What I Did On My Holidays

It's the middle of the week, so I suppose now is an OK time to talk about what happened at the weekend.

Friday was Kirsty's birthday, complete with a party at the flat of said individual. The idea was that everyone would bring their national drink but in the certainty that there'd already be plenty of Carling sloshing about, I decided some Chinese baijiu might be just the thing. Sadly, by the time I got down to Chinatown after work, all the right shops for that sort of undertaking were shut.

Daunted, I set about stage two of the preparations. For, you see, I had been put in charge of the cake. If anyone had been thinking clearly, they might have realised this was unwise. However, against expectations I came through with the goods -- a long oblong spong cake from M&S with HAPPY BIRTHDAY iced on it.

The party itself became increasingly manic, with Kirsty's brother turning up, followed some time later by their cousin with a gaggle of 15-year-old girls. Things were rather noisy. I'm obviously getting old.

Crashing on. On saturday I met up with Kirsty, Sophie, Freddie, Kunal and V at the Cross on York Way. The Cross is a fairly dressy club in some of those classic Victorian underground arched storehouse things you find so many of around King's Cross. things started slowly, though even while sitting down in the far end bar, it was amusing to watch what may have been the most excited girls in the world. Dressed in Essex-girl clobber, they were utterly wild with enjoyment at the fact that they were lurching around spasmodically to R'n'B that could at best be described as mediocre.

The Cross has a nice paved garden section outside, which normally I'd spend a fair amount of time in. On Saturday it was far, far too cold for that, though, so we tended to stay inside. As did everyone else. At about 2 a.m. it was so packed (especially in the central house room) that it was nigh-impossible to move, and there wasn't really much point in doing anything other that going off to have a nice sit down. The best music of the night was probably that played in the room to the far right as one enters, a hard house set with vaguely electronica leanings.

At six in the morning the prospect of getting buses back to Brixton seemed unnatractive, so I joined the others in going back to Sophie and V's place in Stoke Newington. We spent Sunday watching television (including one of the weaker Bond films, For Your Eyes Only) and ordering takeaway.

A fun time, in short, was had by all.