First Date Ideas For Over 60s In Ireland

There is a particular difficulty with a first date in this country, and it is not nerves. It is that you will very likely be seen. Pick the wrong spot and you are two tables away from somebody who knows your sister, and the whole parish has it by the weekend. That is not a reason to stay in. It just means the choice of venue is doing more work here than it would elsewhere.

The other thing worth remembering is how little a first date has to achieve. You are not being assessed. You are finding out whether you would like a second one, which is a far smaller question. So: somewhere you can hear each other, somewhere neither of you has to cross two counties for, and something that ends by itself so nobody has to invent a reason to go. Six that do the job.

1. Dinner

The default, and there is nothing wrong with the default. What decides whether it works is the room, not the menu. A hard-floored place with the music up will have the pair of you nodding along to sentences you never caught, which is a long two hours. Ring ahead, ask for a quiet table, go early. Think about the journey as well, because somewhere handy for you may be an hour of back roads for them. And if you would rather not commit a whole evening to a stranger, lunch does the same job and finishes itself.

2. Country Walk

The best of the six, if the weather holds. You are side by side rather than staring across a table, and when the talk runs dry there is something to look at, which takes the pressure off entirely. It needn't be a proper hike. A looped walk, a greenway, a forest park or the strand will all do. irishtrails.ie lists over nine hundred waymarked trails and the looped ones are exactly the right size. Agree the distance beforehand so nobody is suffering quietly in the wrong shoes, and bring a coat you do not mind being seen in, because you know well what can happen by three o'clock.

3. City Bus Tour

Underrated, and it fixes the thing people actually dread, which is the silence. On a tour the conversation is handed to you through the window and you needn't produce a word of it yourself. It is grand if one of you is up from the country for the day, and better than you would think between two Dubliners who have never once done it. The sitting is done for you and it ends when it ends. If you are 66 or over, remember the free travel gets you there and back for nothing.

4. Cinema

People say the pictures are no good for a first date because you cannot talk. They have it backwards. The film is not the date. The film is what gives you something to talk about over coffee afterwards, so neither of you has to arrive with material. In Dublin there are two that suit us particularly: the Light House in Smithfield runs Silver Screen for the over 65s every Friday at noon, seven euro with a cup of tea beforehand, and the IFI in Temple Bar runs Wild Strawberries monthly for the over 55s. Outside Dublin, ring your local and ask what they do midweek.

5. Boating

Half an hour in a rowing boat and the ice is gone, for one simple reason: neither of you will have the first clue what you are doing. It is very hard to stay stiff and formal with somebody while you are going round in a circle and laughing at the state of it. The length is right too, long enough to get talking properly and short enough that you can part at the jetty with no harm done if it is not going anywhere. One of you will get wet. It has never spoiled anything.

6. Garden Centre

Here is the one people laugh at and then use. A big garden centre gives you two easy hours with the structure built in: plenty to look at, plenty to point at, a café in the middle of it, and no obligation to perform. Johnstown in Kildare, Arboretum in Carlow or Kilquade, Ardcarne in Roscommon, or whatever the good one near you is. Free parking, no drink involved, daylight, and easy to leave. For a first meeting it is a great deal kinder on the nerves than the pub, and nobody will think it the least bit odd.

And if you cannot settle on anything, a coffee is not a cop-out. Forty minutes, cheap, and if it goes well you can always go for the walk afterwards.

Look who else just joined