Speed Dating at Greenbelt 2006
The Logistics of Love
Signing On...
It's half past one on Saturday, at Greenbelt's Winged Ox bar. The queues for speed dating registration are already snaking out of the door. I feel a mixture of relief and panic; relief that speed dating has survived the vagaries of Greenbelt fashion for another year, panic at the sheer enormity of the task ahead. We sit behind our desks and gaze longingly at the bar.
Queuing is never going to be a popular pursuit, particularly with so much else of interest happening on site. It is a satisfyingly diverse queue however; there is not just a good spread of ages, but also a variety of motivations. Some are coming for a bit of laugh – or so they say – others are convinced that God will find them a partner here. The real losers at this point are the Folk musicians at the other end of the bar; by now they are probably wishing that they had followed Bob Dylan's lead and gone electric.
Speed dating has often been dismissed as the secular world's latest romantic fad. In fact it was invented about 10 years ago by a Los Angeles Rabbi – deeply concerned to ensure that good Jewish boys and girls didn't "marry out". Not for the first time in history, Christendom has followed the lead.
The idea is simple enough – in theory if not execution; rows of men and women of roughly the same age do the verbal equivalent of folk dancing and change partners every three or four minutes for a series of whirlwind mini-conversations. The participants of both sexes record whether they would like to meet each partner again; if both parties express an interest, they receive each other's email addresses several days later. Whether these are followed up is up to the individuals, in the days and weeks to follow. The first three years have yielded a number of weddings – probably several more that we aren't informed about.
The Challenge of Demographics
Any speed dating organisation, Jewish, Christian or secular will agree that the main challenge is demographic. In the younger age ranges there are always too many men, and too few women. But the older people get, there are too many women and not enough men.
We have tried a number of ploys to ensnare an adequate supply of men; the least subtle was simply to buttonhole vaguely eligible looking men on the site - a technique later refined, by delegating this role to a beautiful 20 year old female student. This worked to some extent, although there was some disgruntlement, when the men discovered that she was attached and not actually speed dating. More recently, and much more successfully, we have offered queue-jumping incentives for those bringing along platonic opposite-sex friends to sign up; we suspect some of these "friendships" have been forged over the last few minutes, but keep these thoughts to ourselves, as registration winds up and the Dutch Courage beckons...
The Moment of Truth
After a few hours rest we decamp to main venue – a large tent, with acres of damp grass. Not an ideal first date, but many of the punters have scrubbed up nicely for festival-goers. We shoo out the marquee's previous occupants and begin arranging the lines of people. The manoeuvre feels like a rather more stratified version of the feeding of the 5,000 - sans religious miracle of course, but with plenty of logistical ones.
Nobody likes waiting for a hot date, and there can be tears and minor tantrums from participants at this stage, but this year's crowd are patient and good natured.
After a short prayer, the whistle blows and they are off. Peace reigns for us as 125 conversations begin simultaneously. In total there are a grand total of 1,800 conversations over the following 90 minutes; that's 1,800 concerted blasts of emotional energy, and every ounce of social skills and charm available. Don't let anyone tell you that going speed dating is a soft option.
Finally, people's forms are collected and hopeful punters disperse, many chatting with new acquaintances. For the rest of Greenbelt, we the organisers can relax.
I meet up with Charlie and Claire who met at our first Greenbelt speed date three years ago. Claire had come to Greenbelt convinced that she would meet her future husband at the speed dating event while Charlie had not even heard about speed dating, but was dragged into proceedings under mild protestation. God really does move in mysteriously ways, as they will happily admit.
Over the following week, back at the Christian Connection offices, we check and double-check every result. Handwriting is variable and we dispute every "hanging chad" – these are people's romantic futures on the line, after all. Generally we don't hear anything for months about the outcomes. This year, however, we are pleasantly surprised with the following email which arrived a few days later.
Dear Christian Connection,
Please take me off your dating site as I have met somebody... in the speed dating queue at Greenbelt.
As St Paul would note: "All things work for good..."
Article by Jackie Elton with Ben Cohen. Jackie runs Christian Connection, www.christianconnection.co.uk , the UK’s largest Christian Dating site – as well as www.eventsforchristians.co.uk . Speed dating events are run through the year, including once a year at the Greenbelt Festival, www.greenbelt.org.uk
