We drink and then we drink

It's been a fairly boozy weekend. On Friday my pal Dr H hosted a Halloween party at her flat. She left it rather late to tell us it was to be fancy dress and I'd been pretty busy with work and hadn't had time to plan (or write blog posts. Sorry.) On Friday morning I had a tiny brain wave. I have a yellow t-shirt with a 70's style print of a woman sunbathing on a each and "Amity Island" written underneath. All I needed was the shark to make it complete. And so it was that I bought a large sheet of grey cardboard from an art shop and after work charged home ready to do some papercraft. I was sensible and did a maquette first on a sheet of paper. It was just as well as my first idea of how to fold and stick it didn't work and had gone straight for the proper version I'd have been screwed. I figured out what I needed to change and then when my little paper maquette looked sharky enough I transferred the pattern to the full-size card and cut it out. The idea was to have the shark around my left leg so that the jaws were around my knee and the shark body wrapped around my calf so it appeared to be biting me. It actually worked pretty well. After about a bottle of red wine I decided, and it seemed sensible at the time, that the shark should now have fully devoured me and therefore I should take it off my leg and wear it as a hat with my happy, tipsy little face peeping out from the maw. Here is me, looking very sober having been eaten by the fish:

On Saturday I had arranged to meet up with friends in a local pub. I always make it a very relaxed affair telling everyone which pub I'll be in and from what time and then leave it up to them when and if they show up and for how long they stay. The first pub started out well and we were comfortable and a couple of pints in when we saw a large P.A. being brought in and installed followed by a load of disco lights. This pub is normally an extremely quiet Victorian boozer and this did not bode well. The bar staff then went around putting printed notices on every table to the effect that the pub had been booked out that evening for a party and we were welcome to stay until 7.30 after which time we could all piss off. This came as a shock. I have walked past the pub every weekend since T and I moved to Holborn and it never has more than about three people in it on a Saturday. It was for this reason I didn't try to book it myself, I didn't think that there'd be any need. The tipping point arrived when the P.A. was cranked up and a super tinny sounding "Red Red Wine" by UB40 came blasting out. Enough was enough. We all decamped across the road to The Dolphin where we spent the rest of the evening.

We left after eight and a half hours solid drinking and T and I came home where, as an unexpected treat to round off the day, I found that my football team, Stoke City, had beaten Arsenal 2-1. TO put that in context, it was about as likely to happen as an under-9s side is to beat Brazil. Amazing. And so I went to bed feeling very happy and a little wobbly.

T Party

This weekend has been Tinsetroos Birthday Festival. She began the celebration on Thursday with dinner with her folks whilst I was at home with the flat to myself wrapping her presents. The main social event was karaoke on Friday night. Everyone knows that T likes to sing and so twelve of us packed into a wee room at Cousin Jills to belt out a few standards.

In a slight break with tradition I opted to sing Money for Nothing rather than my usual Johnny Cash numbers as I felt me and Mr Knopfler have similar vocal range (not a lot). I didn't manage the Sting parts though as they well beyond my limited range. I was quite pleased with my "Hoola moola that's the way you do, money for nothing and your chicks for free" complete with hint of geordie accent. As is traditional there was also a rendition of Guns Don't Kill People, Rappers Do with highly exaggerated welsh accents later on. T and her school-chum KG put everyone else to shame by actually being able to sing really well. It took a collective chorus of Europe's The Final Countdown to takes us back to the ridiculous from the sublime. This part of the evening is immortalised on video though I don't think it's really suitable for public consumption. It does prove that we'd all drunk a lot more than I remember though. Further evidence for this may be viewed below:

Yesterday T opened her presents from me which included some crazy Japanese socks, a T-shirt I designed and printed for her, Guitar Hero - Aerosmith, and a few other treats. The weather was filthy all day so we only went out for brunch and then scuttled back to Schossadlerflug until the evening when we got all dressed up and went out for dinner to Rasoi Vineet Bhatia which is a superb Indian restaurant in Mayfair. It was astonishingly good, certainly in my top ten meals I've had. Amongst the delights I had included tandoori salmon, minted chicken, duck confit with a coconut sauce and a, and this is no lie, fois gras crême brulée which was barmy but brilliant. Two and half happy hours later we rolled out back into the night and made our way home holding our contented fat bellies.

Today we've bummed around the flat as, once again, the weather has been shitty all day. As I write this T is shredding on Guitar Hero and showing Joe Perry and Brad Whitford how it's done. Metaaaaaaal!