Win a meat tray!
You think I’m joking but I’m not. Like I said before, I loves me a competition.
The Meat and Livestock Association (MLA) has launched its Lamb is for Lovers campaign. Here is the latest instalment that follows the travails of Don, the ‘Bachelor’.
The MLA sent me a meat tray to trial for the season finale of the Australian Bachelor (my flatmates and I had a viewing party). I made a lot of grumpy noises at the TV about all the fake eyelashes and fake tan and fake EVERYTHING but I secretly loved it.
I am not entirely convinced of the romantic powers of lamb but I can attest to the bonding power of lamb + trashy TV + wine. I highly recommend it.
If you would like to win a whopping lamb meat tray for either delivery or collection at your nearest butcher, simply tell me about your worst date dining experience. Did the guy use a ninja star to pick his teeth? Did the lady order a mountain of foie gras and Bollinger and then ‘forget’ her wallet? Tell mama all about it and your BBQ guests will thank you.
The guy had asked me out to dinner, brought wine, yay! – then when the bill came told me I had to put in more as he had brought the wine. And then asked me to go home with him.
First date, spied through the camera at his friends pub to see who I was chatting to in the pub courtyard whilst having a cigarette. Then he said because I looked like I was so entertained that he thought best that he should leave. Clearly a misogynist right, are you also a great writer/psycologist?
Oh yeah, well, I had a blind date once and she looked like a ‘pork chop’! No one likes pork chops!
I’m Jewish too, so it was wrong on so many counts. I totally dig lamb though, seriously who’s doesn’t like a bit of lamb chop?
Chop chop, I have to run.
Shane
Taken to swanky dinner by rich divorcee in Cali. Nice meal, great company, all going well until suddenly threw up violently in her car outside my place. I probably should have had the lamb!
When I was 22 I once had a date with who I thought was an art dealer but turns out he was part of Mexican mafia. He told me anything I wanted he would get for me and demanded that he take me bathing suit shopping. As he was driving me home he then kindly offered me a quarter bag of weed! I declined. But being the stupid 20something that I was, I ended up giving him my number (which I had just got connected) and proceeded not to answer the phone for the next two months!!
Oohh, I love this challenge – I have yet to find someone who can outdo this bad date experience… mainly because it just kept going…
It was a blind date and it became (crystal) clear very early into the evening that my date and I were never going to be a couple. This was so obvious that the first thing the cabbie asked me as a leapt into the back seat was: ‘bad date?’ I got home, debriefed to my flatmate complaining that he was odd, spent his spare time one facebook (really, I mean though we are all on there surely there is something else you can claim to do in your spare time)… oh the list went on… The truly amusing part occurred two days later when my flatmate said to me grinning from ear to ear:
‘I know how old your date is…’
I looked at her sideways, ‘huh?’ as I did not know his age and there was no way that she could possibly know.
‘He’s 30.’ She said smugly, still not clearly explaining herself. At this point I was completely baffled.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I saw him on TV last night…’ She replied.
Yep that’s right, my date was on the SBS show ‘Insight’. The episode was titled ‘Tough Love’ and it was about what was acceptable (and not) in regards to disciplining children. Are your warning bells ringing right now? Mine sure were! As she tells it, she had the TV on in the background and as the story unfolded she realised that the reason the person on screen seemed very familiar… Firstly, the show talked about how this guy had studied family counseling with his mother as it was something they had always dreamed about doing together. Secondly, it went on to say that he worked with his parents at their real estate business. Thirdly, they holidayed together… by this point (and of course the name was the same) it clicked to her her that she had heard it all two nights previously from me! So it turns out that he was on the show because his mother hit him until he was 25. (To be fair, watching it online afterward, I felt sad for him.) So, at this point, most people will concede that it doesn’t often occur that your date appears on TV a couple of days after you meet him for the first time on a show about being smacked… But, the story certainly doesn’t end here.
This, of course, was one of those difficult situations where I had to communicate back to the person who arranged the set up that it didn’t go well… And that person I had to break the new to was my grandmother… She was very excited when she told me about this young man (whom she had never met), from a ‘good family’, that she had found for me. Although, I had told her to watch the show, hoping that it would be clear that we were not at all compatible, she was not at all thrown by the potential mummy issues. When I spoke to her to break the news of the disastrous date, including viewing the ‘Insight’ episode, the only part that seemed to evoke a reaction was when I got to the end of my story – where I had paid more for dinner than he had. Where earlier she smiled with indulgent amusement saying that “he is just a little awkward”, my grandmother’s expression suddenly changed into a scowl. His not paying for dinner seemed to be just as unfathomable to my grandmother as my thoughts about allowing yourself to be smacked at 25 years of age. So much so that she was still shaking her head over breakfast the next day, forlornly muttering over her toast ‘I can’t believe he didn’t pay!’ Let me assure you that this was the part that I worried about least… But, it doesn’t end there…
Despite my very polite text to say thank you but I didn’t think we were compatible and that I wished him all the best for the future, he kept texting me to do things with him. Eventually, I had to be quite rude. So the texts stopped. But wait there is more… About two months later, my cousin calls me in a panic:
“Help me, Grandma is trying to set me up with…”
Guy called me after we met at a wedding. Invited me out for Sunday brunch. Nice! I thought. Get in his car (again nice! He picked me up!) & he goes silent & suddenly veers into the parking lot at bunnings en route to what I thought was a brunch trip. We spend the next hour at bunnings where he gets angry looking for a screw for his broken fridge or something. After bunnings we go to a cafe but he doesn’t let me order food as it’s ‘his least favourite cafe’. Odd that he chose to bring me there. Then we go back to his house, he says he’ll cook us eggs. He turns the tv on, puts on a ‘nice’ video for me to watch while he just ‘fixes something’ on his fridge. An hour later I am still watching The Hurt Locker. starving. Confused. I peer into kitchen and request to be taken home. He lives far from public transport otherwise I just would have left. Its 4pm & I’m starving. Relieved to be home I call friends to dissect this weird guy who thought bunnings would be a nice idea for a first date. THEN at 9pm I get a text from him. ‘Fixed it!’
Great, dude, that’s great. Please never call me again.
The end.
I was trying to eke out a living as a busker in inner-city Brisbane; it was touch and go. I didn’t know many people there, and I went out on a date set up by a friend. I was supposed to meet him at a pub in outer suburban Brisbane. I was pretty much broke, but I’d heard such great things about this fellow, I broke into my last $20 to buy a $10 dress at the train station in Fortitude Valley. I kept the other $10 for beer and train fare. Well, I waited and waited — he was over half an hour late. He was already drunk. We chatted for awhile — nothing in the glowing reviews I’d heard about him seemed to be real. He mainly responded to introductory small talk with comedic (to him) burping and farting. It was becoming apparent to me that he was a bit of a lout, and a member of the Royal Order Of Boofheads. He bought me a beer, but then told me it was my shout next, so I had to buy him one. My $10 was dwindling fast. After he drank my round, he tottered off to the men’s room. I waited another half hour (I was young and naive at the time.) It was starting to get kinda late, and I still had to get the train back to the city, so I asked a guy from the cricket team sitting near me to go and see if he was okay in the men’s room — I thought maybe he was having a chunder. The cricket bloke came back — ‘Nobody in there, mate.’ He’d done a runner… or perhaps another lucky lady had taken him home with her, swooned by his drunken manly charms? I’ll never know… he was my Mystery Date…
I didn’t realise its was a date until it was too late. My first year in Sydney, first job, very excited by the whole prospect of making friends so I accepted an invitation from my boss ( a 45 year old, balding divorcee with child) to go to brunch at a trendy place in Surry Hills. Believing as a naive 19 year old this was going to be business related, it wasn’t until post sourdough he started caressing my hand that I had definitely been under a misapprehension. To say I legged it would be an understatement.
Hi kids! Just letting you know that the chap from the agency behind this promotion decided to nominate Lou as being the most unfortunate in love, and subsequently fortunate in lamb, winner of the meat tray. Thank you so much for all your entries. You crack me up!