Ode to albatrosses

I met a guy. Six three-ish, blonde, gorgeous blue eyes. Casually devastating.

We put him on camera. He looked into the lens, gave it a smouldering look, and told it solemnly, “I love you.” To a camera. When you played the film back though it suddenly wasn’t an inanimate object he was speaking to, it was you. You felt like it was real, you felt like all he wanted to do was rip your clothes off and show you just how much he loved you.

That sums him up. He’s attractive in the classically perfect way. When you separate each feature off they’re good, but when combined it’s magnetic. Basically he’s just sexy as hell. But his appearance, while gorgeous, has absolutely nothing on his personality. He’s a man who’s turned charming women into a true art form. The guy does lines, looks, and even the whole knight in shining armour thing to the many women who fall at his feet and happily turn themselves into distressed damsels for his attention.

But it’s to the camera. Every woman is that lens- inanimate. He wants us, he thrives on our attention, and he needs us. He’s a guy who needs women. As in the plural sense rather than singular. He knows what it takes and he does it, but he never does it because he feels like it’s the right thing to do, it’s just there as a ploy to get us. He’ll tell you he loves you, and the only response can be, “Oh yeah? Like hell you do.” He loves every woman he wants to sleep with, but that won’t stop him leaving the next morning, or later on that night.

And I want him. I want him because I already know all that stuff, he doesn’t hide it, but I want him because I’m still thinking, “what if it’s different with me? What if this time it isn’t the lens he’s speaking to, it’s the person behind the camera?” I’m thinking that somehow I can reform him; somehow he might not break my heart.

It’s stupid. It means that I’ll be just another female in a very long line. And that, inevitably, means that of course I won’t reform him, others couldn’t, I’m not going to bring any new ideas to the project. So I played it safe. I flirted, I let him play the knight in shining armour and seducer all at once, and I thanked him when he showered me with compliments. I even managed not to laugh when he did the whole “I’m undressing you with my eyes,” look while drawing out “Good evening” for approximately thirty seconds longer than is really required.

I want him. I think it might even be worth it simply for the sex- god knows he’s had enough practice to make it one hell of a ride. But I’m not going to pursue it. I’ll meet up with the safe guy. The guy who won’t fuck with me. The guy I sat with and lost three hours with in a pub in which it’s hard to make three minutes pass quickly. The guy I went out of my way to make arrangements with after flirting with the wannabe-Casanova and then leaving him standing.

I guess I was cruel. He stuck around for me. He made a fairly spectacular effort. But while I’m sitting here thinking, “at least he liked me more than the other girls who were trying to win him,” I’m also thinking that in truth he probably didn’t. I’m just another girl, so yeah he definitely tried, but he’s tried for so many others, there isn’t anything that makes me special. He’s too practiced, too sure. So yes, I was a little cruel, but if I hadn’t been then I would have slept with him.

It’s nice to think that after that I’d have gone to work the next day and seen him leave without any regret. It’s nicer to think that he would have wanted more and that it would have been longer than one night. But nice isn’t real. He wouldn’t have left a number, and I would have been miserable, pathetic, and worse: used.

But still he’s the one with longevity, if only in my memory. I may not have left with him, but the one I did leave with didn’t come home with me. One was nice, but the other was electric. I’ll see nice on Friday, but it’s electric who’s been giving me such vivid dreams.

Labels: Coquetry, Pleasure

Apparently men with really big penises can never get fully hard. This is due to the fact that they are so big and heavy that they don’t have enough blood spare to maintain a full erection. I’m not going to get pornographic with you; I just felt that this information seemed interesting because it explained a few things.

Unfortunately, finding out this particular piece of valuable information has been about as close to sex as I have come lately. Or not come as the case may be. Being single full time is occasionally rewarding, and generally better for me than the boring coupled-up counterpart version of me, but it is a slight strain.

Looking for love is about as rewarding as looking for your keys when you’re late leaving the house. There’s just no way you’ll find them and still be on time; you might as well just give up. Looking for sex in a drought is similar. When you swear yourself off it you find yourself a magnet for attractive, nice men. When you need it all you can find are complete shits and stalker-freaks.

My love life is boring. I’ve got a Best Friend [of the ex] thing which, whether I like it or not, I can’t touch, and a charming, attractive bartender with a girl friend and far too much emotional baggage. Oh yeah, and in the spirit of repeating mistakes over and over and over, the ex (who from this point forward shall be known as The Numpty) wants to know if I’ll be back home [and able to have sex with him] at Christmas.

Casual sex, even with an ex, is fine, brilliant even, it’s just that when you’re planning to meet up in three months time and shift plans and everything, it starts to become less casual and more planned. Planned is less good. Planned means that you’re thinking ahead, you’re committing to a date, time, and practice. Commitment, to anyone, and especially the Numpty, is not good.

I’m in limbo. As soon as I go to uni I’m going to be over-run with people and wishing I was back here stuck in limbo again because it was easier. But I don’t leave until next Sunday so I guess I’ll confront that when I get to it. Right now I want to complain.

But, as irritated with limbo as I am, I’m also slightly relieved. I can listen to Counting Crows- Accidentally in Love again. I haven’t been able to listen to it since April because when you realise how much you’ve lost, that song just sounds so smug and well, irritating. That, my darlings, is major progress. Music is the biggest outlet for my emotions. There is absolutely no doubt about it, you can tell what mood and state of mind I’m in simply by which playlist I’m listening to on my mp3 player.

Single life is boring. It’s incredibly interesting, embarrassing, and eventful at the same time, but eighty percent of the time it’s boring. You don’t have consistent sex, someone to phone when you’re bored, or someone to cuddle up to and comfort you when you feel down. If it isn’t by choice then it’s the most miserable state of being that it is possible for you to be in. But once you choose it, once you realise that real love and happiness is impossible to find properly when you’re stuck in a bad relationship, you start to appreciate the boredom.

It’s like stars in a night sky. Most of the sky is black, empty, dark and dull. It’s depressing, soulless. But without the black you don’t notice the stars. The emptiness emphasises the fact that there are stars. You need the blackness to find them. It helps your search.

I loved the Numpty, and right now I simply can’t abide the celibacy. But I understand the need and I accept it as my due. Being with someone is comfortable. It’s easy, and it’s rewarding. But it’s lazy. I need to find the stars, and I need to be bored and frustrated otherwise I won’t look; I’ll sit at home with the boyfriend who isn’t really, but is just enough to fill the need. I need to be single because that way I might learn how to search.

* * * * *

Kudos goes to blogger for working out how to put labels onto posts. After opening a wordpress account months ago, the lack of labels has been the only drawback to blogger weblogs. Now, due to the new beta version, I am an extremely happy bunny.

Labels: Courting, Flying, Pleasure

I want what every girl wants. I want to be Cinderella. I want to fall deeply in love with prince Charming, and I want him to want me so bad it hurts. It’s the fairytale isn’t it? Charming, attractive, rich, popular, and the idea that he could love you back… it’s so unbelievably seductive.

But why do we want that? Cinderella, yeah brilliant, you get the guy, you get the castle, and you get the happily ever after. Hey, you might even get a nice warm fuzzy feeling that the guy chose you. Like, wow, you’re so special.

The hardcore among you will already know all about my Cinderella complex. Favourite Disney film, fairytale, and all round heroin. When I was eight. When I got older I started to think that I wasn’t quite going to fulfil my goal. I still wanted to so badly, but reality has this way of sort of letting you know when things aren’t quite going to happen.

Thing is, when I look at it now, it seems silly. Why wait for a guy who’s so wonderful to pick you? Did feminism never happen? Why did the suffragettes bother with their hunger strikes? Women may as well have kept their bras and just got on with burning the turkey they were cooking for their husbands and oodles of children. We’re stuck in the dark ages. We go out, have jobs, act like we’re big and hard and totally together, then hit thirty, nab a guy, and wing it as a housewife for the rest of our lives.

And that’s wonderful. We don’t work; we just do what Mother Nature intended: become walking vagina’s that cook, clean, and have the dinner sharp at six o clock when you come in from work. Yeah, there are exceptions. A lot of people can’t afford to do that, and it’s far less expected than before the suffragettes and feminists had their say. But there’s still this overwhelming thing going on with gold diggers and men who expect women to just be machines to do their laundry and look after the kids.

Gold diggers. God. Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking for a rich husband. I don’t want one who does fuck all and lives off the dole. People who work and still don’t earn that much are fine too, I just don’t want someone who doesn’t pull their weight. If they’re rich and do fuck all then hey, they’re out too. Leeches aren’t my thing; whether it’s emotional or financial, I don’t care.

I just don’t want to be Cinderella any more. Falling in love with the most perfect guy is great, but he’s gotta work for me too. I won’t be walked over, and I won’t be downtrodden; it isn’t my thing. I’ve had enough of pining after men, and I’ve more than had enough of finding that whatever I do, I’m just not enough. How can you be more than they need, and so much more than they ask, and still not be enough? It’s simple, you aren’t what they want.

And I need to be wanted. It’s the one part of the fairytale I’ll keep. I need to be wanted more than I want them. I need to be chased, and I need it to not be one of those things where the man chases and once he’s got, sort of thinks, well, hey, this was nice but where’s the chase gone? I need to be chased, and when they get me they need to feel that I’m more than I ever expected.

I guess right now I need too much. But that’s okay too. A while ago the idea of being single was an idea I did not wish to court. Why would I? I was in love with a boy who made me happy on so many different levels, and I was comfortable in the first relationship I’d ever had with anyone that hadn’t been fucked up in some way. And we’re still good. But the relationship part of it faded.

Being single isn’t so hard. It hurt at first; I guess at first it sort of killed me. But after adjusting it’s kind of fun. Even the oompa loompas. Right now it isn’t time for happily ever after; somehow I doubt that even exists for most people. And needing too much isn’t too bad when I’ll settle for less as long as I still enjoy myself and it doesn’t hurt me. But my forever guy won’t be prince Charming; he’ll be more than that. He’ll be a modern, better adjusted, and all round more fantastic prince, and he’ll not only want me, he’ll fight to get me. So needing too much won’t be a problem, because he’ll give that. And then, though it won’t be happily ever after, it’ll be happy.

Labels: A field of poppies, Flying

Without the pomp and without the fanfare,
I say goodbye with only a kiss.
Without the cries of "you're going nowhere!"
I just pray that I will be missed.
Without the tears and without the sorrow,
I stand alone as I wait to depart.
Without "we'll miss you"s and without the goodbye's,
The only sorrow is within my heart.

Labels: Poetic licence

"We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to." -- W. Somerset Maugham

Due to the reintegration on myself back into the working world and out of the rather comfortable realms of unemployment, I will neither be writing because I want to or have to. Possibly an update or two will be sporadically forthcoming, but generally I shall be too damn busy and tired. Working life; it sucks.

Wednesday saw me rushing to Eldon Square to purchase work tops, shoes, and black trousers. Who knew it had been so long since having a proper job (two month nanny escapade not included in this category) that I’d long since lost those few vital things? And I swear those trousers have SHRUNK since I last wore them; I have NOT gained that much weight.

So tomorrow at the completely unreasonable time of nine am, back into the employed masses go I. For two whole weeks. Strange, I’m sure you’re meant to have jobs for longer than that. Whatever, it’s a fifty hour week, though there are only two of them, and I’ve got to wear black and white, and find my make up. It isn’t that I haven’t been wearing make up these last few… months, it’s simply that if left to my own devices I’ll live on a diet of eye liner, mascara, and tinted lip balm. Clubs require more of course, but only really in the way of glitter. For work, that just won’t do.

So, against my lazier judgement, and in screaming opposition to my body clock (make up means getting up at least half an hour earlier than were I slapping on the essentials and running), tomorrow I’ll be waking up at SIX THIRTY in order to enjoy the effects of foundation (grrr), blusher, highlighter, lip stick and gloss, and possibly concealer. It also means digging out some socks; apparently flip flops aren’t appropriate footwear. And, oh god, styling my hair.

It isn’t that I think of these things as pointless. Really, I more than understand the effects of adding them, and also the effects of simply not bothering. It’s just that they’re such a bloody hassle. Men have it easy; women can’t get away with not doing them. Even for the lucky few who look great with or without the pampering, it’s still a form of armour, and of pride.

I should stop complaining. I need this otherwise I’ll never be able to buy the laptop I decided would be bought with this summer’s earnings. The money I got from Germany was spent almost as soon as it was made on clothing, jewellery, and a smoothie maker which I haven’t actually used yet. So now I have to do this or live with the guilt of wasting a whole summer.

Meh. Responsibility, goals, all that jazz; it all sucks.

Labels: Work ethic

I love the Pre-Raphaelites. I love the idea of them, and I adore the paintings. The idea is of an artists’ group who fought for the affections of a woman. One woman, a muse, a model, a legend. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s wife, but model for so many. She’s my favourite, but I love the painting (left), William Hunt’s Isabella and a pot of basil.

My sister reminds me of the Pre-Raphaelites. It’s the way you stand in front of the painting and are awed, it’s the way they make you speechless. I fall in love with art, and I fell head over heels for the Pre-Raphaelites. Men fall in love with women, and fall head over heels for her.

When we were little I was always the pretty one. The distinction generally wasn’t made out loud by our parents, but it was made by others. It wasn’t a huge thing, it was just always there. Growing up we went through the phases; gawky, skinny, chubby, ugly, whatever. And eventually, not so long ago, we came out of it nearly finished products.

I’m pretty. I’m attractive enough to keep men, and I’m really good at provocative once I’ve got their attention. My sister? She has a wow factor like the paintings. It isn’t that she’s more gorgeous than everyone else; it isn’t that she’s stunning; it’s just that she can walk into a room and there isn’t going to be anyone else better looking. Maybe there will be someone as attractive, but even when there’s someone conventionally better, she’s still got something.

A few weeks ago I made a comment that could have been interpreted as ambiguous. The comment being: “It isn’t that I don’t want him to see other people, it’s just that I don’t like people who are prettier than me.” I don’t like people who are prettier than me. Wrong. You’re gorgeous, that’s great, I don’t care. The people I don’t like are the ones who act superior because they’re prettier than me. I.e. my sister.

I’m proud of her, I love it that when she walks past a group of men they’ll stand there mutely watching her go by, and then when she’s past one quietly says, “wow.” I’m more than happy with who I am, and I think it’s good that she’s got that, I’d love it. But she isn’t happy. When we go out it can’t just be to have fun, it’s always got to be “I can pull more people than you,” or “the guy I pulled was much more attractive than the one you did.” It’s like somehow I’m a lesser person if I don’t compete and reach the same level as her.

And what kind of level is that? She’s beautiful, why does she need to verify that to herself by being better in some way than me? I don’t want to compete. I don’t want to pull every man in a club just to prove something. If I pull then invariably it’s because I’m too drunk to know the difference, but I like to think that it’s because I like the person. When I’m sober enough it sometimes is.

Like the Pre-Raphaelites I'll watch from a distance. I can’t compete, and I would never wish to if I could because if she ever felt that I’d won she’d be broken. That’s who she is, and I won’t hurt her. But it bothers me. It bothers me that there isn’t room here for the two of us anymore. My father said it; this house no longer has room for two women, we simply can’t live together. Salt and pepper, too different, we don’t belong in the same grinder. And that hurts me. But unless I have some kind of personality transplant, I’m not sure how to change it.

Labels: dynasty

Today, loneliness for me was standing waiting in the town centre public toilets waiting to see if a second line would appear on the do-it-yourself pregnancy test I’d bought from the local Superdrugs.

Earlier on in the day loneliness had been waking up feeling nauseous and tender at the base of my stomach. It had been looking through my diary and realising that it was the fourth day of getting this exact feeling for the few hours after I’d woken up, and it dissipating sometime around one o clock.

Loneliness was getting out of bed, padding downstairs and dragging The Family Doctor out of the bookcase and looking up “pregnancy” in the index. It was going down the list and saying “yes” to everything on it except vomiting.

Loneliness was going back upstairs and checking my calendar, looking to see when I was last due my period, and finding out that I’m just gone two months late. A lost period is no longer due too much consideration. My weight fluctuates all the time, and last month I was so stressed that when my period didn’t come I was hardly surprised. But it shouldn’t disappear for two months. Specially when I’ve spent so much time on holidays. Specially when there are so many other symptoms.


Relief was shoving the stupid white piece of plastic into my bag and walking out of the toilets. It was walking along with Stacey and finally working up the courage to drag it out and check the results. It was checking that the time had long since elapsed, and the second line being very definitively non-existent.

Relief was sitting eating potato wedges and knowing that the rest of the day was not going to be spent going over and over the pros and cons of abortion, adoption, and having a baby at university.

Relief was being able to think about my ex without following the label with “the father of my child.” Relief was not having to spend hours trying to phone him up simply to tell him those two horrors, “I’m pregnant.”

Relief was throwing the test away an hour later happy in the certainty that that second line definitely wasn’t going to suddenly appear.


Having sex with him again wasn’t a mistake. It was good, it was a relief, and casual sex isn’t a problem if no one gets hurt. The only problem is that what if I’d been wrong? What if I had got hurt? What if that second line had appeared? Then it doesn’t matter how good it had felt at the time. It doesn’t matter that we’d both consented, and were both happy with our separate outcomes. Our decision to be separate entities would have been completely irrelevant as we’d still have been joined by that stupid blue line.

Whatever my final decision, whatever happened to that life inside me, the line would still have been there. In years to come I’d look back and wonder what had happened to that line. I’d either be looking at a kid, I’d have an adoption certificate, or I’d have the mental scar of an abortion.

I’ll have casual sex again. I just can’t promise that I’ll never do it, it wouldn’t be realistic. This time I’m lucky, but next time I’ll be more careful. This time the second line didn’t appear, and now I can only hope that there won’t be a next time.

Labels: Falling, Theatrics

I came home from Germany like Santa Claus, only with slightly more… distinctive presents. Jewellery, dream catchers, fluffy sheep, and photos of lederhosen I really would have bought had I been able to afford them.

Texted David, “when do you want your present? x”

In my defence, and this is a very bad defence- it wouldn’t get me anywhere in a decent court of law, I was feeling lonely and pathetic at the time. He replied “anytime” and he came over.

I asked him over because I missed him. I can’t lie and pretend that missing him was the only reason I asked him over, and it definitely wasn’t the reason that he came. And it’s stupid. We’ve not been together… four months now.

But he came over. We sat on the bed. Stupid place to start off a conversation I know, but while there wasn’t anyone else in the house, it still feels strange trying to sit with him downstairs on the sofa. So we went to my bedroom like kids, closed the door, and talked on the bed.

It should have been awkward. It should have been something, I don’t know what. It just should have been different to what it was. It was too easy. We just talked like we used to, called each other names, and promised ourselves the world. He wanted to have enough money so he could buy a new motorbike, a train, an airplane, basically anything big, fast, and dangerous. I wanted the world to play with, to travel the universe, and to be adored by millions.

I called him… something. A numpty maybe, whatever. He tickled me, I tried to escape, kicked out, he moved to stop me kicking and so he could tickle me more. I hate being tickled. I’m the tickliest person in the world, I can’t help it. It just isn’t something you can work up a resistance to. I wasn’t kicking him hard, but he had to move because I was getting dangerously close to somewhere that he definitely wouldn’t have enjoyed being kicked. So he pinned me under him and called a truce.

A truce is all well and good, but the tickling and kicking at least distracted from the fact that I was lying underneath him and his lips were approximately an inch away from mine.

I want to tell you I don’t know why I did it. In fact, I’d love to tell you that. But, the simple truth is that in those few seconds when we were just looking into each other’s eyes, waiting to see if either was going to back out, I took a measure of myself as much as him. He waited for me, he didn’t do anything, he just stopped. Right then all I had to do was wriggle out from under him and start up another conversation. We both would have known that I’d turned him down, but it wouldn’t have hurt anyone.

I made my choice. Tell me it was a bad one, feel free, but I won’t apologise for it. He stopped me later, said that he only wanted to take what I was willing to give, put words to what we’d earlier established just from looking into each other’s eyes.

He's gone back to the navy now. It was fantastic, but made better because we both knew that it wouldn’t happen again so enjoyed each other like we had to take everything because there was no point in leaving anything behind.

He stayed for a while afterwards, but still left me lying on the bed as he had to go to work. We laughed about him loving and leaving me, we both watched the clock, and when he said goodbye we kissed but very briefly. In all honesty I have no idea who used who. But I know that I came out of it with a feeling of conclusion rather of unfolding possibilities.

I do things my own way. A lot of my friends aren’t going to talk to me for a while because of this. And maybe they’re right. Maybe it was the wrong thing for me to do, and maybe I was indulging him and hurting myself to do so. Except that it doesn’t feel like that. It just feels like I had fun, rediscovering him was at least as great as discovering him the first time. And it feels like we both got the best end of the bargain. We both got to walk away.

Labels: Falling, Pleasure

I use men. I use them to relieve my boredom, to make me feel better, and as devices to make other men feel jealous. And of that ever increasing (and ever more depressing) list of flings, dates, and drunken incidents, I’ve actually only really liked two of them. I give up working out how many men there are anymore, for some reason the joy that came from categorising mine and Stacey’s lists of conquests started to dispel when she became so happy, and I became so sad.

As a child I dreamed of being a princess. I dreamt that knights and princes would travel from across the world to win me. As I got older it became less fairytale and more modernized, but essentially the same. Instead of being a princess I was simply Barbie (brunette) beautiful, and the princes and knights became rich and attractive.

When life eventually conspired to turn me into the cynical bitch I am today, I figured it might be fun to be an ice queen. To be adored, aloof, and ever slightly detached from every man I met. I always attempted to act the ice queen, the realisation that for the past six months or so now I’ve been living it is somewhat a shock to me.

I look back and come across various blurred faces. Men I’ve ridiculed as puppy dogs, or simply pathetic because they’ve been stupid enough to like me. Men I’ve led on heartlessly when I’ve known from the start that the only way they would ever have a chance with me would be if they either became millionaires or had a face transplant. Problem is, I’m starting to lose track. I’m sure there haven’t been that many. But when I think about it, even the times when I haven’t directly pulled anyone, I’ve acted as a cocktease in some capacity or other.

I don’t set out to break hearts. Most the time I maintain that I’m not capable of it due to the fact that I’m unattractive/ too much of a bitch/ just not a heartbreaker. And I’m not breaking any hearts with what I do. Or, at least, I’m pretty sure that I haven’t got close enough to any man to manage. I’ve only been close to one man, and he definitely hasn’t had his heart broken by me. But though I’m not breaking hearts, I’m not exactly being nice.

If any man did what I do to them (and this includes the one that broke my heart rather pathetically) then I would be beyond pissed, I’d be livid. So why do I do this? Pick men up and drop them five minutes, an hour, two weeks later? Is it some stupid survival reflex from the various times I’ve let someone get close and they’ve hurt me? Am I so self obsessed that men are no longer other people and are simply another form of self gratification for me? Or am I just a heartless bitch who’s never going to be happy with anyone so goes through everyone just to check?

I don’t know anymore. I don’t like myself. And I definitely don’t like some of the things I’ve done.

And I don’t know how to stop…

Labels: Courting, Flying

London has the very best of clubs, and the very worst. My most recent London experience was, unfortunately, the latter.

It started at the apartment in Aldgate. Tired and highly strung from spending four days living in extremely close proximity with my sister (the same bed) was turning into a joke. I love her from a distance, but sleeping, eating, and drinking with her is not exactly my idea of heaven. I layered on the scarlet nail varnish and forced myself to endure the few hours of her prancing around the room in a black mini dress, straightening her naturally poker straight hair, and telling me that my eye brows don’t match, I’m too dressed up, I’m under-dressed, my heels don’t exactly match my belt, and do I think her bum looks big in this?

I downed the Pimms and lemonade and forced myself to carry on quietly without forcing the tweezers down her throat. A painful tube ride later (strip lighting flashing cheerfully), and a rather awful experience involving eight lemons and two bottles of rum in Tesco’s later, we arrived at Hammersmith and went in search of taxis. The first taxi driver was extremely helpful in telling us he didn’t know the area, and couldn’t help us. The second was marginally better, but took us to the wrong street, dropping us down some dark alley and leaving us to negotiate our own way. After walking for ten minutes in six inch heels the five of us arrived at a strip club where the bouncer helpfully ordered us another taxi.

This taxi did, eventually, take us to our destination. Unfortunately he also took fifteen pounds off us to get completely lost, and then make us find the right street in his pocket A to Z. Personally I felt that this was taking the piss, but our relief at arriving quelled a few of my objections.

Meeting up with the rest of the party meant standing in the doorway of a smallish house just outside Hammersmith and enthusing over the birthday girl’s dresses, property developments, interior design, and the fact that my sister really doesn’t look so young. This, coupled with more pimms and lemonade, and possible the worst Mojito I have ever had the misfortune of drinking, was a headache in the making. But it didn’t stop there. From there the party moved via three cabs across zone two and ended up fuck knows where.

This cab was much better. It only cost us twelve pounds and the driver was flirty, complimentary, but never sleazy, so earning my London cabby thumbs up prize. He was the only one in my entire visit who earned this so he was special. The club was the kind of club where you spend a shit load to get in, then find that the place is half empty and really you’d rather stay at home with a DVD than go to all this trouble and then contemplate staying here for another three hours minimum. In a word, it sucked.

While enduring classics such as the Baywatch theme tune and a disco version of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” I downed Sambuca shots, got off with the birthday girl’s younger brother, and sat on the bathroom floor phoning everyone I could think of who might, just possibly (say in an alternate universe) also be awake.

I then ditched the guy (my brother nicknamed him “The Oompaloompa,” and he sang along to Baywatch) lost one shoe (later found), and completely failed to listen to anything that anyone started to try to tell me. I also got asked if I was on coke, and if so, could I get him and his girlfriend some. Surely I wasn’t that bad?

When finally we arrived home, there were only a few hours before I woke up with a screaming hangover, the taste of truly disgusting curry still in my mouth, and the knowledge that I was leaving in two hours, hadn’t packed, and had a seven and a half hour bus journey before home. Wonderful.

Labels: Alcoholism, Mistakes, Theatrics