They stay at their table

all evening. The men take

it in turns to sit next
to each woman and have a
Three minutes to get to very quick conversation.
know the love of your After three minutes a
life bell rings and, even if
you are in mid-sentence,
Finding a partner has it is time for the man to
always been a complicated move to the next table.
process. It is a ritual If you like the person
which has evolved over you have just spoken to,
the centuries, from a man you put a tick in the
taking food to a ‘yes’ box on a scorecard.
prospective partner in If the other person
the Stone Age to young chooses you as well, this
couples having tea is called a ‘match’, and
together in Victorian the organizers will send
times (under the watchful you the other person’s
eye of an unmarried email address a couple of
aunt)to dancing in the days later and they will
club to deafening music be sent yours too.
in the twenty-first
century. ‘Three minutes is enough
time to talk to someone’,
But now busy men and says Adele Testani, who
women who don’t have the runs a speed dating
tine for a slow, gentle company, ‘because you can
courtship have a quicker get an idea of what a
way to find a partner: person is like in that
speed dating, where time and you can
single people have eliminate them if you see
exactly three minutes to immediately that they’re
decide if the person they not your type’.
are talking to could be
Mr or Ms Right. The idea, Britain’s largest ever
which started in the USA, speed dating evening took
involves bringing place this week at the
together people for an Hydro Bar in London, so I
evening of frenzied, decided to go along and
‘quick-fire’ dating. This see what it was about. I
is how it works. pretended to be a single
24-year-old lawyer...
Small tables are placed
in a line and the women
sit down at the one which
has been given in them.
WHEN I ARRIVED at the
Hydro bar, the women who
were wearing fashionable
dresses and smart suits
were giggling nervously
as they put on badges
with a number of them.
‘Maybe my jeans are a bad
idea’, I thought. I
chatted to other people
while we waited. People I
spoke to said they had
doubled the number of
dates they had in a year
with just one night of
speed dating. The men
included a chef, a
banker, a photographer,
an engineer, a management
consultant, and a
novelist. They were just
pleased they could stop
having to try to chat up
strangers in bars: ‘It’s
so hard to meet girls in
London. With speed dating
you meet 20 or 30 single
girls in one night,’ said
one man. ‘You can’t talk
to girls at salsa
classes,’ said another.
Matt, 28, said, ‘After
doing this once I got
several dates. There’s a GLOSSARY 2 Figure out the word based on the
good atmosphere; it’s meaning. Find it in the reading passage.
safe and it’s really
good. It’s like being at
a party with lots of
single women.’
Then it started. I made
eye contact with the girl
next to me so we could
compare our opinions of
the men; we raised our
eyebrows for possibility,
exchange a smile if the
man was good-looking, and
made a grimace if he made
three minutes feel like
three hours.
I thought it was boring
just to ask questions
like ‘What do you do?’ or
‘Where are you from?’ so
I tried to think of more
interesting and
imaginative questions to
ask, like ‘if you could
be an animal, what animal
would you be and why?’
In the end I ticked six
boxes. A couple of days
later, I was told that
four of the men had
ticked me too. Well, four
new dates. Not bad in 66,
minutes.
GLOSSARY 1 Figure out the meaning
based on the context
 Prospective partner
 Courtship
 Mr and Ms Right
 Quick—fire
 A scorecard
 A match
 Not your type
 .... a small piece of metal, plastic,
or cloth with words on a design on it
 .... an expression on your face that
shows you are in pain
 .... laugh in a silly way because you
are amused or nervous
 .... move the line of hair above your
eye upwards
 .... talk to somebody in a friendly
way because you are attracted to
them
 .... talk in a friendly, informal
way