Party- the low down.

I'm sure you're all dying to hear about how the party went and I only wish I was able to tell you with any degree of certainty.

Unfortunately my funny story telling abilities are hampered somewhat by just how trashed I got, but I'm pretty sure a good time was had by all (especially me).

These are my top funny party moments (though some are funnier in hindsight and some are more cringe worthy)

1) Steve in silver boots

Having size 6 feet is often problematic for Steve. In most situations it's because shops just don't start their men's ranges from such a tiny size. At parties- it's because women all insist on him wearing their shoes. At one stage I remember Steve staggering into my bedroom wearing brown knee high furry boots and the next thing I know, he's wearing some metallic silver pointy knee highs with silver heels. He always pretends he hates it, but I recall him posing for some dubious pictures. Keep an eye on face book for these.

2) Pseudo lessie behaviour

Do you think perhaps it might have been a boy who suggested it was a good idea for all us girls to compare the colours of our nipples whilst kissing and being photographed? Hmmmmmm, I would have thought so. It's a good job we were sober enough to tut and cast our eyes to heaven and pull our tops up to our chins shaking our heads disapprovingly. Yes, this IS what happened. As Lindsey said, let's hope none of us ever become famous, put it this way, we won't be applying for any reality TV shows too smartish. Although we'd be bloody good in them.

3) Lindsey and the album

I found Lindsey on her bed with a tortured looking little brother by her side. She was thumbing through old albums talking in detail about every last shot and explaining EXACTLY how she felt about them. Her little brother was trying so hard to make appropriate comments and not look ridiculously bored. She then told him she'd seen him with an erection- embarrassing sister, eat your heart out.

4) Fireworks

Despite being a very budding and talented illustrator, our confidence was not 100% invested in Matt Ox's ability to create a seamless and safe fireworks display. In fact, at 11pm, when we all gathered on the pavement and peered up at the roof terrace the rockets which peeked over the top reminded me of sniper's guns and I was all too aware that there was a VERY good chance that we could well be in the line of fire. Thankfully it was all fine, and Matt got to blow up some things which kept him happy. Lots of the fireworks shot over into trees so we couldn't see them from the pavement, but they made very loud bangs, and let's face it, that's all that really matters.

5) The copper

Ok, so inviting a copper to a house party isn’t the first thing that springs to mind, but he's a very good old friend of mine and luckily he was easy to pick out with his short back and sides and stripy shirt. Whilst he tried very hard to be cool about the debauchery others didn't do quite as good a job reciprocating. In fact at any one time I think there was a good 2 metre gap around him and I could sense lots of paranoia and gossiping. Thankfully he left at midnight before it all got very out of hand.

6) The lost voice

Where ever Laura goes, men fall in love with her and my party was, of course, no exception. By the end of the night, she'd done so much chattering, smoking and social butterflying, she came bursting into my room, flung herself on the bed and tried to talk and only high pitched squeals and screeching came out. We promptly administered more booze and fags and she was fine.

7) The Phantom smearer

We've all seen it in public loos, but yes, it was on show in the downstairs bathroom. Someone had taken it upon themselves to smear poo on the wall next to the toilet. When I told Steve he said to me that we should be pleased that there were no white hand towels in the bathroom- needless to say at a recent party he'd attended someone had taken it upon themselves to wipe their bottom on the hand towel and leave behind all kinds of evidence. Apparently we got away lightly. It didn't feel like it yesterday morning with a stinking hangover and a jay cloth trying not to gag.

8) Sam's tights

Sam managed to get dishevelled very rapidly throughout the party and at one point looked very much like her and her tights had had a very nasty encounter with a bramble bush. Perhaps it was just that Gavin couldn't contain himself, but at the end of the evening, she rather flamboyantly declared they were coming off and they did- with legs flailing and a' kimbo. Marvellous.

I'm sure there was much more, but I'll need to see some pictures first to jog my memory.

I lost a £25 Marks and Spencer's voucher, some green beads, some shoes and all of my weed. Very annoying. Thankfully Sam had all but one of these things. Hurrah! Steve managed to misplace £50, which wasn't so helpfully returned. What a wally.

A massive thanks in particular to all the Brighton contingent who made a huge effort to come all the way from the seaside, it meant so much to me....and I can't believe you all went home at 5am....nutters! To Jonathan- I'm so gutted you missed out on the fun, you would have had a blast- next time.

Tube games

On the occasional days where Steve and I journey into work together on the Northern Line (like this morning) I like to play one of several little games to amuse myself during the 5 stop ride.

When we get on the tube, we’re normally in a morning fuzzy headed mood, and neither of us are particularly animated. In fact, you’d be hard pushed to even place us as a couple given the lack of communication. Steve will sit and whizz through his blackberry, saving up a back log of messages to send when he hits ground level. I’ll listen to some inappropriate rap music and feel young again for 10 minutes and we happily ignore each other. This is all well and good and none of our commuting compadres have any clue that we’re a couple.

The fun bit comes when it’s time for either Steve or I to get off. What we have honed to a fine art is the practice of the dramatic goodbye kiss. This comes out of the blue, and is delivered without any chat, just a lunge coupled with a full blown smacker on the lips and then…gone.

The look of surprise on people’s faces is priceless as they try and work out whether I’ve just been assaulted and they should be chasing after Steve, or whether they’ve witnessed love at first sight. Responses have ranged from ‘Do you know him?’, to jaws hitting the floor and general disgust at such an overt PDA.

The other extremely childish thing I enjoy doing is the copy game. This only really works when we end up in seats directly opposite each other and involves- you guessed it- me copying everything Steve does. Try it. I guarantee within a couple of minutes you’ll both be in hysterics crying with laughter, either that or one of you will have a black eye (this was the inevitable outcome when I used to play the copy game with my big brother- and on one occasion a nose bleed). It’s brilliant as fellow tube passengers can’t help but cotton on and have a giggle as well.

Lets face it, everyone with a sibling played the copy game at some point in their lives, so why not at 29 years old, during rush hour?

How about we all try doing it with a stranger on our next public transport journey and collate all of the reactions?*

*the author of this blog is not liable in any way shape or form for any grievous bodily harm inflicted as a result of the copy game, play at your own risk.

The girly get-together

Last night we had a little dinner party where we had the following:

X 1 very drunk guest who passed out promptly after dinner and proceeded to sleep for 12 hours
X2 very opinionated guests who shouted at the drunken guest and talked over each other
X1 very poorly wheezing asthmatic but diplomatic guest with rosy cheeks
X1 slightly perplexed but very sleek and skinny guest

‘Guest’ is somewhat of a misnomer as 3 of the guests were in fact inmates. And the drunk guest was in fact drunk from the second she staggered in the front door with a man in tow (girly dinner party no-no). The man was soon despatched and we got down to the serious business of gobbling chinese and slurping wine.

I have to say that if any man had been a fly on the wall last night, or worst still had the misfortune to be a guest they would have been shocked to their very core. 5 normally fairly well behaved ladies when thrown together to discuss a contentious topic quickly became a shrieking, voice raised, me-me-me-ish cacophony each trying to get their VERY important point heard first. And of course there were no shortage of extremely well thought through opinions, it’s just that they were delivered somewhat haphazardly.

At one point Lindsey pleaded with us:

“Please can we all try and speak one at a time?”

Tricky. We did try, but of course it wasn’t possible and within seconds we were all screeching again with Lindsey resting her head in her hands.

And even when the victim of our well rounded advice finally passed out (or at least feigned passing out to escape) we turned our attentions to other important topics such as a health concern of one of the boyfriends- we helpfully diagnosed a likely inner eat infection and suggested treatment of a simple course of anti-biotics, a ‘how to’ guide for some of the most gruesome bedroom antics helpfully provided by Samantha which almost provoked a scene from ‘In bed with Madonna’ and also an in-depth examination of the nations sexual habits (based purely upon ours so extremely well rounded).

We were like a pack of Tasmanian devils, whizzing and whirling at dizzying speed between topics polishing them off and then swiftly onwards towards our next prey. When I went to bed I was utterly exhausted. We all need at least a fortnight to recover before another similar event, if nothing else but to hone the skills Sam taught us.

Gavin- you deviant.

Chez Bruce- What's in my tummy

So then- birthday dinner at Chez Bruce last night was great. We sat right next to the cheese board and were treated to pungent cheesy whiffs every time a waiter wafted past....yummy.

This is what I consumed-

Aperitifs

X1 bottle of house champagne (shared of course)

To start

Rare roast beef, and some kind of mushroomy sauce with rocket and parmesan- extremely yummy and tender

For main

Sea bream with scallops, shrimp and teeny tiny gnocchi- very fishy indeedy

Accompanied by ½ bottle of extremely yummy Sancerre

For pudding

Warm chocolate fondant pudding with milk and honeycomb icecream- GOD DAMN!

Night cap

½ bottle of vintage port *feeling queesy now*

Morning

Horrendous hangover. Moderate humiliation as remembered I got home last night very drunk, had to get some fresh air, proceeded to sit in the garden on the funky plastic sofa chair (which must have suffered from torturous weathering and become very brittle) which promptly shattered into thousands of little pieces under the weight of my ginormous bottom. Was left on wet floor in glam silk dress with muddy bottom and dented pride surrounded by shards of white plastic. Thankfully not impaled.

Arrived in work to find massive, huge, wonderful bunch of flowers from amazing friend Dave complete with wildly inappropriate card about flossing my privates. Cheered me right up.

Have to leave work at 1pm to go to 24 club for an afternoon of champagne quaffing with new company for 'bonding' purposes.

May vomit if faced with prospect of more drinking.

Rock and roll.

Fun- you make me sick.

My boss, soon to be ex-boss, seems to have a crippling disease, an extreme aversion to any type of fun. She is the kind of person who would sit through a seminar all day and then leave at the prospect of mingling and drinking at the bar afterwards. And this isn't down to shyness as the women is a ball breaking uber bitch, basically.

She just can't stand to be in a situation where she might let her guard down, or have to make small talk, or actually laugh, smile and relax.

Today is my leaving 'do' at work. 'Do' as it's just at Abacus, the meatmarket bar in the city, full of smarmy city boys in suits with bags of money, but no souls, and with regular shipments of Essex girls who get dolled up after their shifts in New Look and come into the City to try and snare one of the aforementioned rich-but-lacking-in-soul men. Usually I leave them to it, they are welcome to each other, but today, we're venturing into their world for 'happy hour'.

Perhaps it was the word 'happy' that struck fear into my bosses heart, but she has suddenly been struck down with a terrible case of 'food poisening' which is funny considering

a) She's stick thin, because she doesn't eat after 6pm. That means no dinner, ever.
b) She's a vegan. Tell me, which variety of undercooked vegetable causes such a condition? An undercooked turnip perhaps.

So basically, her aversion to fun has meant she's faking an illness. She said she was 'thinking' of giving us her credit card so we could go out and buy champagne. 'Thinking' not doing. We won't see the credit card, or her.

Now, don't get me wrong. The evening would be terrible if she were to turn up. Why? Because she doesn't get on with anyone and my ex-boss, who was fired before Christmas is turning up. I can only hint at how bad this situation got, but lets just say, the police are involved, as are some mild erm , threats to personal safety. I think it would have been quite funny to see them both scratching each other's hair out and screaming at each other, but i'll settle for necking cocktails, and dancing badly.

I hope I never get to an age where I can't see the point of having fun, laughing and letting my hair down. Last week in Leeds one of the bars we went to (the Living Rooms)was full of people all over 40. We weren't sure if we'd walked into a birthday party by mistake, or whether this was just a gathering of older people who wanted to get out and have fun. Either way, we left feeling uncomfortable, just as we would have done if we'd have walked into a bar full of 16 year olds. Funny that 'comfort' in being out relies not only on your venue, the music, lighting, company of your friends, but also so much on whether or not you class your fellow revellers as 'like' you. But isn't that dull. Does that mean I'm only relaxed when I'm in a bar with lots of outgoing bubbly,middle class late 20's professionals, with a penchant for cheesy music, and expensive tastes. And when I describe that, I conjour up images of really awful people. Strange.

Last night I had the most revolting dream ever. I dreamt that Steve and I were eating raw chicken breasts coated in some kind of hallucinogenic drug...he munched his down and said it was tasty but I remember chewing on the rubbery flesh and woke up feeling quite sick.

In other news, I've packed my bags with the following essential items for holiday:

1) Bikinis- x6
2) fins, mask, logbook and diving computer x 1 each
3) Flipflops- x2 one gold, one silver.
4) Summery dress- x3
5) Linen trousers- x 1
6) Vest tops- x 6
7) T-shirts x 1
8) Long sleeve top- x1
9) Bras and knickers x10 (don't know why as never wear either on sunny hols)
10)Books, sunglasses, cosmetics, sun cream and other products.

Pretty good capsule packing that ey?! Steve on the other hand packed the following:

1) Socks. SOCKS. x 5 pairs.
2) Long sleeved t-shirts- x3
3) Jumpers- x 2
4) T-shirts by Diesel- x 15
5) Shorts/boardies- x10
6) Pants x 10.
7) Flip flops.

31 degrees and sunny every day and the boy packs socks. He's not taking trainers so I'm scared he might wear them with the flip flops. Thank goodness the yanks are there, and are bound to be dressed much more distastefully than us.