my stuff
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winter mornings and thank yous.
It’s -4 ½ degrees outside today. Snowy, cold, just like winter should be. Hurrah.
A new girl started in the office yesterday. She’s just moved up from London. ‘I’m just waiting on winter kicking in, everybody says it’s a really cold winter up here’. Hmm. This wintery enough for ya?
The thing is, Scotland always has this reputation of being absolutely freezing. And maybe I’ve developed a thick Scottish hide so I don’t notice it, but our winters aren’t actually that bad. Yes, they’re cold, yes they’re very dark and wet and very depressing. But the image that people have of Scotland being in a blanket of thick snow from November till March just isn’t true. Maybe once upon a time, and yes, maybe further up North, but not really. Canada and lots of parts of the US are much more snow covered and cold and proper wintery than we are here.
But today is proper winter. It makes me want to take the day off and go back to the house and snuggle up on the sofa watching shite on TV and drinking hot chocolate.
So. Today was NOT a cycling into work day. Bandito gave me a lift in, which was lovely. But it meant I was over an hour early for work so I went to a wee café along the road and had a nice cappuccino and read the paper. I had to drink my coffee fast though because I was bursting for the loo – not something they have, seeing as it’s just a little take away.
God, why on earth am I telling you this?
Anyway, before you start thinking ‘hey, wait a minute, this is an entry about absolutely fuck all whatsoever’, I’ll tell you about the Burns Supper on Saturday.
After much, MUCH talk about whether we should come of our detox for the night or not, we woke up on Saturday morning and knew there was no hope in hell that we’d be able to go round to a Burns’ supper and not drink, especially not with the crowd that we were going to be with. Sound pathetic to you? Sound like I’m in denial about how much booze means in my life? Yeah well, ahem. It wouldn’t have been fun put it that way. Apart from anything else, we would have brought round loads of fruit juice and never heard the end of being on the bloody detox and hten we’d be forced into drinking and then we’d feel really guilty for drinking everybody else’s booze.
Just one of the many reasons we went onto re-tox for the night.
It was a great night, we only had a couple of bottles of wine between the two of us, so we weren’t steaming drunk, just nicely toasted. By the time the poetry came out, I was right up for it.
Thank you EVERYBODY who left me suggestions about poetry – what a well read bunch you are. Let me see if I can thank everybody properly. Thank you pablo (there was a John Hegley book on the table so quite a few of his went about), smedindy, yelayna, saru-san, mntgirl, goingloopy, teranika (for the Wendy Cope tip. Never heard of her before, but loved the bits I looked up), onewetleg - I read out your ‘glad to be a woman’ one. I couldn’t find the man one, I thought it’d be funny for Bandito to read that one. Oh well. kiosh, kimstry (nice to meet you, don’t think I’ve heard from you before), kungfukitten (and nice to meet you too! I read a poem called Love Story or something by Dorothy Parker from a friends book, thanks for the tip!), vicola, lsmonkey - I got confused, I knew you’d recommended someone but I ended up doing a Ted Hughes thinking it was the same person and it was depressing as all hell and totally changed the tone of the evening. Whoops! Should’ve looked at my comments before going along!! sopeculiar, ottodixless and finally Avid Reader – whoever you are. I ended up doing your poem before I got too tipsy. It went down a treat so thank you too.
I also did 1 Burns poem – a toast to wanton-ness and I did another Scottish one that I had tucked away for a special occasion. So it was a great night and thank you for taking time to leave me a note.
There’s not an awful lot more to report. I had a killer headache on Sunday which is quite good actually because it reminded me of the down side to boozing, so hopefully the next 4 weeks should be a lot easier now I’ve had that reminder.
And that’s it. See, reduced boozing means I’m boring as all shit. I’ll make some stuff up next time….
9:35 am - 31 January 2006
