Stay safe on your date

DI Ash Wilson pictured at Worksop Police Station (w120924-8b)

Published on 14/02/2013 14:29

It will have escaped no one’s attention that it is Valentine’s Day today. I can barely get to my desk due to all the bouquets of flowers, chocolates and teddies.

It means that romance will be in the air tonight and over the weekend, and as a result Worksop’s restaurants and bars will be full of doting couples.

But how well do you know your date? This week, as your own personal suit-wearing Cupid, I’d like to offer some tips for safer dating. If you are meeting someone new, whether in person or online, take note of the following advice:

BE MYSTERIOUS. Don’t reveal too much personal information about yourself and don’t tell your new date where you live. Under no circumstances reveal financial information and be wary of requests for money.

BE PATIENT. If you meet someone new on a night out, why not wait to take it further? Don’t go home with them or invite them back to yours. If you do decide to do this, make sure you tell your friends who you are with and where you are going. On a night out, never ditch a friend for a new squeeze.

BE SENSIBLE. Make sure the venues for your early dates are in public places, like restaurants or bars. Make your own way there and your own way home again. Always tell someone you trust about your plans.

BE PERCEPTIVE. If your gut is telling you no, listen to it. Be conscious of anyone who comes on too strong, too quickly. Watch out for those who seem to have troubled lives and beware of people who make inappropriate comments or appear to be aggressive or pushy.

BE DRINK AWARE. While you may choose a tipple to calm your nerves, too much alcohol can impair your judgement. Don’t drink excessively when meeting new people. It takes time to build that trust with someone, plus you will, no doubt, want to remember the date.

I don’t want to sound like an over-protective dad, but I want to make sure the only thing budding love birds suffer from this week is being struck by a cherub’s arrow. Have fun, but stay safe.

Lifestyle

Columnists

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Stay safe on your date

Top stories

Lifestyle

Columnists