Well I kicked off my bank holiday weekend last night, despite the fact that unlike most people in the UK, who are going to be having four days off work, I will have to do some work on Saturday. At best this will be making a few phone calls to people at around 7am to check that all is in order with everyone that is working (well not everyone in the UK that is working, obviously, that would take hours if not days – just the six managers working for me) and they will all say yes it’s fine. Worst case scenario is that I will be rung at some ungodly hour, probably about 3am or so to be told it’s all going horribly wrong. I will do some phoning and try to make it better, then be phoned again about an hour and a half later to be told everything is still wrong and then be phoned again a couple of hours later to be told that the world is caving in and end up working all day.

That’s not going to stop me, I have a weekend of fun ahead, starting with heading down to Bournemouth for S’s birthday, once I have got work sorted out tomorrow. Saturday night is Godskitchen at the BIC – for those of you not familiar with this, it is in fact not a restaurant run by a deity held in a pen shaped building. It is a hard house night at the Bournemouth International Centre. I haven’t been to such a night for about five years (I think the last instance was a night at the Opera House in Bournemouth on my birthday which resulted in a rather annoying argument – that’s another rather funny story about how illogical us women are). I am hoping I haven’t turned into a granny before my time, I’m looking forward to it for a start, however I am concerned about my ability to stay awake until the wee small hours. Sunday is sleep and recovery (hopefully involving lots of sunshine, sitting on the beach and at least one ice cream) and Monday will be spent with S’s family in Southampton.

But as I was saying the Easter weekend kicked off last night, firstly by meeting N for a couple of pints over in East London. This time he’d located a decent pub mere metres from the exit of Bethnal Green tube station, which was fine by me, having decided to ignore the fact that my feet were killing from a day of walking many miles and deciding to wear pretty high heeled shoes anyway (They were new and I had been looking forward to wearing them all day!). As closing time drew nearer we contemplated going elsewhere to get a pint but as the only thing the barmaid and a drunken bloke at the bar could recommend was walking a couple of miles to Brick Lane, N decided that that was a little too far for one more drink, and considering his knackeredness it was quite impressive he’d stayed awake this long (I will assume my intellectually stimulating conversation was responsible). So with that he walked me the ten feet to the tube station and sent me on my way.

I got to Bank, got off the tube, walked to the Northern Line to head back home, when a thought struck me. What was I doing? It was AA’s birthday and they were probably still out. Which meant I could still have my fifth pint that I felt I needed. I headed back to the Central Line (and very nearly back to Bethnal Green – I realised I was on the wrong platform just in the nick of time) and made my way to Tottenham Court Road. From there I used my trusty phone (and the wonderful search engine that is Google) to get me to their location. I discovered it was shutting and so the bouncer wouldn’t let me in. I have learnt over time that fighting with bouncers is not a good move, generally shouting at them and telling them that they are wrong will in fact not get you any closer to your aim of entering the establishment that they didn’t want you to go into before you turned into some kind of annoying, and possibly aggressive, idiot. So I said that was fine, and that I understood, and that I would just get their attention from the outside of the door. After 30 seconds or so of me waving through the window like a loony and not getting anyone’s attention the bouncer must have realised I wasn’t actually going to leave until I did get their attention, so he let me – the insane one – in. I discovered that people were considering going home and it wasn’t even 12.30am!!! I was horrified. I had already consumed four pints – but goddammit I wanted my fifth, N had denied me due to his tiredness, and now it looked like the guys I thought I could rely on were calling it a night. Thankfully the birthday boy had some sense in him. AA and A (AA’s best mate) were off for a Chinese, and invited me along. So I went. One, so far that day I had existed on three cereal bars and four pints of lager so food was probably a very very good idea right now. Two, it was AA’s birthday and so far I hadn’t celebrated much of it with him (about 10 minutes of it in all) so it would give me an opportunity to make up for my crappiness. Three, most importantly, a restaurant would have more beer. Yes a Chinese sounded fantastic.

After an unsuccessful attempt to get a table at the Crispy Duck on Wardour St (I recommend you do try – it’s just very busy at midnight!) we ended up at the Red Dragon Restaurant and Karaoke on Gerrard Street (however when we enquired they said that tonight it was not karaoke, just Red Dragon Chinese, they played none stop Chinese karaoke songs so we had no chance of joining in). D, T, C and TM joined us (they missed the last tube and Chinese was a more appealing option than a night bus to Brixton). So we ordered lots of food, it was very good. Do not take this as a sound recommendation, please bear in mind the amount of alcohol consumed, and that sometimes after that much alcohol, kebabs are considered haute cuisine. It may have been very good though, I will go back when sober and confirm. And I got my beer. Which was definitely very good.

As we were paying (careful not to let AA part with a penny of his money) and finishing the last of the green tea, the Backstreet Boys turned up on the karaoke screen, which I pointed out with great glee. An English karaoke song! A and I decided to start singing, and soon after so did (most of) the rest of the table, and then everyone else on the first floor of the restaurant (about twelve or so people) joined in too. Even the waiter who had told us “no karaoke” was singing along! I had an enormous sense of wellbeing, we had created a wonderful moment of togetherness and fun for all of us in the room. I’m not sure AA quite saw it that way, I think being sat between A and I singing didn’t help matters, however we made him sit through it right until the end, when everyone (probably lead by A and I) cheered!

And so we stumbled out into the night, and through China Town and Soho to find a bus in Trafalgar Square, which proceeded to brake down the other side of Trafalgar Square. We found another bus… and eventually a bed, and then crashed out and had a lovely long sleep.

All in all a good start to an Easter weekend. Alcohol, sleep and fun. Plus today has been chilling out, sun and reading (‘Yes Man’ Danny Wallace, from what I’ve read of it so far I definitely recommend!) Will report back on the rest of the weekend… hopefully it will just get better and better!