Your Sunday sermon: Claridges with a Clergymen

I consider myself a very unjudgemental person. OK, so I hate people who overuse exclamation marks, and people who use the word 'literally' wrongly and in fact the word 'anniversary' (it's only an anniversary once a year, people - you can't have a 'one month anniversary' - it just doesn't make sense). Actually while we're on the subject, I judge boring people, vegetarians, people who refer to their cats as their 'babies', men with girlfriends half their age, goths, emos, most people who use the N29 bus, and the woman who lives upstairs who has screaming rows with her boyfriend at all hours, when she's not playing pumping house music.

But in all other respects I'm deeply unjudgemental. Because, let's be honest, I'm a champagne socialist left-wing media professional and so there are some things I pride myself in being a fan of. Like freedom of speech, equal rights, freedom of religion, feminism - those sorts of things. I'm open-minded. Honest.

So when I was asked out by a chap online not so long ago, I said yes. I was still in the 'trying out lots of dating' phase. And he seemed nice, good looking, definitely funny, wrote a brilliantly engaging email to me. Email banter had been great. But then I asked what he did... "Ah," came his reply "I'll quite understand if this means you don't want to go out with me, but I'm a vicar"...

Oh dear God, I thought. Literally. 

It threw me into a quandary. If I said I didn't want to date him, then would I be someone who judged a man just because of his vocation? Because of his faith? Would that make me some sort of religious HATER? Would God (if He exists, and I'm a lasped Christian, so I still deep-down suspect He might) be narked at me for this sort of attitude? What if He punished me for it by making sure I never had sex again?

The only thing I could do was to go. And my reward for agreeing was an enthusiastic "Excellent. Shall we meet in the bar at Claridges at 7pm?" Well, I do like a man who takes you somewhere impressive. 

I got to the Claridges bar and waited. He wasn't wearing his dog-collar, and was not as good-looking as his photographs suggested, so I didn't quite recognise him at first. But when we settled down with martinis of great strength, I thought to myself - ok, see how this goes. And indeed, conversation was excellent. He was super-smart and very witty. But all the time I was thinking 'It's a relief I don't fancy this man. Because - why didn't I realise this before? - there is no long-term possibility with a vicar. I couldn't be a vicar's wife. Nor would I want to be. Nor, arguably, would anyone allow me to be if a whiff of my saucy reputation got anywhere near the community. But also, there is no short-term possibility with a vicar either. You can't have a onenightstand with a vicar. I don't know where it says that in the Bible. But I bet it does somewhere (probably 'Judges'. Ha). And however great an anecdate it'd be, I don't think I could just sleep with someone to say I've done it with a vicar. Won't lie though - it did cross my mind. 

But I crossed it back out again, because that'd just be the most wrong thing I'd ever done, and eventually I made my excuses and left. Would love to go back to Claridges sometime. And he was nice and interesting, so it wasn't a wasted evening. But maybe know myself a bit better now to recognise that I'm probably simply more sinner than saint. I'll pray for my soul, of course. Just not every time I'm on my knees.