In a world where your next relationship/date seems to come from Tinder or some form of social media, this week’s task was extremely refreshing. A genuine blind date. No pictures, no swiping, no ‘liking’ pictures, no small talk prior to the date, just an open mind and trust in a friend.

Off the back of last week’s post, my colleague at work, Poppy, contacted me to bring up the idea. Traditionally, this is something I’d never even consider, my only experiences of a blind date is Cilla Black’s ITV programme or David Brent’s blind date in The Office. So it was an perfect idea for this challenge.

After accepting the offer, all I was told was I’d be meeting a Daisy, aged 20, who’s brunette. I did have mild panic attacks the day before, where I drew on the varied advice from people I knew. One person said “As soon as she sees you, she will love you and then she will talk to you and will love you more”, though this is something my mum would say, I promise it wasn’t her! Then I went to the boys for advice, to which I was advised “Just don’t faint this week”. Brilliant.

Before I go any further, I’d like to make clear that this blog post isn’t about rating how the date went. It would be unfair on Daisy and besides it’s none of your business. This is all about the experience.

Meeting at Brighton Pier at 6pm, I made sure I was fashionably late by arriving 15 minutes early. Thinking I’d be greeted by a Daisy, I was greeted by Rachel, the storm that happened to be taking place in Brighton at the time. Rachel was angry and was doing her best to brush me off my feet before my date even started. Hopefully Daisy would be a bit kinder.

Only when it got to the date, it occurred that she may turn up, see me and leave. You can see by the group ‘WhatsApp’ conversation, I was cool as a cucumber.

The good news is she turned up, recognised me from the pictures she had seen and didn’t feel the need to turn around. We got out of the storm, had a meal and went on to drink a few cocktails.

It’s hard to describe the energy I felt before and throughout the evening. Having no idea who was going to turn up and not knowing a thing about their background, was brilliant. There were no expectations and it turned out to be a fun evening. Yeah, it was a risk, but it goes to show you should trust your friends. I knew Poppy was unlikely to stitch me up; she knew both of us and thought we’d get on…. which we did. There were thousands of things to talk about and no pressure at all. The most pressure I had all evening was choosing which cocktails to choose. The ‘Songbird’, chosen purely as it’s an Oasis song, was a success. The Martini, if it’s good enough for James Bond, it’s good enough for me, wasn’t quite so successful.

I’d honestly encourage people to give something like this a go. Trust your friends, take the whole ‘looks’ element out of it and chuck yourselves in the deep end. As I said to myself before the whole thing, what’s the worst that could happen?….. (I didn’t faint this week!)

As always, ideas are encouraged. The list is growing!