The handbags and the gladrags…

It’s Friday morning and here I am again, writing about the time I jumped on a bandwagon, cause Emily and Ashley told me to. I’ve no idea what I’m going to write really, so let’s just see what happens.

I can start by telling you about a bandwagon I didn’t jump on. I didn’t jump on the Take That bandwagon when one of the popular girls in juniors, Amy, decided she loved them, as did a lot of other girls.

I did, however, jump on the PJ and Duncan bandwagon (that’s Ant and Dec to most of you). I don’t know if they had their own bandwagon, as such, but my friend Hannah liked them, hence I liked them. Her and I went to quite a few of their concerts.

My other friend, Ruth, and I once wrote them a letter before one of their concerts. We must have been about 11 years old. We were all into learning dance routines off Top of the Pops or making up our own so this one time we had tickets to one of their concerts. We had matching outfits ready for the concerts, by the way. O yes, matching outfits. We didn’t do things by halves, Ruth and I. We had black tight fit t-shirts that said ‘Right On’ in silver lettering, a white denim skirt (yes, white denim), black pump things with a bit of a heel, a pale denim jacket and a little black over-the-shoulder handbag thing. All matching. Boy, did we look cool!?

And we wrote them this letter which was something along the lines of “Do you need backing dancers for your next concert in Liverpool because we’re really good and already have dance moves to all your songs so we could be your dancers.” I’m also pretty sure Ruth asked PJ to send a pair of his pants with his reply.

We never got a reply. Which surprises me.

Actually, talking of having matching handbags, Ruth and I jumped on that bandwagon bigtime! We decided, when were maybe 15 years old, that it was time for us to join the world of grown ups and have handbags.

Our first foray into the handbag world was filled with nervousness and there was a lot of discussion about how best to go about it. I think Ruth’s first one was a cute grey fluffy backpack type thing. I’m not sure what mine was, probably more of a shoulder bag. We experimented with what exactly to put in it. I remember us both being like, “What on earth do people have in them?” So Ruth went on a discovery mission and looked through her Mum’s handbag.

I remember her being like, “Ok, she had a pen in there,” so we both ran off, got a pen, put it in our handbags and felt like we were real grown ups cause we had proper handbag items.

We were in such a rush to grow up, Ruth and I. We spent hours poring over Argos and Next catalogues, looking through the ‘home’ section and deciding how we would decorate the flat we would live in. Even down to the design of the taps in the bathroom. We had a little scrapbook where we cut out all the things we saw that we liked and stuck them in then spent ages looking through it all.

When we were about 17 and people had starting ‘going out’ drinking and clubbing, we decided to jump on the ‘clubbing’ bandwagon but in a comparatively rubbish way. My mum and her then-boyfriend were going for a drink at a kind of upmarket fancy pub-club place called Yates’ on Allerton Road (the cool girls at school went all the way into town to the proper over-18s clubs whereas Allerton Road was just a shopping road with one or two gastropubs at the end) so Ruth and I went with them.

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. My first Big Night Out was to a slightly fancy gastropub with my mum.

Mother and boyfriend went and stood a little way off so as not to ruin our Cool Factor and it was at this point that we decided to give ‘drinking’ a go. I think we probably got some kind of bottled soft drink thing with about 0.2% alcohol content that wouldn’t even get a toddler tipsy. I was doing a bit of dancing cause I’d heard that’s what people did when they went out. Ruth, however, was having none of that silliness. She sat on a high stool while I bobbed about and sang “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!” in her face (while also changing the word ‘roof’ to ‘Ruth’ and feeling terribly clever).

I can’t remember if we Talked To Any Boys on this occasion (another bandwagon I was pretty keen to jump on) or even if we stayed out past midnight. I imagine we didn’t. I’m pretty sure we just walked to the car and drove the five minutes back home and got into bed.

When I’d be in school after this occasion and girls would sometimes ask who’d started Going Out Clubbing, I would always pipe up.

“O yeh, I have, yeh. I’m mad for it, me! Can’t stop going out! Yeh, I love all that. The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!”

It was quite a long time, after this one evening out before I actually did start clubbing and we all know how that turned out.

How fast do you chop vegetables?

This is a worry I’ve had for a while now. Are any of you out there the type of people who chop vegetables at five hundred miles an hour? And your hand is a blur. And all your vegetables are small and perfectly shaped? Anyone? Well, can you please show me how to do it please?

On Monday, I am taking a tentative step into the world of food and kitchens and chefs jackets and sharp knives. I am excited. Without a doubt. Because it’s a chance to see whether I really want to work with food properly or whether I just like cooking at home and should stay there.

It’s busy there. Very busy. It’s constant. There’s no standing about and looking around for things to do.

But do I chop vegetables fast enough?! I’m nervous that I don’t. When I pick up a vegetable, there’s no blurred hands or roses carved out of turnips. I just chop it with a knife at an average speed and hope the slices are even. You can definitely see the movement of my fingers. No blur.

I also don’t drink or smoke. At all. Which seems to be the biggest trait of most chefs. On my trial shift last week, the chef expressed surprise that I don’t smoke.

And wine. Wine is a thing I’d like to know about. It’s quite an impressive thing to know about wine. I’d love to be a sommelier. But I don’t want to drink it. I just want to know about it. I mean, what kind of chef doesn’t know about or drink wine?!

I also don’t do well with heat. I get sweaty and uncomfortable. And kitchens are sweaty places. Especially in the summer.

You see? You see how these things worry me?

Monday is the big day. Will I be able to chop a tomato fast enough? That is question on everyone’s (my) lips…

Going ‘up London’

Unusually, when the latest invite came in from a friend to attend birthday celebrations, I said yes. My favoured response – ‘no’ – had escaped me as the table was being booked for the exact number of attendees and there was no way out.

Ok, I thought, I shall go and I shall have fun and I will make sure my friend Naomi comes with me, to prevent me from making a last minute excuse (my usual way).

And so, the scene was set, I was fashionably late, I had been told not to wear flats (dammit) and I was ready. I was going for a night out ‘Up London.’

The highlights of the evening were when the DJ played Sean Paul and Blu Cantrell, Breathe. I think I’ve never been so ecstatic in my life. Also, the gay French boy who was dancing nearby who we tried to make friends with – it was pretty good when he came over and said, ‘You’re lovely ladies but I have to dance with these people. I’m not wearing a ring though.’

That was good.

Waiting for the number 33 bus for 26 minutes in Hammersmith was not good though. I repeat, not good.

I once dated a man who’s name I didn’t know

True story.

It happened about five years ago. I saw him every day when I was at work and thought he was utterly beautiful. When I was at work I had a name badge on.

For about a year, I smiled and tried to start conversations. For a year, he smiled politely but didn’t respond. Then one day I went to get some photos developed and he was standing there in the shop! Thankfully, the photos were of friends and I at a party so I looked presentable enough.

When I went to pick them up, he finally responded to my advances and chatted a little. The chatting developed over the next few months until he finally asked me to go for a drink. He’d been saying my name when talking to me for quite a while by this point. Obviously, having a name badge on made it easy for him. But by the time we were going for a drink, I realised I didn’t know his name and we had been flantering (flirty bantering) for too long for me to now ask him.

When he gave me his number he just wrote it on a peice of paper, without his name. Before our date, I tried going online to the website of the shop where he worked but there was nothing about staff names. And so I went for a drink with a man who’s name I did not know.

When the man gave me a gentle kiss goodnight at the bus stop, I still did not know his name. When I saved his phone number under ‘Man,’ I still did not know his name. When we text back and forth to arrange a second date (which we did not end up going on), I still did not know his name.

When he disappeared off the radar altogether for a year or so, then showed up back at my work needing someone to talk to and saying he’d been married and divorced in the past year and struggled with alcoholism, I still did not know his name.

When he cried a little so I took him somewhere quiet to sit and gave him a hug, I still did not know his name.

When he asked me what he needed to say to prove he was still interested (I, unfortunately, no longer was), I still did not know his name.

And now, while I’m remembering how odd that all was, I still do not know his name!

This one’s for you, Hannah

This post was a request from a friend over the weekend. ‘O, go on,’ she said, encouraging my demise and the potential ruining of the so-far sophisticated and grown-up idea that you all obviously have of me. ‘Write about the time you drank your way through the alphabet. Go on. It’ll be great.’ As the good friend I am, I agreed. ‘I’ll do it for you, Hannah,’ I promised.

I don’t know whether I regret this now. Anyway, here goes….

Once, when I was young and foolish, something happened which probably explains why I no longer drink alcohol.

A friend and I were having a night out. I don’t know where I’d got this idea from but we had decided we were going to drink the alphabet. Essentially this means that you have a drink beginning with each letter of the alphabet and aim for Z without passing out. I think we also tried to make sure we went to places which began with the letters we needed too.

I can’t remember all of them but I remember a few where we had to really use our imagination to find a drink. I think for E, we requested our drinks be ‘extra cold’. I remember, if we couldn’t think of something for a letter, we managed to make sambuca fit for most things by prefixing it with something for the letter we were on. For example, Q was difficult so I think we ordered 2 ‘quite small sambucas’.

Anyway, as you can imagine, it very quickly descended into madness. The last place we ended up was a bar called The Walkabout, sitting on the sofas downstairs (we were safer sitting down, than on our feet) and trying to work out how to do U, V, W, X, Y and Z.

Either we decided to leave or the bar closed but at some point we were leaving. A girl was sitting on a curb, looking like she had taken a pretty bad tumble. There was an ambulance near by. I had done first aid a few years earlier and ran about saying, in what I imagined to be quite a comforting manner, “I’VE DONE A FIRST AID COURSE! I’VE DONE A FIRST AID COURSE!” I then kind of lost interest and wandered (stumbled) off.

At some point, my friend hit that stage where a large intake of alcohol causes you to slightly lose control of your limbs and did a lot of falling around, to the extent that the ambulance put her in the back to check if she had been taking drugs. She hadn’t, as I kept telling them. But given that I probably wasn’t forming my words properly, they decided not to take my word for it.

She was taken to hospital and I went along for moral support. I remember that I was really crying and going to them, “Honestly, it’s just alcohol. Honestly. She’s my friend. I know her.” Blub, blub, blub. Unusually, for a drunk person, I did know what I was talking about. But they wanted to be sure, so in we went.

The journey must have been quite bumpy and I probably made the drug-taking suspicions worse by running off and vomiting in the toilet just after we got to hospital. I obviously thought it was like a TV hospital drama and was hanging on to my friend’s hand and telling her it was going to be ok.

They wheeled two beds into one cubicle cause I think we probably cried and insisted we needed to be together and we promptly passed out.

After a few hours sleep, we both woke, covered in white hospital blankets and unsure exactly what had happened. I don’t think anything had. They must have realised that she wasn’t on drugs but just been glad that we had shut up finally and let us sleep.

Immediately, I realised I didn’t have my jacket or my phone. As we had been to so many different bars while drinking the alphabet, I had no idea which it would be in. My heart sank. I loved that jacket. I raised my head slightly and saw something by my feet. It was my jacket! Hurray! I was so utterly comfortable in the hospital bed that I didn’t want to move but I did. And that’s when I realised it.

Where was my phone?! I thought again of all the bars we had been to and which one I could have lost it in. Panic set in. I told my friend, who was also awake by this point. Feebly, she pointed to my feet where my phone lay, in full view, waiting for me to spot it.

After about ten minutes, I think a nurse came and said we could go when we wanted as they hadn’t found anything to worry about.

We called a taxi, my friend still wrapped in her hospital blanket, and went home, with all our possessions, slightly worse for the wear and minus our dignity.

And that is one of the many reasons I don’t drink.

When people ask me why I don’t drink and I say to them, “It’s just not pretty. Trust me,” they don’t believe me. Or they think I’m exaggerating. Surely everyone gets a little messy when they have a drink? Well, no. Now I’ve said it. If it gets to the point where you’re waking up in HOSPITAL after your nights out…. then maybe it’s time to stop….?

Sometimes I think too much

Something quite exciting happened yesterday. I was in work, doing my thing, when a customer came in. She’s been in quite a lot lately. She’s new to the area. She’s lovely.

I stopped what I was doing and we chatted for a bit, just chitchat. Another customer came in and I served her then went back to chatting to the friendly lady. She got some stuff and, while she was paying, said her and I should go for a drink sometime as she doesn’t know anyone in the area yet.

I immediately was like “That sounds great! Yeh, definitely.” She said she’ll pop in tomorrow and leave her number….

All of a sudden, I started thinking. Bad move. I felt like I’d been asked on a date. I was thinking about what we’d talk about, whether there’d be enough conversation to sustain an entire evening or whether we’d freeze under the pressure. Should I ask a friend to call half an hour in to the ‘date’ so I could pretend something had happened and I needed to leave? What should I wear? Should I just go in something super casual, like the clothes I’ve worn to work that day? Or go a bit fancier? If I go fancy, will it look like I’ve got ridiculously high expectations for the blossoming friendship? I’ve never undertaken a friendship in this way, there’s always been a longer ‘getting to know you’ period before we took the plunge and went for a drink. I’m a little nervous. If we go for a drink and we find that, while it’s pleasant, we don’t have enough in common to become best friends forever, how will we go about reverting back to our original positions as Customer and Deli Assistant? Will there be a lingering awkwardness whenever she comes into the deli, about the fact that we tried, and failed, to be best friends forever?

Clearly I think too much. But sometimes it’s best to have thought these things through first, to be prepared.

In actual fact, what will probably happen is we’ll go for a drink, have a lovely time, then do it again the next week or a few weeks later. And the friendship will continue in this manner. Maybe we’ll invite each other for dinner sometimes. It will probably be quite a nice fulfilling friendship.

But that doesn’t stop my mind working overtime, prior to our first ‘going for a drink’. Any advice on dos and don’ts of a first ‘date’ with a potential best friend?