A Grown Up Night Out
Last night we escaped from the house for a few hours to attend the local radio station's awards eveninga ball held at the big hotel on the edge of town. I wore a new suit and new shoes (kind of a mistakebreaking in shoes on the evening of a function), and my better half grinned like the cheshire cat when she realised she could still fit into the slinky black dress she wore on our honeymoon.
The hair was an adventure. In-between working full time, helping at Sunday School, running Brownies, and being a Mum to girls who do clubs almost every night of the week, there was no way my other halfwas going to get to the hairdressers.I ended up buying a selection of hair dressing kits from the high street yesterday morning, and then learned pretty damn quickly how to do them. When zero hour arrived, we went with an elegant “French Twist” thing. It looked easy on the boxwrapping the hair around this wire armature thing, and then pinning it in place. It took SEVEN goes, but looked remarkably professional (more by luck than judgement).
You know the funny thing? During the evening word spread during the rounds of compliments that I was responsible for the spectacular hairdo. A succession of women I didn't know introducing themselves to me, remarking with wide eyes that I had missed my vocation.
By the time we arrived at the ball, the bar was already filled to burstingand my prophecy about spending the entire time before heading in for dinner attempting to buy drinks almost proved true. When finally served, I took my chance and headed back through the crowd somehow carrying an ice bucket with a bottle of something nice in it, three wine glasses, and a pint of lager. Of course while carrying the mountain of stuff, and worrying I was going to drop everything, I began bumping into people I knew. Why does that always happen ?I think we had pretty much self-organised “the naughty table” for the dinner part of the evening. I found myself sitting next to quite the most crazy, lovely, and utterly mad lady I've ever known. She had provided everybody at the table with party bags, and decorated glasses. Mine had bits of computer programming scrawled over it, in among drawings of naughty things that I can't possible describe. She quickly realised that the guy she normally sees in scruffy t-shirts and combats at school functions was probably just as mad as herand made a point of shouting to her other half”I BLOODY LOVE JONATHAN!“The dinner was interesting. The starter was pat and a piece of toastit probably had some posh name, but it tasted nice, and lasted about 30 seconds. There appeared to be a soup option too, but I don't ever recall seeing a menu, or being asked in the run-up to the event about foodapparently Ihad been asked. The main course was fish and potato rosti (I think). It was fine, but the wonderful lady friend sat on my other side read my mind;“That was nicewhen do you think they're going to bring the main course out though?“Pudding arrived at just about the same time as we had all drunk too much, and while it tasted wonderfula chocolate mouse, with some kind of posh fruit jam (and I'm guessing it wasn't called “jam”), I held mine up and remarked to the table;“Not too keen on the sand castle with branston pickle”That kind of set the tone for the rest of the evening.
It's funnywhen you go to an big event, with lots of people that “kind of” know you, you end up dancing like a lunatic after drinking colossal amounts of wine (or at least I did). I got called out by somebody lovely at one point”I had no idea you could dance like that”. I wasn't quite sure if it was the most brilliantly delivered joke, or a serious commentbut I smiled back at her toothy grin, and said “I'll assure you these abilities are only unlocked by several bottles of wine, and may go disastrously wrong”.
I'll admit to being incredibly annoyed with one thing that happened during the night, but I'm not going to dwell on it. Let's just say some people's actions and behaviour give you pause for thought sometimes.
Somebody who WILL be pausing for thought this morningprobably over a toilet bowlis one of the teachers from a local school, who apparently drank a little bit too much early in the evening. I became aware that many of the girls in our group had vanished to the ladies restroomsand returned some time later wide eyed, sharing guarded conversations with each other. I think it was the classic “life and soul of the party” routine, where somebody burns out like a firework, and then crash and burns spectacularly.
There was a wonderful moment during the evening when the group of perhaps my closest friends at the event crossed paths on the dance floor at the same time as each other, and I shouted something like “THE GANG'S BACK TOGETHER!”, to beaming grins, and further idiotic dancing to a succession of 80s and 90s cheese (the DJ was brilliant).
After wandering home through the deserted streets with good friends in the early hours, my final job of the night was to deliver our babysitter home. We must have looked quite the sighta very pretty 17 year old girl accompanied by a be-suited 40 year old wearing running shoes (I changed from the dress shoes the moment we got back), quietly making our way through the back streetsalone.