15th September 2011

Went to Dublin for a meeting today.  It involved getting up early.  I don’t *do* early.  People should know better than to arrange meetings for me at 10am, much less meetings at that stupid time in a whole other country.  Who does that?  Who?

Thankfully I was awake early – the pain from yesterdays debacle acting as a natural alarm clock, so I was able to haul my backside out of bed and on to Aer Lingus.

In an effort to wake up at this ungodly hour, I mainlined coffee all the way from Paddington Station in London to Dawson Street in Dublin, but didnt have time to go to the loo before my meeting because my meetee was in the reception when I arrived.  Damn him and his flirting with the receptionist.

So I sat for the next 90 minutes in exceptional agony waiting for an acceptable moment to put my hand up and request permission to go to the toilet.  The moment never arrived so my bladder slowly imploded as I tried to win some business.   It’s potentially a decent client and all I could think of was that if I’m going to play with the big dogs, I can’t pee like a puppy.

Stupid puppy.

14th September 2011

Worst accident ever.  Not in an injurious sense of course, don’t be daft....it was the worst ever in that I was humiliated beyond belief.  

Worse than when I walked the length of Chiswick High Road with my skirt tucked into my knickers (thank God for thick black opaques).  Much worse than when I drunkenly cried at the student disco because the openly gay guy didnt fancy me and wouldn’t snog me. 

The day started out, as most of these do, quite innoculously – it was brisk, sunny and there was a cheer in the air as I sauntered through Soho.  I was perambulating at a slow to moderate pace, taking my merry time and enjoying some window shopping

As I peered at leather banana hammocks in the Soho Sex Shop, I clocked two fast talking fast walking ladies and a dog that were rapidly approaching me.  I panicked....I had only about 10 seconds to decide what to do.

Do I stay in the centre of the footpath, do I go tight on the corner, hugging the edge or do I speed up and leave them in my wake?  I imagine these are the rapid fire decisions that Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton have to consider every other Sunday.  But this was new to me.  Pressure.  Head wreck, and a proper blight on an otherwise lovely afternoon.

In the end, as they descended down upon me, the cocker spaniel looking well fierce as he lollopped closer with his tongue dribbling excitedly, I decided to hug the wall and let them pass. And thats what I did....I put my back to the wall and pressed against it to give them space to pass.  Except it wasn’t a wall.  It was a swing door.

What happened next felt like super slow motion, I fell UP three steps, backwards...stumbling one at a time, and right through the inside door of an Italian restaurant.  On colliding with the second door, my balance, to which I was precariously hanging on as I reversed up the entrance porch, left me entirely and I fell FLAT ON MY ARSE at the foot of a waiter who was carrying a plate of pasta to an otherwise unsuspecting patron.

In the next bazillion seconds.  Nobody moved.  Everybody just stared, wondering why a girl reversed through the door on her buttocks.  Then the obligatory “are you okays” started....I wasn't; but there was no way I was staying around longer than absolutely necessary, so I legged it....noticing as I did that my little finger was at about a 60 degree angle to the rest of my hand and swelling up rapidly.  Didnt care.  I have another hand.  Wanted to get away.

I pushed my bone back in place...excruciating for about 3 seconds, but I know from experience that this is the only way and I went into Starbucks a few doors down to ask for their first aid kit....they were kind enough to give it to me, but there was little or nothing of use to me, and so it transpired that I took my humiliated, bruised corpse back home with my broken finger held in place with an eye patch.

Apart from that, it’s been about ten days since a shag...and my vagina is drying up.

13th September 2011

After yesterday stomach related debacle, I was still quite fragile, and definitely pissed off at nature and the interior workings of the human body.  That still didnt stop me making my way to the corner shop, slowly like an invalid, to buy some bread and butter for toast.  I love toast.

In fact toast was the highlight of my day today.  Well second highlight.  Judge Judy was first.  But I’m in love with her, so that’s a given.

12th September 2011

Was supposed to go to Jersey for work today.  Oh my, how that didn’t happen.   Whatever prawn based sandwich nonsense I ate in Barcelona airport yesterday was regurgitated in London today.  Spectacular.  At one point I thought I was going to die, and at the end of the day I was quite surprised to find that I still had the normal complement of oesophagases and kidneys and such because there was a definite risk of them disappearing down the toilet as well.

11th September 2011

Today was just disco.

Flew home from Barcelona and although I have no idea how it happened, an old dude next to me ended up reading a Martin Amis sex scene to me as we took off.  Can I just say how awkward it is when the unfamiliar elderly know about things like fornication and blowjobs.  Hideous.

At first I erred on the side of polite disinterest, but he wouldn’t stop, so I had to gently reprimand him for his inappropriateness.

As it turns out, this wasn't the extent of his horny geriatricness.  This zimmer-frame botherer had a filthy mind and a roving hand, because I was napping on the flight and woke up with a tickle near my left knee.  Went to scratch it, and it was a veiny putrid hand, patting my leg.  And not in an accidental way. 

Now its generally accepted I have the moral boundaries of an alleycat, but this was a combination of surprising and unacceptable.  I didn’t know what to do, so I huffed, picked up his hand and returned it to his own lap,  said "Excuse Me" unnecessarily loudly and made sure I stayed awake for the rest of the trip.

Well handled, I feel.

10th September 2011

Okay.  I learned something new today.  When “they” say do not mix valium with alcohol, they’re not kidding.  Those anonymous order-givers know what they’re talking about.

Prior to the presentation I had taken a valium – not necessarily because I was nervous ...surprisingly I wasn’t overly so, but because I have a tendency to speak too quickly and am known to be excitable under pressure – neither of which are useful attributes in a public speaking scenario when you’ve spent two days eating copious volumes of Serrano ham and desperately trying to shoehorn a year’s worth of rambling knowledge into 25 tightly focussed power point slides.  Definitely, some pharmaceutical mollification was in order.

The presentation was okay.  Admittedly there was no heckling or jeers, but I was not at all satisfied with my round of applause...it was altogether underwhelming and not at all to my liking.  I was expecting at a minimum a standing ovation and some curtain calls.  Disappointingly they didn’t arrive.

Regardless though, I was in such a fabulously medicated mood that I didn’t quite give a damn about anything, except maybe giggling and being first in line for the chorizo at the lunch buffet.  While this wasn’t quite propofol, and I certainly did “self-administer”, when the end-of-conference wine was poured by the exhibitors just after lunch, I partook in a large glass. 

Mistake.  Big mistake.  Huge.

In the space of five minutes, I went from mellow to fucking demented.  I was rushing about the conference hall, gathering pace as I went, legs moving independently from my body.  I was like Road Runner.  I couldn’t be stopped.  People tried, but they failed. I had neither reason nor logic to my movements, popping up here and there, chattering at a speed and pitch that only dogs could hear. Staccato movements from person to person, random witterings.  I made no sense whatsoever.

It was brutal.  

And of course, what goes up, must come down.  And so came the inevitable crash. 

There was a big party in Opium del Mar.  Allegedly there was drinking on the beach, bonfires, clubbing downstairs, general magnificence associated with a party encompassing a club, a private bar and a beach in Barcelona.  I wouldn’t know though – I had taken a nap before going to the party.  I lay down at 6.15pm, alarm set for 6.50pm.  Make up done, party clothes on, hair curled.  I was taking a quick rest after along day.

I woke up at 5.40am – almost 12 fricking hours later.  Barcelona was over.  Time to go home.

9th September 2011

There was a party tonight.  A big party.  I didn’t go.  I figured that I would work and prepare so that during my presentation tomorrow I would give off the appearance of somebody who knows what they’re doing.  I life in fear of “getting caught” but I was damned if that was going to be in front of a group of strangers in a darkened conference hall.

So I didnt go to the party. This was a major decision – being that I always go to the party.  All the parties.  But I know that there is a bigger party tomorrow.  And I fully intend going to that – being that by then I’ll have already convinced the group of strangers who show up to my presentation, that I am not a horses ass, and as such am deserving of a massive night out.

Besides, I like Barcelona. I’ve said that.  But part of the reason is that I have never been to Barcelona and not had sex.  I haven’t had sex in ages.  Not since I made fuck with Guy1....and right at this moment I am beginning to regret being hasty with him.  How bad is the Daily Mail anyway?

So I have had no sex in far too long and feel that I am going through a process of revirgination.  I am pretty sure that Lady Gaga has a song about it and I’m putting my faith in this warm Spanish city to rectify this god-awful situation of unwelcome chastity.