game.

Ended up chatting to this girl for a while and decided we’d go to MVP to get a pint. The night came and I’m nervous as fuck, hadn’t been on a first date in 3 or so years at this stage. Everything is going pretty good, conversation is flowing, we’re getting on well, even get a little smooch when we’re out having a fag, delighted!

The pub shuts early, because of covid restrictions and all that, so we decide to get a few takeaways and cycle back to hers, ‘happy days’ I say to myself.

Here is where it all starts to go downhill.

I’m slightly more pissed than I think I am. We’re cycling along the canal towards Inchicore when I think ‘do you know what would be really cute? if you cycle up alongside here and give her a little kiss’. Well, fuck me, what a plan! 

I cycle up alongside her as she is looking confused, her legs still peddling away. Her knee comes up and clips my handlebars. Without time to do anything, I get that panic feeling of ‘Oh fuck, here we go’ *BANG* I slap the ground with my head and shoulder, hands still gripping the bars. I get up off the ground to see her on the opposite side of the road with a big gash on her elbow.

We laugh it off get back on the bikes and keep going, one of my arms laying limp by my side. Here’s me thinking its grand just a little bump, be fine. Keep in mind this has all happened within one bridge on the canal from where we started. To make matters worse the takeaway bottles are now smashed in my bag and streaming all over me.

So we continue cycling… Get to Dolphins Barn and I go through the junction, my date is a few metres behind me and I hear the screeching of car tyres and the familiar bang and crack of a windshield. I turn to look back and there she is stumbling about beside a taxi, stopped in the middle of the junction with a smashed windscreen.

A few local youths come running over screaming that they saw it all and it was the taxi’s fault. I run over to make sure she is alright or to see what i can do when a garda public order van arrives. They ask if she needs to go to the hospital, she declines, they explain that they are going to have to breathalyze both the driver of the taxi and the driver of the bicycle. She is then arrested for drunk operation of a vehicle and instead of being brought to St.James’ is brought to fucking Kevin Street!

I’m standing there clearly pissed, reeking of booze, with my arm hanging off me getting rather annoyed with the situation and how the garda are dealing with it. I follow after the garda van, one-handed and wait in the foyer of the station til they let her go. Not quite sure how long it took, think I was pretty concussed at this stage. She gets released and we decide to lock her unmoveably mangled bike and mine outside the cop shop and get a taxi back to Inchicore. The night does indeed end with my clothes being taken off but in a far more delicate manner than i would have hoped for. Woke up next morning to my collarbone a beautiful sky blue colour and my whole shoulder looking like a fleshy squidgy football. 

Think I’ve got over the nerves of first dates anyway, can’t really get much worse than that.

Moral of the story, don’t try and show off you fuckin fool ye.

-Aaron

Taken

My second ever date using a dating app. Just after the first lockdown and sure weren’t we all a bit desperate?

I gave Bumble a go because the girl messages first and it’s a bit tamer than Tinder. I’m generally quite confident and outgoing, and as I’d never used an app to date I really didn’t know the red flags to look for and was probably way too naive.

We were supposed to meet in Dublin to have early drinks but he called to say there was a break-in next door and as his folks were away, they asked him to check on the house in Newbridge. He said we could cancel or if I wanted, he could pick me up and I could go check the house with him and then we would go back to Dublin together (I know, I’m a fool).

As soon as we got there I felt something was off….he looked way too comfortable and took his shoes off straight away? I started texting my friends but it didn’t seem too sinister. He had good chat, but it wasn’t at all like the conversations we had on Bumble. I thought it was just us in the house and then I heard noise upstairs. He told me his nephew was up in his room but ‘wouldn’t come down and bother us’.

I thought that was insane and rude and that obviously he was welcome to join us (Also, strength in numbers, right?). He was really sweet but didn’t have great English so it was kind of awkward for a date. For the next half-hour he just talked about football and eventually, I put two and two together and realised there was an important match on.

As soon as it started his phone was blowing up and he told me that his friends usually watch the game in his… 20 minutes later there’s a knock on the door and four Albanian lads come in and start making themselves drinks. At this point, I was starting to look up train times and how much a taxi would cost to get home. 

The match ended and a friend in Wicklow said she would come pick me up really soon. I kept talking to the nephew as this dude was fully ignoring me at this stage and his mates were getting really weird. They were all sitting on another couch looking at me and whispering. Then they put on awful music, like Eastern Europe’s answer to Pitbull or something, and all the videos were like porn. My friend said she would be there in 15 minutes and I just needed to make an excuse.

I told them there was a family emergency and they started getting really pissed off at me. I would like to point out that the 20-year-old nephew was very sweet and genuinely concerned about my ’emergency’ and gave me his Insta to let him know later that everything was ok.

He walked me out and the guy I was supposedly on a date with just scowled at me as I left.

Overall I am convinced the person I went on a date with was not the person I met. He had curly hair in his picture and I just believed him when he said he had got it cut (yes I know I’m a gobshite and this is entirely my fault). In messages, he only talked about music festivals and travelling and what I experienced felt like a scene out of fucking ‘Taken: This Time with Football’. Strangest bit was that three days later he messaged me to see how I was…..as if NOTHING had happened….I later deleted the app and have not downloaded it or any other since. I may never date again.

* Honourable mention for the dude who took me to Burger King and paid with birthday money from his gran (24 yrs old) and then got annoyed when I wouldn’t have sex in his car before he dropped me home. There were four years between these two dates. What is wrong with people?

-Kate