Christmas starts here...

Christmas is coming, and the only thing getting fat is moi. At the moment my exercise regime consists mainly of lifting lots of edible objects to the cake-sized gap in my face. Yum. Even a bout of party dress shopping (one must get one’s priorities right) only made me temporarily stay the tendency to eat chocolate and apple crumble with cream, as I breathed a sigh of relief at ‘squozing’ myself into a size 14 Kazza Mill strapless dress. Oh well, I’m back to the weight/size I was in 1999 – so it’s not all bad. And the dresses that I had to avoid on the grounds of ‘too much booty, not enough fabric’ can come back into circulation. Maybe I’ll try for 1989’s size 10 next year.

First Christmas do was last week Thursday with my team at The Big Time Newspaper (website). Thankfully, there was no need to dress up. We had a meal, where I tried to drink as little as possible, and then once I had some food down me I felt more able to indulge. It’s not about getting lean with work people and embarrassing yourself. I know someone who got very drunk at her office party, and snogged her very married boss, in front of her workmates. Shortly afterwards she got six month’s salary and was asked to leave. Strangely she didn’t think the two incidents were connected. Either way I’d say that was a fucking result!

That would never happen to me. For a start my boss is female. And secondly, when I’ve had a few drinks I’m more likely to hit the dancefloor and dance in a rudely, suggestive manner rather than collar someone I wouldn’t give the time of day to when sober.

After the meal we walked to a pub in Notting Hill. Yes, The Notting Hill, but rest assured, there actually are black folk living in the real NH. We had a couple of drinks at a pub where some weird looking man decided I might find him wildly attractive if he stared at me long and hard enough. Forty-five minutes to be precise. Even after a voddie and tonic and a shot of sambuca, I felt in no way compelled to talk to him.

Like I said, I just wanted to dance. A guy gave us some free passes to a bar up the road, The Gate, so we trotted along there as I was desperate for a boogie. One debate with the doorman later (some people forgot their passes in the pub) we were descending the stairs to Montel Jordan’s ‘This Is How We Do It’.

We had a good little dance and managed to have a conversation that didn’t revolve around work for once. It’s quite cool when you get to know people you work with. What’s strange is that there are people I started off thinking were really nice, that I know now are not. And people I thought who were ‘wrong uns’ and now think they’re great.

Princess Pushy proceeded to get pretty hammered so I went into ‘watch over the drunk friend’ mode, and ended up bringing her home with me. She promptly stained my sofa and her stupidly expensive Reiss top with the extra chilli sauce on the kebab she’d bought. The kebab I waited for in the back of a black cab, while speeching the driver who wanted us to get out and find another cab, because he said we were stopping him from earning.

His maths was obviously shit because him taking us from Kensington was at least a £20 fare, but he was saying he could pick up a couple more fares while he was sat waiting outside Ranoush. I really don’t know what’s got into cab drivers, but it always seems like you have to argue the toss with them. I mean, while we were sitting there, the meters running and he’s getting paid, what exactly is his problem. I just kept him talking, as he tried everything, short of telling to get the fuck out, to get out of the cab. There was no way I was getting out of that warm cab to stand on a street corner in High Street Ken, trying to flag down another.

Don’t these people have any compassion. I won’t even count the number of times black cabs with lights on have driven past me in the early hours of the morning. When I was working in Manchester, an Asian cab driver drover past me. That one really hurt. Two women, on their first day in a strange town and the fucker wouldn’t even stop.

I can drive, but I don’t know how that’s gonna work when I get a new set of wheels. No more boozy nights out for me. Just a tonic water and the thrill of the rave. So looking forward to that.