T hat Saturday morning began chaotically. Naomi Clark had been out running and fallen over, miles from home. She limped back and arrived, flustered and sweaty, just in time to log on to Zoom for her blind date.
She was ravenous, but in the rush had run out of time to order the takeaway Vietnamese summer rolls she had planned to eat in front of this stranger. She clicked open the call and there was Deej Phillips, her date, beaming back at her. He held up the meal he was about to tuck into, and guess what? He had gone for the same – summer rolls.
“I think we’re soulmates!” Naomi said, laughing. A nervous pause. “Is it too soon to say?” she continued.
Deej: “It was quite forward.” This may seem a strange way to go on a date, until you learn that this was April 2020, a time when everything was happening via a screen. Plus, this wasn’t just a regular blind date, but a Guardian Blind date – and every awkward moment was being recorded for a special edition of the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast.
Naomi was in her flat in east London and Deej was 4,500 miles away, holed up in a hotel in Nepal, where he’d been making a documentary. The two of them, locked down so far from each other, gazed at each other’s pixelated faces on computer screens. In Kathmandu, a heavy thunderstorm was brewing and soon the rain was pelting on the roof of Deej’s hotel – a converted former palace, where he was now the sole resident, staying in the honeymoon suite.
“You’re so.
