How not to behave on a date

So I met up with Eli again last night (not that the first soiree was documented on this blog, it wasn't particularly story worthy). If you were to ask my ‘why?’, which you would be well entitled to do, I would not be able to give you a satisfactory answer, except for the fact that a second date tends to follow a first date and although I’m a bit more at ease now in Ghana, I don’t want to burn my bridges, just in case I need someone to talk to in the near future. Yes, it has got to the point where I agreed to go on a date just so that I would have someone to talk to for an evening. It's a lonely place! This is tragic! If there is one thing Eli is good at, it's talking. Actually, to be fair on him, last night he was rather good at listening too, and he had to be because I told him exactly what I thought about men, relationships and romance (for anyone not in the know, I unfortunately consider all of these things to be a great compromise). It occurred to me as I was about half way through my tirade that I may have accidentally struck a match under the metaphorical bridges that I had resolved not to burn. This was not, after all, what one usually considers to be acceptable date etiquette. To his credit, Eli took it well within his stride and we ended up making a deal that he would be a friend to me, as long as I kept an open mind and I should tell him if I did fall in love and want to get married to him. This was a deal I was happy to agree to and I shook his hand to confirm it with a great deal of happiness.

The place we had gone to this time was a bar in which I was told they served the coldest beer in town; 'a pretty good USP' you may be thinking. The walls were painted yellow and black and were topped with the most barbed wire I have ever witnessed to be protecting a pub. When our first beautifully cold drinks were brought to us (shandy, because Ghanaians apparently don't typically drink very much alcohol) I was pleased; but Eli was not impressed and asked the waiter where the properly cold ones were. Apparently there was no ‘properly cold’ shandy, and so once I’d finished my first drink a suitably temperate beer was brought. I couldn’t really see the difference myself, they all seemed quite cold, and indeed condensation was streaming off the bottles, down the sloped table and into my lap, which just goes to prove it.

Anyway, Eli was by now very tipsy, since he never intended to drink anything as intense as a beer. When the 4^th bottle was brought it had ice in it - Eureka! Now I know what the fuss is about! I can honestly say this was the coldest beer I’ve had in my life.

There comes a point, once a certain number of bottles have been consumed when one has to enquire about the location of the toilets in whichever establishment one is in. Eli went first and I watched him stagger off. I went second, feeling not at all equal to him in my inclination to stagger, and was shown to a rather disconcerting toilet block. The bright yellow walls were about shoulder high, there was no ceiling, and there appeared to be no toilet inside it. However, there was a urinal.

I have never in my life used a urinal and I didn’t feel inclined to start last night. For a start, I’m not particularly sure how I would approach the problem; which way it would be easier to face; or if I would have to stand on one leg. Usually in Ghana, ladies toilets are just an alleyway, giving you the privacy to squat on the ground, sometimes there is a gutter or a drain to aim for. Here there seemed to be nothing. The floor was made of wooden slats and I couldn’t tell if it incorporated a drainage system. I wondered what the ladies in this room were supposed to do and if any of them had been as confused as me, or if the answer was very obvious to the majority of visitors. Still, a couple of bottles of drink on an empty stomach does wonders to allay concerns such as this...

So there we have it. I went on a date in which I spouted anti-romantic venom and weed on the floor! Surprisingly, I can’t help but feel that it actually went better than the first date on which I behaved myself perfectly. If there’s a moral to this story then I dread to think what it is!