Will you be my totally awesome girlfriend?

Toast

Last night there was a small gathering of some of the regular characters on the blog. MyLoveLifeInYourHands was around with the visiting Marni (also known as Blossom on this blog), FleetStreetFox was celebrating her birthday and some of the Schwingalong Girls were out.

I had invited the Theatre Producer along too. We were going a fancy pants party, but it didn’t start till later so we joined the gang in a pub for a few drinks before the bash.

There was a lot of giggling. The girls were all exceedingly well dressed, lots of floaty dresses, power pencil skirts and some-what optimistically shorts. Optimistic because the weather hasn’t been exactly great.

Everyone got on very well.

The whole affair was  terribly pleasant, but also had a hint of MyLoveLifeInYourHands and I presenting girls we like to Her Royal Foxyness for judgement.

I had tried to get Biscuit to appear too with Jen (who has already been fox-judged) but he made up some rubbish excuses.

After a few drinks the Theatre Producer and I walked over to our swanky party. There was free champagne and a BBQ with proper grown-up food. Not tiny canapés. This was a very pleasant surprise and so we set about eating and drinking slightly too much while playing ‘Is that a famous person?’

While we were playing this game the bar ran out of  pink champagne, so we had to slum it and switch to normal coloured champagne. Tough times.

Some time later we went back to the Theatre Producers place, which incidentally is a proper grown-ups house rather than the ‘Lost Boys nest’ that Biscuit and I live in.

She gave me the presents she’d got me in America, they were all silly, pointless and lovely. The stand-out items were three water-pistols that were shaped like dinosaurs. She said she’d got three so she, Biscuit and I could use them at the same time. I thought that was unbelievably sweet.

We chatted, I was given the guided tour and ended up staying the night.

The next morning I quizzed her on important facts. I’d already decided that I wanted her to be my girlfriend so I was just clearing up some final details which included her views on white chocolate, avocados, robots and David Bowie’s trousers in Labyrinth.

She passed all the questions and so I asked her, “So Theatre Producer, will you be my totally awesome girlfriend?’

She said yes. She also said that she’d never been properly asked out like that before. Men of the world, up your game.

When she was out of the room making me a cup of tea I punched the air and said ‘Yesssssssssss’.

Marriage percentage: 56% – Steadily rising.

Biscuit should start looking decidedly nervous if he has any sense.

Why a chap should never get too mashed at his own house party

Toast

Regular readers may have noticed that Biscuit has developed some what of a habit.

 He kisses people. He kisses commentors, he kisses friends of mine and he kisses strangers.

He is a very kissy man. This is important to the story.

We had our house-warming at the weekend. It was a very intoxicating affair. We made space cakes. I’m not really cool enough to do that sort of thing regularly.

I think I’m still not into double figures for the amount of times I have eaten naughty space cakes.

I always have a great time but given that I’m now in my third decade I can’t really pretend to be hardcore.

I’d baked quite a lot of ‘special herbs’ into a series of slightly flat cupcakes for our guests to enjoy. We had no idea of what a suitable amount would be but probably a couple of cakes.

I didn’t stick to the recommended level. The spaz.

The whole day was spent frantically cleaning the house and  sorting things out for the party, and then we waited for the guests to arrive. I ate a cake. Then I decided to eat another cake, and another one, and another.

A few hours later was, well I wasn’t in full command of my mental abilities, but I was having a lovely time. In total I ate seven cakes.

An old female friend turned up and we chatted away in the kitchen. I’ve been out with her before and had a great time in a boozy way but I don’t really fancy her.

She had spent most of the night bumping into me and doing various other ‘subtle’ moves to indicate her interest – she had eaten a couple of cakes and drunk a few gin and tonics.

I wasn’t really that interested, she is lovely and all that but she is in the friend space of my mind.

Anyway, the bumping and practically sitting on my lap had got pretty bad. I was bouncing around the room trying to avoid it mostly. You know in a polite English way.

Biscuit appeared in the kitchen and then she started touching his hand and making eye movements that seemed to tell me to leave, so I left to leave them alone, because I could guess what was going to happen next. It’s what Biscuit does.

A minute or two later she reappeared, and sat on my lap and we ended up kissing.

I can remember my thoughts at the time  (I made a note of them on my iPhone in the loo) so here they are unabridged. I would like to preface them with the fact that I was very mashed, I have never been more mashed.

‘Only kissing her because I didn’t want Biscuit to kiss her because he always snogs all my friends. Snogging her was a bad idea.’

We ended up doing some more snogging in the back room, the whole time with ‘this is a really bad idea’ rushing through my head in the way that only stoned people can really understand.

At about 10pm I crashed out in bed utterly ruined but having a whale of a time rubbing my face on my bedspreads. She left a bit later, but I don’t remember her going because I was spending some time gaining a new understanding of Pink Floyd.

The next day I apologised to her and awkward conversation with a chum about my behavior, but it seems to be okay. I hope we can still be friends.

My conclusion? Winners don’t do drugs

Geishas, Uzis and thick mustaches

Toast

The Wed or Dead wager is a competition. Biscuit has been reminding me of this quite a lot since he has been in the lead. The git.

So with that in mind I went to the party with a simple goal. Meet a nice girl, talk to her a bit and then marry her. I wasn’t expecting to do all of this in one night. These parties are legendarily long affairs, but that would be pushing it.

The birthday girl was resplendent in a smashing frock. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in ‘casual clothes’. Her mother is the same, always perfectly turned out. It was lovely catching up with the birthday girl and her family.

She was on top form with her new chap who looks like a sexy Bond villain (The one Daniel Craig played cards with) but with out the whole evil thing.

The food was beautiful as ever and I had lots of fascinating conversations about Iran with chaps sporting amazingly thick mustaches.

Sadly my plan to find suitable marriage material was scuppered by the mix of people. Instead of being full of charming single ladies like last year, The place was absolutely infested with couples. Yuck.

Fun couples, but couples none the less. It was a huge mix of ages too which made it seem like much more of an occasion, also there was cake. Cake improves everything.

The couples were at least well dressed and interesting if not suitable for the wager. I chatted to an actor who specialised in death.

He has died in every film and TV show he has ever appeared in. He was very funny about it though and was quite happy to demonstrate his top five favourite deaths. His ‘executed by Uzi’ was especially good.

I caught up with some other chums that I’d not seen in ages, I really wish that I would get to see them more than just once a year.

I got absolutely cornered by someone’s great-aunt who gave me an hour-long pep-talk about life interspersed with taking photos of me and telling me I was pretty. I often get cornered like that (the pep-talk not the photgraphs) and I never know how to escape.

Later on a chap appeared who described his look as ‘male geisha seen through a cypher of the 80s’. Just take a moment to think about great that would have looked , and then imagine it better. You aren’t even close.

I wish I had managed to take a photo of him. I might see if the Birthday girl has a shot of him I can share. He was so special.

The one single person I did end up chatting to (for about four hours) was a dancer originally from Leeds.

She was supposed to have a date for the party but he cancelled at the last-minute because he had walked into a screw and had a stupid mark on his head. Apparently he was so shy about it that he refused to be seen in public until it went down. I suggested he just wear a hat, and the message was sent via text, but he didn’t go for it.

So she was on her own and we talked about all sorts of things for ages. She was lovely and I’m sure we will go for lunch at some point, but it wasn’t one of those intense party connections that make your skin tingle.

M20% – She had beautiful Roberto Cavalli boots so that is worth at least a few extra percentage points.

Lessons learned:

• If I wear a waistcoat with a pocket watch I become intoxicatingly alluring to women old enough to be my grandmother
• More chaps should dress like ‘male geisha seen through a cypher of the 80s’
• I need to go to more parties with interesting, single people at them.
• Biscuit is definitely in the lead at the moment.