A hellova weekend!

There’s a pattern developing in my life and it goes something like this…..Ali always feeling shocking on a Monday morning. Ok, so it’s fairly obvious, but I would have thought at the ‘not-so’ tender age of almost 30, I would feel rested and recuperated after my weekends, not like I’ve been dragged through every hedge in Hampton Court maze backwards. This time however, it was worth it, ohhh yes it was.

Friday night started early thanks to some kid on work experience taking out the power supply to the entire of East London, well, Hoxton and Shoreditch at the very least. Workers spilled out on to the streets in what can only be described as a carnival atmosphere and the pub tills were ringing (or not as they weren’t working) but the empty ice cream tubs were filling up with change and the numerically challenged bar maids were working hard at their mental arithmetic. At one stage I got 3 pints, a cider and a Pimms for just over £7. Thank the lord for ditzy barmaids.

Somewhere along the line, I realised that the promise of a heavy Friday evening loomed in the distance and my sensible streak kicked in, so I jumped on a train to Brighton where thankfully Anita’s cleaner let me in and I started my packing with a booze fuelled-vengeance. 3 bin liners of clothes to throw away later I realised I was running late for the pub so hastily got changed into one of the few things which hadn’t been thrown away and headed to the Crescent to meet Dave, Laura, Sam and a fleeting visit from Vic. As you’d expect with me and Sam around, our thoughts soon turned to our stomachs and we headed to the Thai Orchid on Preston Street for some dinner.

After that we headed over to Pinchos People a fairly innocuous looking tapas bar with a lovely secret…..its cocktails. By this stage, we were down to 3 and Dave sat looking somewhat bemused with his rather small and camp looking ‘challenging’ Manhattan cocktail whilst Sam waxed lyrical about flavours, and subtlety, and camomile foam, and I checked out the barmen and wondered, if single, whether I might fancy any of them. In the end, intricate facial hair put me off. It was wonderful and we whiled away several hours talking rubbish and drinking lovely drinks on a comfy leather sofa. Actually, the reality was that Sam and Dave snuggled up on the leather sofa and I sat on the hard trendy looking chair, but believe you me, I was in NO position to interject in the ongoing love-in between these two.

The night continued in an almost inevitable demise into drunken, incoherent rambling on Dave’s sofa, and when the sun came up and was showing no signs of going away, we realised it was high time we called it a night…day….whatever. My fondest memories of that evening…..Dave’s guitar- pure genius, and also, Sam and Dave telling each other how much they admired each other…..seriously cute.

Saturday morning was spent in a fuggy, muggy haze of blurriness and hungoverness. I managed against the odds to get the packing licked in a couple of hours and when I realised that Saturday night was a right-off (Brightonians….no stamina!) I jumped on the fast train to Clapham for a sedate night in The Goat. Ahem. A bottle of wine later I was steaming, and realised I’d overstepped the mark when I had spent over 30mins not with my boyfriend, but being entertained by a group of 5 scally blokes from Newcastle showing me ‘magic’. Being a girl, I love a bit of magic, and some of the tricks, including the old ‘20p in the becks bottle’ were simply awe inspiring. The fog lifted during the ‘mind reading’ trick, when I was tempted away from the pack with a particularly cheeky chappy who told me to whisper the same of a ‘secret famous person’ in his ear- which his friend would magically guess and took the opportunity to have a grope of my arse. Cue, Ali centre stage, exit right. Pronto.

Having returned to the relative ‘safety’ of my pack of drunken footie players (euuch) I once again unwittingly found myself in the middle of a most unsavoury discussion with a drunken centre back who was telling me how awfully untrusting his girlfriend was and how she controlled his life. At one point he told me that Steve was casting us angry glares and I beckoned him over to demonstrate to him how unthreatening this conversation was….at the exact point he arrived, this bloke says to him ‘how much would it cost to take your girlfriend home for the night’. Oh god….potential fight! Thankfully not as it turned out, it was an entirely innocent question, meant purely as the bloke in question wanted me to ‘talk to his girlfriend to sort her out’. I’m sure that would have gone down brilliantly and not been perceived as ATALL arseholish. Steve thankfully reacted in a grownup fashion and turned his back on us, at which point this bloke (no wonder his poor girlfriend has the trust issues) said something along the lines of ‘There are lots of reasons why I’d like to take you home, and if your boyfriend knew about them, he wouldn’t be best pleased’. Yuck. This would NEVER happen in Brighton….would it?

I pulled a face and decided to stick firmly to Steve’s side all night, which is tough when you’re really drunk and the room is spinning.

Yesterday, thank god, a chilled day in the pub followed by a home made thai red curry and watching, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ which made me laugh and cry and is therefore brilliant.

And so we face another week my friends….roll on next weekend.