From the sublime to the ridiculous

Sorry, that's a bit poncey, I haven't really got my head on straight as I appear to have got yet another winter cold.

Anyway, I was going to tell you about my weekend. About a month or so ago, my friend T announced he was getting engaged. This was something of a bolt from the blue as I've known him nearly seven years and I've met his fiancee, S, once. Dressed as a naughty air stewardess. Her, not me, I was wearing my famous technicolour sixties outfit with the purple wig. After some toing and froing (I think there should be hyphens in there but it looks MUCH funnier without)the date for the event was set for Saturday, and the location a remote Berkshire village within a stone's throw from my parents house.

Then, my friend John decided he was going to be having his birthday party that same weekend. In London.

Naturally, I decided to do both.

So, to get to London at a reasonable hour Friday I had to go straight from work on the train without having a chance to change clothes, meaning I had to wear something smart and plain enough to wear to work and funky and trendy enough to wear to a gay club in London - the appropriately named trash palace. I went for a little black dress of the not too slutty variety and did my make-up on the train. Arriving at the bar where everyone was, I saw a friend I hadn't seen since December. His jaw dropped when he recognised me and he said: "Hello, skinny!" He's gay, by the way, hence the overdramaticised nature of the compliment. Anyway, that felt pretty good.

After a couple of drinks at a very funky bar in Soho, we went to a funky tapas type restaurant and had some tapas (unsurprisingly) and some paella. One of my dining companions who was sharing the paella decided there wasn't enough meat so complained and believe it or not we got this paella for three people for the price of one. Result! Then on to trash palace, which was extremely cramped but madly cheap for a gay club in Soho. Also quite good fun, although as I had my overnight bag with me I was quite concerned about it getting nicked/covered in alcohol/stamped on by overenthusiastic dancers. Fortunately none of these things happened.

Then back to Brixton to stay at John's, who shockingly enough had no milk so therefore there was no tea to sate our hangovers in the morning. Terrible.

On Saturday John and Dan (who also lives in London and attended both parties) had to go to a play which they left until the last minute. They were due to travel on to Berkshire with us later and during the interval at the play, they called us to say they wouldn't be able to catch the train if they stayed so were planning to leave straight away. While me and SC (who had travelled up from Cornwall for the events) were on the train, which was just about to pull away from the station, we started slagging the boys off saying there was no way they were ever going to make it. At that exact moment, they walked into our carriage.

This was followed by a long, convoluted, and quite heated argument about whether or not we were going to go to Sainsburys.

We didn't, by the way.

Once we got to Newbury, HF, who had driven the car down, met us and drove us (a total of five including myself) to my parents house where we had approximately half an hour to get ready to go to a two-hour engagement party in the middle of nowhere. (I wore my floaty purple nonsense dress and the ballerina shoes, by the way, pix to follow). My Mum had never met John or Dan before so had a very whirlwind introduction. Mostly involving requests to use irons etc and resulting in Dan being so rubbish at ironing his silk shirt that my sister, who was also briefly there, ended up doing it for him.

Anyway, after all that rush, we got to the party and my was it a swanky affair. There was a marquee with a bar and waiters/waitresses wandering around handing out peach bellinis, pink champagne and pimms. There may have been some non-alcoholic stuff going round too, but obviously we weren't after that.Approximately every 10 minutes, a tray of minuscule but heavenly canapes appeared. After a while I got quite adept at ushering the trays in my direction, but somehow it felt rude to take more than one at a time. T seemed happy and S looked beautiful and we all had a chance to chat to her and decide that yes, after all, we would accept her as Ts special lady. Lots of very interesting people all living in a completely different world involving public schools, designer dresses, ponies and large fistfulls of money served with breakfast. I felt a tad out of place (despite the fab dress) and was acutely aware that my shoes probably cost about the same as one of the tiny links in one of the ladies' necklaces. But everyone was lovely and it was quite possibly the most civilised and by far the most posh occasion I have ever, or am ever likely, to go to. Until the wedding, obviously.

Anyway, after that it was time to lower our standards again so we headed off to Newbury's premier nightspot,
liquid. I'm not sure words can do justice to the entertainment at this bitchin' establishment, suffice to say John and Dan were not loving the music. I pointed out that they were playing Britney Spears, but unfortunately at that moment, they mixed it up with a truly heinous jungle track. Oh well. Takes all sorts.

When we tumbled home at about 3am, we quickly discovered two potential problems. Not only was John allergic to cats (my parents have two) he was also allergic to the feather bedding my parents had thoughtfully laid out for him. So we had to do a certain amount of chopping and changing to do before we got down to sleep.

Approximately three hours later, John knocked on my door apologetically and told me rather sniffily that the allergy was beginning to be somewhat problematic and he didn't think he could spend any longer in the house.

He spent the rest of the night sleeping in SCs car.

The climax of this weekend was a meal in the restaurant my sister runs, The Pot Kiln, which was rather delicious and involved a special extra course just cos she's my sister. Mmmmm.

Anyway, after all that excitement, it was time to drive home and get into my own bed. Which had been eaten by giant beavers.

Oh, no that's right, I was hallucinating from too much sun. And probably too much fun.

More on that story later.