An online date, five angry Australians and an orthopedic shoe

Everyone loves hearing stories about bum-clenchingly cringe events, right? Safe in the belief that nothing that horrendous will ever happen to them.

I used to be like you.

That was until I encountered the man with the orthopedic shoe.

This tale is as romantic as it sounds, I assure you.

Or perhaps not.

I had been sampling the delights of online dating, it was free and my cousin has just got engaged to a wonderful fireman (the dream) called Ryan as a result of her online dabblings.

And thus, I was virtually acquainted with Dan from Australia.

Australian accents are intrinsically sexy, everyone who ever grew up watching Home and Away knows that, so I assumed I was on to a winner.

Immediately in the flesh I was rather upset to discover that he wasn’t Chris Hemsworth and was at least five inches shorter than the six foot that his online profile professed (why does that ALWAYS happen?).

He was also wearing trainers last seen on a Fred Durst in 2003.

However I decided at 5'4 I could afford to be vertically open minded.

And re: tragic trainers fashion is in the eye of the beholder or whatever they say plus I still had the accent to cling on to.

Off to a bar we headed where the awkwardly over flirtatious barman chucked a complimentary shot of jäger towards me.

Dan from Australia was not impressed and little (no pun intended) did I know things were about to get worse.

Retrospectively, at this point I should have eloped with the generous barman.

Desperate to not notice his displeasure I volunteered bags of desperate conversation and nodding.

When nodding, I noticed that he kept passively aggressively implying I had some sort of vendetta (why does that word always makes me think of Vienetta?) against short people.

“So I tried out a new class at the gym, but think it might have been a bit difficult...” I said, for example. “Yeah I bet because the instructor was SHORT” replied increasingly angry Australian Dan.

This carried on for two drinks.

Suddenly, in between one extra enthusauatic nod away from claiming to have 'loads of short friends, I promise', he presented me with his previously thought ill advised shoe.

Which he plonked on the table for everyone (including my barman admirer) to see.

'SOME PEOPLE CAN'T HELP BEING SHORT YOU KNOW' he said jabbing his finger at a rather chunky previously unnoticed platform on the shoe.

Think lopsided Baby Spice circa 1997.

Now, do you ever get that thing where you are desperate to vacate a situation but don't want to offend the person? I do.

So I accepted another drink, which we had over his solitary stacked loafer.

But after that it was game over - I had paid my dues to rather angry Australian Dan and his single platform shoe.

“Oh is that the time? I'm SOOO sorry but me and my flatmate said we would watch er, the one show! We just LOVE Chris Evans!” I offered.

“You can't go, I told my friends you were coming for dinner! They have BOOKED!”

Say, what?

However due to that aforementioned fear of offending, I then proceeded to pay for my own overpriced yet allegedly stone baked pizza while being interrogated by five equally angry Australian women.

Perhaps they didn't deem me worthy of Austrailian Dan or his platform shoe because I never heard from him again.

To clarify, he slammed an orthopedic shoe on the table and it was me who didn’t even receive a ‘Thanks for coming to dinner’ courtesy text.
 
[Last week: Bad boys, revenge and underpant burning: Sex and the City this is NOT!]