Quite literally 28 Dates Later - The end of the blog

In case you hadn't realised, this blog is finished (awwww). For six months, January - June 2013, I went on 28 Dates from 28 different dating sites, after my first online date ended with an infected human bite wound.

500,000 unique readers will be aware of how it all turns out - of the three options at the top, I thought the most likely end was "get myself killed" at times - but just in case you've just stumbled upon it, here's links to each every post, in chronological order:

1: The Biter

...my first online date, in which I meet a girl who almost bit my finger off - from OKCupid.

2: The Girl with the Knives

...in which I recount my previous worst ever date, which involved a wall of sharp knives.

3: The Adulteress

...in which I consider having an affair - from Ashley Madison.

4: The Lizard Loving Nerd

...in which I encounter a fiscally prudent herpetologist - from Geek2Geek

5: The Republican Warrior Princess

...in which I take romantic inspiration from Ayn Rand, and meet a "gun loving, god fearing Republican" - from The Atlas Sphere

6: The #Twittercrush Part one & Part two

...in which I meet up with someone I had a crush on through twitter, and make her charity cupcakes. - From Twitter/52 First Dates

7: The Farmer

...in which I meet a soft-fruit farmer and get my first proper kiss of the project - from Muddy Matches.

8: The Fan of the Blog

...in which I meet a fan of the blog and on this occasion, I *am* the bad date.

9: The Naval Officer

...in which I am "sexted" by an officer and a gentlewoman and we discuss our favourite admiral. From Uniform Dating.

10: Three Jewish ladies

...in which I discover I am a hot piece of beef on J-Date.

11: The Cougar

...in which I date an older woman. From Cougar Dating.

12: The Guardian-reading Tory

...in which I meet the only other socially liberal but economically conservative person known to man - from Guardian Soulmates.

13: The Blandest Date

...in which I meet a woman I have nothing in common with - from OKC Crazy Blind Date.

14: The Sleazy Hookup

...in which I hookup with a friend - from Bang with Friends

The half-time show: A midway through maudlin reflection on why I was single after 14 Dates.

15: The Tabloid Date Blogger

...in which I meet another Date Blogger and get reviewed - from Single, bored and Geeky about films.

16: The Psychic

...in which I date a woman with psychic powers. Or so she claimed! - from Beyond Psychic dating

17: Two Fakers & a Cambridge Undergraduate

...in which I don't date either a Czech pornstar or a High-flying lawyer, and end up taking out a Cambridge undergrad instead. - from Plenty of Fish

18: The Fundamentalist Christian & the Sex Devils

...in which I date a Christian, who put the "Mental" into "Fundamentalist" - from Missionary Dating

19: The London Cosplay Otaku

...in which I date a lovely lady who was into dressing up. - from Lovestruck

20: The New York Millionaire

...in which I am a gold-digger. from MillionaireDating

21: The Second Injury

...in which I can't tell you much about the date apart from the fact I received an agonising sex injury on it.

22: The Hometown show

...in which I try online dating in my small seaside hometown - from Match.com

23: Pet Dating with my Hedgehog

...in which I take my pet Hedgehog on a date with me - from Pet Dating

24: The Data-Driven Dater

...in which I try to date arithmetically, and meet a woman who dates by Spreadsheet - from E-harmony

25: Speed Dating with the Pickup Artist

...in which I go to a Scientific speed dating event and am lectured by a strange pickup artist - from Dating Science London

26: My Single Friend and the Finnish Superwoman

...in which my friend Janine tries to pair me off with a Finnish lady-adonis - from MySingleFriend

27: The Video Gamer and the Zombies

...in which I fall off a barn and my date steals my sniper rifle from my cooling corpse - from LFGDating

28: The Doctor and the Cliffhanger

...in which I meet a lovely doctor in Chelsea Physic garden, and reject her by Text message! - from Doing Something

29: The Blind Date 

...in which I go dating in a National Newspaper column - from Guardian Blind Date

30: The Happy ending and the Girlfriend

...in which you discover who I ended up in Love with (we're still together after six months, so it all seems to be working out). 


But…but…what about the text message to the Doctor explaining you were seeing someone?

Oh, alright, I suppose I should tell you what happened. In between Date 24 and Date 25, I got a message through OK Cupid.

 Now, this isn’t unusual – I haven’t actually closed my account on any of the sites I’ve joined, including ones I’ve never got dates through – I’m still holding out for a sexy baroness from nobility dating site Godmother.com or an amazing Indian wedding from arranged marriage site Shaadi.com.

However, this message, unlike lots of others I’ve received (I’ve got 16 sitting unread in my J-Date.com mailbox alone) piqued my interest.

It read:

So – I have got worried that you might think I’m stalking you and so thought I should drop you a note reassuring you that I’m not.”

So, not a stalker. A good start.

“I appreciate the paradox in sending someone a message to confirm that I’m not harassing them but I was telling a friend about your blog (recommending if that gives me any credit). Once she’d stopped laughing we decided to see if we could find your dating profiles and it was much easier than we’d expected, given you’ve linked to the blog in them. Once we’d got that far it seemed rude not to read them... and then I realised I’d show up as having checked you out. A lot.

So I presented the conundrum of ‘contact or not contact’ to my office mate. Her response was “Well we haven’t got anything else weird to do today…”. Obviously not reporting me to the police would be appreciated – it would mess up my career quite a bit.

As an aside – by our ‘weird’ task of the day she is equating you with various things I have made her do recently - including going to a Nate Silver talk in a parliamentary committee room and learning ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ in Spanish. She was wrong. This is clearly weirder.”

By the time we actually got around to meeting, I’d done date 25 and date 26. To cut a long story short, we met up for drinks on the Southbank, which led to a.) me deciding she wasn’t a crazy stalker and b.) a lovely kiss in the sunshine. That led to trips to the Globe theatre, meals out, the cinema, picnics, her meeting my friends, me meeting her friends, us deciding we were a couple, and indeed, last week, her meeting my mum. Yes, it’s proper serious and everything.

We’ve been dating for almost three months - which may explain the slow rate of progress on the blog. I think by now, as Nik Vincent-Abnett hoped, I have taken the girl in question – the “winner” of the blog, if you like – on at least 28 Dates. Huzzah! A happy ending after all.

So, in conclusion, I met the woman I love through online dating. If you’re single, give it a try – it worked for me…

(Sort of...eventually.)

THE END (really this time)

1.) I reserve the right to do another post if there’s a book or a film or (whisper it) a wedding or anything of that sort.

This post originally appeared at the end of Date 28, but I've decided to separate it out.