Sunday 10 January 2010

A night out minus clothes and Snow

15st 6lb, 14.5 units. I spent most of the night suffering agonies of indigestion, made worse by the knowledge that they were thoroughly deserved. I was also racked by nightmares about mythical PR disasters involving clients I have not worked for or thought about in years. Please God let this not be some sort of premonition.

I earned the stomach pains by taking Mrs H out for a large and delicious dinner at a reasonably local pub – something I knew to be a mistake even before we embarked on the trip. But the poor soul wanted and deserved a night out, and I felt that something must be done to make up for the theatrical event in London tonight to which she had been so much looking forward, before I wimped out of travelling to it on account of a little bit of snow. Or, to be fair to me, on account of my long experience of how the British transport system is liable to crumple into a state of complete collapse shortly after the first snowflake hits the ground.

The title of the show we missed as a result of the weather? A ballet called The Snow Queen. Now there’s irony for you.

Dinner was excellent, but I think I ate rather too many courses of it and I know for an undisputed fact that I consumed far too much alcohol to help it along (see the day’s estimated unit intake, above. Note to Cheshire Constabulary: it was not me who drove home afterwards). We entertained ourselves by observing our fellow diners, being particularly fascinated by the young lady who had come out to celebrate her birthday in her underwear, or at any rate a grey body stocking topped only by a micro-skirt. Perfectly normal behaviour on a hen night in my home town of Newcastle, of course, but perhaps a slightly eccentric choice for supper with one’s parents and granny in a Cheshire country pub. I finally concluded that she must be a very tall child rather than the young woman I had initially assumed, but then I spotted the member of the party who was evidently her younger sister enthusiastically necking an Irish coffee. Perhaps, even outside its northern footballer, WAG and Kerry Katona belt, Cheshire simply reaches depths of oddness I had never expected.

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