SURPRISE!!

A lot of you will know that my dearest darling sister organised surprise leaving drinkies for me this Friday. A lot of you will know because you probably recieved the message that she sent around to almost everybody in my phonebook! Raped and pillaged my mobile she did.

Apparently it was also all over Facebook, how I managed to miss it I have NO idea, clearly I'm not nosy enough!

Friday was excellent, I arrived at the pub under the impression that I was meeting a 6ft 4 policeman and his mates for a pub crawl (care of Wilf Porkie Enterprises) and found two tables full of a completely random assortment of lovely lovely people.

Caroline, Choy, Uma and Viv were there from the zoo, Bruce and Chris from work, my old housemate Steve, Wilfy and Jo who had got me to the pub in the first place, and of course the lovely Nicki were all waiting to surprise me! There were balloons and there was cake and nibbles and lots and lots of booze. There was also an exceptionally excellent white vest being passed around that people were writing messages on. I'm taking it with me and using it as a sleeping top....should be a bit of an ice breaker in the good ole dorm rooms.

After a while, Nicki recieved a phone call from someone who was coming, but neither of us recognised his number. He was described as having an indian accent and for the life of me I could not think of who it might be, until I saw Julio wandering through the pub. That would explain why I couldn't think who it was, he speaks with a very strong Spanish accent! Julio is a painter decorator that we've had in a couple of times to do some jobbies at work. He's absolutely lovely and proceeded to plonk himself at the bar with his mate, from this position he held court with all the ladies and purchased tequilas with wild abandon.

And later on the lovely Kayleigh and Tom turned up, by which point most of us were pleasantly pickled....apart from Steve who was driving...poor Steve.

The whole evening was excellent, Viv was totally on form. She gives the impression of being a very kindly, sweet and benign lady, which she totally is.......and then she gets her hands on the wine. She came out with some absolute gems and took a bit of a shine to our Steve ;), grabby grabby, NORTY Viv!! She certainly helped make the evening, I think I'm a little bit in love.

There were a couple of persistent themes of the evening, the first being spillage of wine! I don't think anyone got away without being splashed by wine at some point in the evening. I was sporting a particularly spectacular purple stain...very chic.

The second theme was JENGA! Perhaps contrary to expectations, as the evening wore on and we became slightly the more worse for wear...we actually got better at Jenga, check this baby out! WIN!


Cake was lovely and booze was lovely and company was excellently lovely lovely. When we got chucked out of the Castle, Kayleigh, Tom, Jo and I moved onto somewhere in Angel for a drinky....but being CONSIDERABLY inebriated by this point, it didn't last too long and soon Jo and I were headed for the nightbus.

We were woken up halfway home by a kindly man who took pity on us and let us know we were being booted off and onto another bus. We must have been a picture of beauty and gorgeousness. Faces squished up against the windows, snoring (probably not gently). I'm impressed he had the guts to approach.

Home for CHIKIN.......and the next thing I know I woke up on the sofa at about 5am.

All the signs of an excellent night I think! Thank you Nicki for organising such a lovely evening, thank you to Jo and Wilf for propelling me in the right direction and thank you to all those who came along to wish me well on my travels. I haz a big love for all of you :o)

Please....take a peek at the photies, these are in order....more evidence for why drinking is bad. There's distinct deterioration!

Nicki fails at Jenga!

Such concentration

Cheers!

Mmm, sexah Jenga pose

The lovely Julio

Tastes good

Hee hee, fab evening guys xxx

Hey Kayleigh....Remember This?

Why I shouldn't drink - exhibit A

That's me licking wood....apparently. Kayleigh, she's such an artist she is. She's the sculptor of the magnificent hairstyle I'm sporting here.

Magnificent

Equally magnificent is the gift Kayleigh bestowed upon me, from her trip to Falmouth.

Behold!

My wonderful new plastic dolphin is now gracing the office along with all my other office tat.

Kayleigh also showed me how to use macro on my camera last night....I can't tell you how excited I am about that. I can't believe I didn't know I could do it, but now I do and I haz a happy.

Well.....I can only apologise for this post. I'll do better soon. I promise!

Birthday of Guinness

I don't know, woolly shennanigans and I STILL thought I deserved a party/drinkup. Talk about have your cake and eat it!

Jo and I made it in one piece, without any knitting needles embedded anywhere upon our person, and only slightly late, to Waxy O'Conners where I'd booked a little area to fill with all my favourite people on my birthday.

As we bimbled down the stairs we met the Steve who had been hanging around for at least half an hour already, and we made our way over to the little booked area where a couple of guys I didn't know sat looking sheepish.

I'd been quite anxious to get there on time, when you book an area you never know how long the establishment will wait for the first guest to turn up before they lose faith and open it up to the 'ugh' general public. You KNOW that as the person who booked it, you have to be there somewhat on time because your guests don't want to be the first people to arrive.

Turn up 20 minutes late and what you'll find is clusters of your friends hovering around the periphery of the 'booked zone', as if there's some kind of inpenetrable forcefield surrounding it.

So Jo and I dragged Stevie through the forcefield and plonked ourselves down, the two interlopers left pretty soon, they could probably feel the force radiating off of me as I prepared to ask them to scarper. The next people to turn up were Wilf and his mate Beck, and Norm.

I tell a wee lie, we knew that Kyle was somewhere in the building, he had been deflected even further by the aforementioned forcefield...to the point where we couldn't actually locate him! Not entirely our fault, this place is labyrinthine and when I went looking I soon lost all faith in my meagre sense of direction and returned, tail between legs, to wait for him to find us. Find us he did and we had a little crowd forming.

Vicky and her blokie Dan turned up next. As you probably guessed, the buying of drinks had started immediately upon arrival, and from the word go I was never without a pint in hand and another ready on the table! So when Dan asked if I'd like another drink and I indicated my next pint ready to go, he asked if I'd like a short. I didn't want to be rude now did I?? I asked for a sambuca....one shot....I can deal with that. Fine.

By the end of the evening I'd had 5 sambuca (3 care of Dan and 2 care of some lovely ladies I'll mention in a minute) and one shot of tequila...care of Clara). How am I still alive?

Then Kayleigh and Tom arrived, gagging for some foodage, they both ordered chicken burgers. They took a while to arrive, but when they did! I don't think I've seen a burger that huge in my entire life!!



Wilf and Beck sidled off after one drink, I can't say I blame them, they'd been out wandering in the rain and had come from a nice quiet restaurant into a loud blaring bar full of loud blaring people. Thank you guys very much for coming if you're reading this, it was great to see you there :)

The music in the place I must say was excellent, very poppy/rocky and very easy to dance to, just my thing!! Just as well, if I hadn't been dancing I think those shots would have knocked me right out. Everyone else turned up at almost the same time at about ten o'clock or maybe a bit later. I'd just said hi to Mark, Clara and Leney when Nicki tapped me on the shoulder, she'd arrived with Helen and Harry...and most importantly....my BIRTHDAY CAKE! There was a stir of excitement as she placed it on the table and went to remove the cover:



Oh yes...just what we need in an Irish pub :D. I managed to mutilate it before we did the whole candle-blowing-out thing, much to Nicki's disgust.....it was blimmin delicious! Sponge and jam, nom nom nom!!!! What a fab icing job though eh people?

Of course, you always get your characters on a night out. We had the 2 drunken Irish 'Party Police' as they called themselves, who harrassed us at various points in the evening. I threw them out when one came onto Nicki, but they came back later after I'd invited a gaggle of girlies into the area. They'd been standing and dancing outside of the forcefield and they seemed a laugh so I invited them in. By this point in the evening the rest of the bar was packed and my mates and I were enjoying an oasis of relative peace and calm in the centre, so I thought they'd benefit too. These were the lovely ladies who bought me 2 sambucas in thanks for letting them in. Bless! I invited them to join in the blowing out of candles and singing happy birthday seeing as they were also celebrating 2 birthdays.

The picture takers of the evening were Steevie, and the 'official' photographer Norman :). I've yet to see Norms pics, and I'll add some here when I do, but as you can see from Steves pics.....they witnessed some fun and games as the evening wore on!




When we got thrown out of the place at midnight most people went home, Jo and I carried on briefly to a bar somewhere (I canny remember the name) where we had a few more drinks and talked to innocent victims about knitting. We then proceeded to sleep all the way home on the nightbus and then attack Western Fried Chicken at about 4am......it was a good night, oh yes.

Thank you to absolutely everyone who came along and made my birthday drinks so wicked, love to you all :o)

Notting Hill Carnival

For the first time EVER this weekend I went to Notting Hill Carnival, I went Carnival!

Now, my housemate Katrin has described it as her worst nightmare, blazing sunshine herded around narrow streets and surrounded by hundreds of drunk people. That's kind of what I expectoo, but not what I experienced funnily enough, although we took a good stab at fitting in with the drunk image by grabbing our first can as we emerged from the station. Personally I was a little worried...were we REALLY allowed to just drink on the streets?? It took spying a few people with cans and watching Kayles and Tom walk past a few police with theirs blatantly on show before I chilled out and cracked my first one. Lammmmmmme.

I went with my mate Kayleigh and her boyfriend Tom, both of them really into their music. Tom DJ's and it heavy into the drum and bass scene. Going with them I discovered the other side of the Notting Hill carnival, a part that many people wouldn't necessarily see if they came solely to see the procession.

Over in the backstreets, away from the procession route, you have craploads of stalls setup in front gardens, food, drink etc etc, and you have the sound systems. Some of these you can just tell have been hammered together in someones garage somewhere, massive contructs of speakers, wood and metal. One systems we stood next to just vibrated your very soul, if someone with a heart problem had come by they'd have been in trouble!! Kayles and I wanted pee pee somewhere nice for a change and so paid £1.50 each to use a clean bathroom in someones house lol!! We probably got pickpocketed on the way in...but who cares eh?

It was lots of fun just wandering down the backstreets, following the sounds of music coming from one direction or another, dancing in front of massive speakers and generally having a laugh! We did catch the procession once or twice and saw some cool outfits too, so we didn't miss out on that.

Thanks Tom and Kayles for a wicked day! :D