Hypatia Avenue

"Would you like some coffee H?"
"..."
"Is that a no?"
"..."
"That face you just pulled looks like you really don't want any coffee. Tea?"
"Uggghhh..."
"Hot chocolate? A smelly fruit tea? Some water? [pause] Are you alright? Are you sure don't want anything?"
"I think I'll have a glass of my special fizzy drink...[fumbles packet of Resolve]"

Okay, so I spent most of Sunday night giggling and hiding from Taxloss (sorry dude, but it's still funny), completely off my face on improv comedy and white wine. Spent most of Monday wishing I was dead. Woke up Tuesday morning feeling vaguely more alive, then toodled off to the British Library to meet Former Flatmate A and to see some exhibitions there. Former Flatmate B turned up and we took ourselves off to a bar nearby where we witnessed some performance poetry, live jazz and lovely dogs. I ended up drinking far too much white wine and shrieked non-stop with my old pals for two or three hours solid, then realised the performance poet was someone I knew from my early years at the Royal Court (she knew me when I was waiting for my GCSE results for chrissakes!) and we had a merry though blurred and oddly repetitive reunion at the bar.

Then I found myself alone with the lovely dog who kept leaping up onto the sofa to shake my hand and nuzzle me with his wet nose and I got talking to his photographer owner, to whom I somehow promised to take care of the lovely dog while he's away in Barcelona over Christmas and made extravagant plans to become a photographer too, mainly of funerals and "the beauty of homeless people. And bricks. Walls look great in photographs."

It's taken me until today to feel less like cutting out my own liver to distract myself from the crippling hangover. I am ashamed. I will be more so if I wake up Christmas morning and find the lovely dog sitting on my doorstep with a sign saying "Will you be my mummy?" Oh dear.

But yesterday was fun! Was assigned to go to a day-long cultural diversity meeting (yes, groan, roll eyes etc) and was prepped very thoroughly on how agonising and boring it would be... looking over the agenda for the day I realised my old witch-boss was likely to be representing her evil empire at the same event and so I was prepared for an agonisingly boring and anxious "blast from the past" kind of day.

However, so well prepared was I yesterday, I held my head up high and strolled in with a stack of emails/ electronic postcards from Lucifer who is currently touring China, Japan, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong etc. cunningly disguised as the documents for the day for me to read in dull moments, armed myself with a strong coffee and before I sat down, I located the organisers. I determinedly walked up to them and asked straight off if anyone from the Office of Doom had arrived yet. Nice Organiser said only one person had come, pointed to the film crew and lo and behold, all my anxiety vanished for it was none other than the Chilean there and we had a merry, huggy, shouty reunion over the various bits of oh-so-familiar camera kit. The day was spent lurking in a corner with the film crew, gossiping, smoking and drinking too much coffee, just like the old days. :: sigh ::

Found out the witch-boss was due to inflict her atrocious presence on the evening section of the meeting and so I fled as quickly as I could to the safety of my pretty Georgian basement flat and my beloved Taxloss and Boatie Flatmate, pleased as always to have left her shitty company. Pah.

Incidentally, the meeting was held in a Holiday Inn Express. Holiday Inn Express - we're talking Alan Partridge territory here. Coupled with the excruciating "cultural diversity workshop" in the afternoon where we were reassured that it's okay to be white but try not to make a big deal out of it, it was all in all a variably good-awful-fucking ridiculous day. Crap sandwiches too.

How has your week been, dear readers?