Susie Lau is eavesdropping this Valentine’s Day

Guilty as charged. I’m an avid date voyeur.

It’s not as creepy as it reads. We all have surreptitiously done it at some point. You’ll be in a restaurant or a bar, either alone or waiting for a friend like a social sponge, soaking up what’s going on around you (even more so post pandemic when merely eating out feels like an ‘experience’) and you can’t help but clock the couples in the room.

I blame my weird ability to go into multi-channel hearing where I’m picking up 10 threads of conversation at once. When I was a waitress at uni, you had to read the room and gauge one table’s wavelengths versus another. When a couple are in the midst of a simmering argument, the real way to smooth over the tension is to ask, ‘Would you like more chilli sauce with that?’

Obviously as per the persistently popular Channel 4 show that is now into its 18th season, it’s the first date scenario that holds the most intrigue. Is there a lengthy discussion over whether one likes anchovies or not that determines life partner potential? Can you audibly hear the crackle of bread breaking during an awkward silence? How loud is that shared laugh? Can you attach meaning to the creases of a guy’s shirt to decipher how much he cares about this date with a girl who’s clearly made more effort? In the bathroom, are they applying make-up carefully and doing the breath-on-the-hand test? By the by, to all my loved ones with whom I dine/drink, I’ve totally been present with you, even if I’ve taken note of what Byredo perfume is wafting over from the table next to us.

I know I’m not alone in this habitual absorption of coupling encounters. While on a date with The Man Who Can Only Talk About Himself, who was quite intent on the whole restaurant hearing his LinkedIn credentials, I escaped to the toilet for a five-minute respite and a woman very helpfully said, ‘You want to get out, don’t you?’ Thanks, sistah. Shout out to all the semi-formalised sisterhood/brotherhood/theyhood planned escape routes when a date is deteriorating.