'Date-Crashers'

Hi, my name is Caitriona and I’m a WOLaholic!
My fiancé, John and I met on a blind date that my sister set up, but it’s complicated so if you have a while, I’ll tell you the whole story.
In July of 2001, I had only recently broken up with my long term boyfriend and was looking for something to occupy the sudden rash of spare time I had on my hands, so a close friend suggested that I join her Salsa dancing in the Temple Bar Music Centre on Tuesday evenings to try and get me out of the flat. The open classes on Tuesdays are a scream with a male/female ratio of 1:80, so as you would expect when the dancing really takes off the men are in short demand.

Short
That reminds me of exactly why I ended up with John in the first place; all thanks to a short asian man, to whom I will forever remain grateful, who was fascinated with my ample bosoms. At the end of the classes, the music really starts and everyone takes to the dance floor. The gentleman in question stood in front of me and asked me to dance. As we walked onto the dance floor, he took my hand, and looked in my eyes with something that I can only describe as rapture. That was the last I saw of his eyes, as he promptly buried his head in between my cleavage and danced on my feet for the song, probably because he couldn’t see where he was going mind you!

If nothing else, it was an incentive to find an alternate dance partner, so I wouldn’t be caught “short” again. There were no amorous intentions there at all, all I wanted as someone to join up with us gang of girls (at this stage there was about 10 of us) and have a laugh. My sister Olivia decided she would ask John for me, who apparently was always up for a laugh, no commitments, just a good time. John agreed to come dancing with me at least once but insisted that I meet him first so he knew what I looked like.
We agreed to meet on a Friday evening after work in a local pub. The poor fella, he still has nightmares about that first meeting; I work for a family business so all of the work crowd decided to go for a drink that Friday, and he walked into a group of about 10 people, one of whom was my father!

Fair dues to him, he handled it very well, and must have done his homework with Olivia as he asked me would I like to come to a concert with him that evening, his uncle is a tenor and had his first professional performance.
As we’re driving down the road, John mentions that he has to drop into his house for something, and manages to get sweet revenge on my introductions by taking me in to meet his mother for a cup of tea. Just as I thought it can’t get any worse, we get back into the car and he asks me the question I will never forget.

“How are you with senile people?”
From then on it was swiftly downhill as he explained that his mother had just asked him to take his grandmother and great-uncle to the concert with us. Both were mortal enemies, lived next door to each other & had to be separated at all costs. My images of sitting in a lovely concert, enjoying beautiful music were crushed as by the time we arrived to pick them up, they were fighting so much they had to be separated for the night. The concert was great, if a little long, and it was good thing that the chairs were so hard and I was suffering from “numb bum” syndrome as his great-uncle grabbed my bum and offered to take me home with him at the end of the night.

Once we had dropped them off, John drove me home in silence, very, very still silence. To his amazement, I cracked up laughing and asked him was this a one off occurrence or were all his family nuts! It was the funniest evening I’d had in months. I had been sitting at home moping over my lost relationship and what could have been and not paying attention to reality.
To end the night, I leaned over in the car and gave him a kiss before I went in the flat. John says that from that moment forward he was smitten; love at (almost) first sight. He’s still stunned that I had the guts to make the first move & I have to admit that I didn’t want to get out of the car then, I really had the fireworks moment.

He promised to take me out for a drink the following day to make up for the disastrous first date. How could I refuse?