It Started With A Tweet(8)

‘I mean, what are you about? What do you do for fun?’ he asks in his peculiar accent, which is a mixture of posh British with a Transatlantic twang. It’s as if he’s doing a bad Lloyd Grossman impression.

‘Oh, right, fun,’ I say, trying to concentrate on what he said rather than how he said it. ‘Well, let’s see .?.?. I go out quite a lot with my friends – you know, bars, parties .?.?. Sometimes I go to the cinema, and the theatre now and then.’ Even though I despise it, it looks good to check in every so often.

‘So you don’t have hobbies, then?’ he says disappointedly.

‘I’m sure I must have hobbies,’ I say in my defence. ‘I mean everyone has hobbies, don’t they?’ I just need to think what they are. I used to be fairly sporty when I was at university, I belonged to the trampolining club and I did street dancing. I’d always intended to do some form of sports in London but it was all so expensive when I first moved here, and then it’s so hard to get back into it when you’re out of the habit.

I think over what I do in my spare time, not that I’ve had much over the last few months. I can’t remember the last time I cooked something for the enjoyment of it, and I’ve got a whole Pinterest board full of craft ideas that I’m intending to emulate when somehow I manage to have an abundance of time and/or realise that I have some crafting ability – neither of which are highly likely.

Surely I’ve got to have more to my life than that? I try and mentally run through my Instagram pictures, as if to trigger my memory, and that’s when it hits me.

‘I’m into photography,’ I say, realising that I snap all day long. Dominic doesn’t need to know that I don’t own an actual camera.

‘Oh, really? That’s interesting,’ he says nodding. ‘I recently bought a new Digital SLR, I’m still getting used to it, mainly using the kit lenses – you know, while I’m a beginner. Perhaps you can give me some tips?’

I try and keep my smile from falling.

‘Yes, I’m sure I could,’ I say lying. The only tip I can give him is that the best Instagram filter to use when you’re looking as rough as a dog is Valencia, and Mayfair makes your drinks look sharper. Probably not what he had in mind.

‘I went to dinner up the Shard last week and I captured some fantastic shots with my wide-angle lens. The lights went all Bokeh in the distance and I had the perfect twilight photo. In fact, my boss was so impressed that we now have it printed on canvas on our office wall.’

‘Oh, that’s fantastic,’ I say, wishing I’d picked a different hobby. ‘I once had –’

‘And then, there were some wedding shots’ – he continues talking, not even acknowledging that I was starting to join in the conversation – ‘that I took for my very good friend. They actually preferred them to the ones taken by the photographer they’d hired. They said I’d captured the more spontaneous moments of the day so they’ve used a lot of mine in their wedding album and in frames around their house.’

‘That’s excellent,’ I say, nodding at his modesty.

The waitress comes over and places my cocktail in front of me; it looks delicious. I practically have to sit on my hands so as not to reach into my bag and pull out my phone to take a snap of it to share online. It’s rare that I go out for food or drink these days and don’t chronicle it, but I don’t feel like I can after what Dominic has just been saying.

‘So what other hobbies do you have, then?’

I’m guessing that if I say I play poker, meaning an app on my phone, he’ll tell me that he’s played at a Las Vegas tournament.

‘I like to watch live music. I’ve got tickets to see the Foo Fighters at Wembley in the summer and’

‘Who hasn’t? Everyone always says they like the Foos.’

I open my mouth to tell him that I’ve actually seen them at all their UK live tours, but before I get the chance he’s telling me about the time he got backstage tickets to see Dave Grohl’s super group, Them Crooked Vultures.

‘What about languages?’ he asks, as he finishes his story. ‘Do you speak any of those?’

I’m about to joke that I can totally speak Emoji; in fact, Erica and I sometimes have whole conversations in it. But I get the impression that Dominic, much like the rest of the population, wouldn’t believe that it’s a real language.

‘No, other than my GCSE German, which I haven’t used since I’

‘Shame; I speak fluent French and conversational Italian and Spanish. Makes holidaying so much easier. I detest people who point and speak loudly in English.’

‘Me too,’ I say, nodding and pretending I’m not guilty of doing that.

‘So what do your parents do?’ he says, rolling on the interrogation at a rapid rate of knots.

‘Um, my mum works as a receptionist at a dentist’s.’

‘Oh,’ he says, ‘and your dad?’

‘He was an accountant, but he, um, died when I was young.’ I get a bit flustered as I don’t usually like to talk about my dad’s death with strangers, and it tends to put a bit of a downer on first date conversation.

‘Oh, he worked in the City, did he?’

‘No, he worked in Fleet, in Hampshire. That’s where I’m from.’