Despite being deaf in my left ear, in pain whenever I laughed, and unable to drink while taking penicillin, I do believe that that was just the best birthday.
I felt so poorly on Friday that I left work early to do the long drive to Pete’s, and he took the afternoon off work to nurse me when I finally got there. That in itself would be enough to make my weekend, but then after much sleep and much caffeine, I was taken out for a pre-birthday meal to a restaurant so swanky that my menu didn’t show the prices. Hey, I’m easily impressed. And old-fashioned. The food was fantastic, and the company could not be bettered.
On Saturday there were more antibiotics, a pile of presents the size of a caravan, amd meatball subs for breakfast. Then I did more sleeping and more caffeining before taking the train into London for the webloggers christmas party.
Like Gert, I wish I’d been more inclined to circulate, but in fact I found a stool near the bar and sat quietly watching Pete mix Guinness with White Russians and do all the networking for both of us. Between the crazy 7″ heels and the illness-induced high temperature, it would just have been foolish of me to have tried to move.
At my corner perch, I was ably entertained by D, Robin, Mark, Stuart, Stuart and Spengy, and a number of other people who introduced themselves against too much background noise for me to have any idea who they were. There’s a real A-list of people I would have liked to talk to more, so I do hope the funjunkies have started planning the next one. Although perhaps they aren’t, because I believe they ended up out of pocket, having bought all that champagne to make up the bar bill to the requisite minimum. I think they should set up a donations hotline.
Thank you to everyone who bought me soft drinks and/or presents, and I believe Gert has a good photo of the shoes, which she might show us if we ask nicely.
The evening was deeply marred by South West Trains utterly fucking up the late night train service, as has been discussed elsewhere. I think I was on the train before that one. The whole experience was horrendous. There are two morals to this story: never wear shoes with 7″ heels, and always accept people’s invitations to stay the night.
But Robin, who has never met before and didn’t read any of my pre-Uborka ramblings, said you look very happy, Karen. Pete took all the credit, as he ought.