*moderately surprising

[warning - pretty boring story]

I'd arranged to meet this girl from the internet dating website that I'm on, at the TATE modern (like you do).
We'd just walked in and were about to go up and look at the art, when I saw loads of people milling around at the bottom of the turbine hall, so I said that we should go down and have a look at what was going on.

When we got down there it was quite strange. What had originally looked like loads of people just sitting down and taking in the scenery with others walking around, was now evident that everyone (apart from me and this girl and a few others) was a part of this performance art thing. There was a group of about 50 people all walking around, in roughly the same direction, then someone would walk in a different direction and the whole 'flock' would start following that particular person. Much like a flock of birds would. All the time whilst this was going on the people were humming in an eery way.

We started to walk round a bit more, and then I was aware in my periphery vision, that this guy walking briskly and purposefully towards me and the girl I was with. As i turned to look at him, I was surprised to see that it was someone that I've met on a couple of occasions (we don't know each other well, but I've spoken to him a few times, and he knows some friends of mine).

As he walked up; and before I had a chance to say hello, how are you? etc - he immediately launched into conversation saying that he was a bit nervous because he had an exam for a course that his work had sponsored him on, and he was getting really nervous about it and didn't know how to cope with the pressure. Whilst he was explaining this to us, all of the people started circling us and humming. This went on for a few seconds until I finally realised that this guy didn't recognise me and that he was part of this performance art thing. I eventually managed to get a word in and said 'Do you not recognise me?' and he stopped then looked at me with an extremely puzzled expression on his face - I then went on to explain that I was such and such's friends, and had spoken to him before - after a while he recognised me and looked extremely awkward.

I said that it was interesting and what was the idea behind it , but he didn't want to say too much about it. After a while he said 'well, I better go now' and walked off. I felt terrible about it really - I shouldn't have said anything because he was pretty impressive - the stream of consciousness thing that he was doing. It was just a crazy experience because I thought he'd recognised me and that's why he was walking up to me.

I suppose the moral of the story is that I'm a very forgettable person and I went on an internet date.