The Party Season Part 3: Burning the Candle at Both Ends

… and somehow also in the middle

Not enough sleep + not enough sleep + a normal night's sleep + not enough sleep + 13 hours' sleep + ice-shuffling
= a very very very bad cold
= missed social events*
= a very annoyed Lucky

I did not allow for this contingency!

On top of that, I'm now very much behind in my Christmas plans and panic is starting to set in.


* in particular, the circle of loveliness

The Party Season Part 2: How to have fun at a party you're not particularly looking forward to

Let's suppose you are going to go to a party hosted by your company and that you work in insurance. Let's also suppose you still haven't recovered from the excesses of the weekend and you want to do nothing that doesn't involve sleeping. Let's also suppose that you can't really be bothered to explain for the billionth time why you're not drinking wine with your meal. Let's also suppose that there're only two people you'll be sitting with at dinner who you think you can have a decent conversation with and one of those has had to cancel at the last minute due to a family emergency.

This is how to have fun:

1) have an amusing anecdote to break the ice
2) wear a flamboyant red dress you have made yourself (which impresses designers)
3) turn up only to find there is no-one there you recognise
4) make small talk with a man who seems also to be on his own
5) after realising that this man has never heard of your company's head office, a speech is made by a strange American man, the meal begins early and it's a buffet affair instead of a sit down meal with allocated table numbers, go and ask a member of the venue staff where you are
6) collect your coat and bag from the cloakroom and go next door
7) you now have an amusing anecdote
8) you will then be accosted by your divisional managing director and head of the company to whom you can tell your amusing anecdote (you will feel silly enough about your mistake to tell your anecdote with humour and cheer but not silly enough to feel hideously embarrassed by it)
9) find out that the people at your table you thought you couldn't have a decent conversation with are actually people you CAN have a decent conversation with, you have just never had cause to
10) very nearly almost but not quite win a £5,000 holiday voucher whilst simultaneously showing off your flamboyant red dress to approximately 250 people
11) get many many compliments on your flamboyant red dress and how elegant you look
12) get even more compliments on your ability on the dance floor
13) hug lots of people
14) find a likeminded individual who is also into sewing
15) go home in a taxi all the way from central London to Chelmsford
16) have a bit of a kip
17) go ice-shuffling

The Party Season Part 1: Some Very Nice Chaps and Some Impressiveness

A very nice chap gave me a nutmeg.

Another very nice chap asked me to follow his "random crap" on Twitter.

Another very nice chap admitted to me that he had enjoyed watching my bottom as I danced.

Another very nice chap suggested green velvet with black trimmings for the next dress I make.

A very nice chapette was impressed by my dress and asked where I got it. She was even more impressed when I told her I had made it. I was impressed that she was impressed with my handiwork when I found out she was a dress designer. It was all really rather impressive. (I suspect that she didn't realise I hadn't designed it myself and had in fact made it from a purchased pattern labelled "EASY" but I didn't have the chance to make sure she understood which is a good thing because that wouldn't have been as impressive.)

New Look

I dyed my hair blue. At the top. But only slightly. Under certain lights.

Let the Ice-Shuffling Commence

I can't believe I'm being made to go ice-skating…
the morning after the company Christmas party…
when I'm supposed to be at work.

Me colleague accidentally bought three tickets for ice-skating at Somerset House for the wrong time and the wrong day and since then he has kept asking me if I want them. I always refuse because I don't want them. I'm not keen on going ice-skating so why would I want to do it the morning after the Christmas Party when I'm supposed to be at work?

Finally, me colleague stopped pestering me and offered the tickets to my friend so she could take me and someone else along with her. My friend (who incidentally takes ice-skating lessons) enthusiastically agreed and refuses to listen to any of my excuses on the grounds that I have run up a mountainside on a horse.

So I am to spend the morning of the 9th December ice-shuffling.

I think they had a bet on

Close to where I work is a sandwich bar called Temples. It's a good sandwich bar as they don't skimp on fillings and are quite inexpensive. It is also possible to buy a sandwich that isn't saturated in mayonnaise. I go there often.

One of the things they do is a toasted panini with chicken, pesto and sun-dried tomatoes in it which is my favourite thing from Temples. I like it so much that I probably get one each week. Temples is also the place at which I buy toast in the mornings. I am such a regular there that the staff at the hot food counter are surprised if I order something different.

Today I went in and succumbed to the desire for a chicken panini. Normally, after ordering something toasted you have to wait for a bit for the toasting to take place. Not today. A matter of seconds after arriving at the hot food counter I was given, not a toasted chicken panini but two toasted chicken paninis.

I was a little puzzled and at my apparent bewilderment all the staff behind the counter smiled and said they were giving me an extra one for free.

I am the chicken panini woman.

I think there's something wrong with the world when you can just walk into a craft shop and buy multicoloured lollipop sticks but you can't buy crepe paper.