No I'm not a fucking dormouse

I haven't had much time for blogging this week, due to a combination of going out on staff jollies and actually being really busy at work. I know, me, busy, who'd have thought?

But anyway, I had a fun time last weekend on an Alice In Wonderland night out. It was our friend Alice's birthday, and so she had decreed that the night out would have a dressing up theme in her honour. This was fine, except that as with all these things you have to say 'dressing up optional' so people aren't put off. We like dressing up though, so we thought we'd make the effort, and here was the result of our labours:

In case you can't tell, I am the Cheshire Cat and Chris is the Mad Hatter. Pretty obvious, no? But apparently not to the people who said "Are you the dormouse?" to me on more than one occasion. Of COURSE I wasn't the fucking dormouse, look at my smile! So I glared at them, but this was rather undermined by the perma-happy expression painted onto me.

Here's another picture, complete with inflatable flamingo:

The other girl in it isn't dressed up, but that didn't stop someone saying "I like your wig" (it's her actual hair) which amused me immensely.

Anyway, I mentioned that it was 'dressing up optional'.

"There will be other people dressed up won't there?" we said.

"Oh yes, don't worry," said Alice. "I'm doing face paint and everything."

So we get to the pub and, er, NO ONE is dressed up. And we're stood in a normal pub, full of bemused looking staff and clientele, me in a pink and purple stripey H&M fucking cat print hoodie, and all our friends saying "Oo your costumes are great". Where the fuck are their costumes???

Alice is the one holding the flamingo. Can you see her face paint? It's there, look again. She had painted a SPADE on her face. A spade from a deck of cards, not a shovel. And that was it! That's not fucking face paint!

So I was mortified anyway, and sat in the furthest corner of the pub where people couldn't see me.

A few other people turned up in costume later, and they'd made quite a bit of effort actually, but bizarrely they'd "only come out for a couple" and weren't coming clubbing. Would you really get all dressed up in fancy dress just to come to the pub? So that was a bit odd anyway.

I had a good night once I got going, and we moved on to the Hanbury Club for We Love Pop after a while. I have to say though, £8 to get into the Hanbury Club is ABSURD. It's only a little out-of-the-way kooky club. So I'm not going there again if they're going to charge that for We Love Pop. It's never that expensive for Pop Kraft, I don't know how they can justify it.

Since the weekend I've had a fairly good week at work, but have been a bit rushed off my feet. This is good though because it makes a change from being bored.

We went on a nice staff social/jolly on Wednesday, in the form of a lunch out at Pinocchios and then a trawl around Brighton Museum. Everyone was horrified I'd never been to the museum considering you can nearly see it from my house, and actually I'm really glad we went because it was really, really good. I heartily recommend it to anyone looking for something to do for an hour that's free (well, voluntary donation, i.e. free).

And now it's Friday again and I don't know where the week went. I might allow myself a little drinkie tonight (as you know, I hardly ever drink) as a reward for being so busy and important this week. I deserve it after all.

Work Christmas do

In the end there wasn’t really any drama to report from yesterday’s Christmas do. Nobody was sick, nobody was asked to leave or told they were making a scene, and Abby didn’t even do the skit she’s been preparing for the last 8 months.

We had a nice meal though. I had tikka halloumi kebab for my starter, and then my main was potato rosti topped with spinach topped with a poached egg topped with melted cheese, which was yummy. And the dessert was doughnut straws with chocolate dipping sauce and vodka sozzled cheeries, mmmm. Plus we got a good half bottle of wine each, and it was all free! Well not free, but I’m not paying, and that amounts to the same thing.

I also had a new and enjoyable experience at the restaurant (no I didn’t put my hand in anyone’s bra), I fed a baby for the first time:

It’s only the second or third time I’ve even held a baby, so I was a bit unsure what to do when it came to combining holding AND feeding. I was assured though that if I just shoved the correct end of the bottle into his mouth and tipped it up a bit, he’d know what to do. Luckily for me he seemed more experienced than I was at it. I actually really liked it, and he was very good and wasn’t sick on me. And then he sat on my lap for quite a while and occasionally tried to hurl himself off sideways through general wriggling.

While I don’t think that I’m anywhere near wanting a baby properly yet, I did enjoy having one for half an hour, and it made me think that maybe I will want one at some point. For now though I think I’m happy with occasional cuddles and feeding of other people’s babies, with the option of giving them back if they start to make unusual noises or turn green or anything. I think I’d make a good uncle for a start, and then maybe a dad in five years or so, or whenever I’m ready to give up on all the selfish aspects of my lifestyle in favour of a small pink blob wrapped in a blanket.

Anyway, after our meal a few of us went for a couple of drinks at the pub down the road, and then people slowly trickled off until there were just four of us left. Then by 9.30 we’d had enough too, so we mooched off home WITHOUT being asked to leave, so clearly an improvement on last year.

I was in work at 8.15 this morning, feeling fine (good old vodka, always my friend), and now I’m just dossing around waiting for our email and internet to start working properly again. It sort of works, but the internet takes 5 minutes to load any pages, and everything is just very slow and intermittent. So I am plumbing new depths of unproductivity today!

Christmas Christmas Christmas

I have my work Christmas lunch tomorrow, I'm quite looking forward to it. Last year it got quite messy, and I'm hoping this one will be equally entertaining.

It's a little dangerous I think to have the Christmas lunch on a Wednesday when lots of us have got to come in and have meetings and things on Thursday, but it also makes it quite amusing because you get to see what state everyone is in. We're quite lucky here that the university pays for the lunch too, and we get the afternoon off to go to it. In my previous jobs although you might get the afternoon off you always had to pay for it yourself.

I'm hoping also that the meal might get me a bit more in the Christmas mood, I'm not really feeling it yet. This is despite having put up a Christmas tree last week and having done almost all my Christmas shopping.

Last year we had a nice meal out, and then about half of us went to the pub for a couple of drinks afterwards. Having started drinking with cocktails at 1pm though, it was inevitable that we would peak quite early, and by 8 o'clock I was flagging. This ended up being entirely fortuitous though, because about 20 minutes after I went home the rest of our group got thrown out for being 'drunk and aggressive'. So hurrah, I was spared the ignominy of being ejected from a pub by someone half my age when it was still only early evening.

I shall record on here any highlights of our excursion, including any instances of arrest, incontinence or emesis. We're such a highclass bunch...

A day spent up back passages, and a picture of Magenta eating

Yesterday we went on one of our 'staff development/team building outings', which basically means we went on a jolly in work time. We went on a guided tour of Brighton's back passages and alleyways that was about two hours of walking down lots of cool and picturesque passages that you'd never know were there, and then we had lunch in the Pavilion Gardens before getting the bus back to work. All in all we were out for about four hours, so clearly it wasn't worth doing any work once I got back...

I had thought the walk might be a bit boring and take us down some of the narrow bits of the Lanes that I've been through hundreds of times, but it wasn't and I actually really enjoyed it. There are some amazing tiny little houses with cottage gardens tucked away in the centre of Brighton, some of which you can only get to on foot, and the tour guide had lots of stories and anecdotes about each place. God I must be getting old actually if I'm starting to enjoy guided walks... I'll be painting watercolours and becoming a member of the National Trust next.

It's really good actually that we go and do things like this at work. They don't have to arrange things like this, but they do and it makes you feel a bit more valued (and like you've got a way dossy job). We have previously been on a wine tasting, to the cinema, and are currently looking into arranging a boat trip from the Marina.

For Shosh's benefit, as she hasn't heard of a Venus Fly Trap before, here is a picture of Magenta:



She is currently eating three flies, and you can see that the traps at the top and on the left are sealed shut as she dissolves them with her special enzymes. I still find her fascinating and terrifying.