I am sitting peacefully beside the lifts in the Midland Hotel.
I am the only member of our little group who is actually sitting peacefully, because everybody else has gone dashing off, armed to the teeth with Nerf guns and bullets, to capture the flags.
Actually there are two flags, and they are not flags, they are scarves, and they are hidden somewhere in the hotel. The winning team has to have retrieved them both.
I am the Respawning Point. If you are shot often enough you have got to come back down to the fourth floor and have a piece of fudge to make you feel better.
It is difficult to hide two massive scarves in plain view where they will not be found. Last year I tied one to the housemaid’s trolley. Mark found it and gave her a fiver not to mind being shot.
It is very quiet at the moment. Every now and again some troubled-looking guests get out of the lift, brushing Nerf bullets from their overcoats, so I can tell that the game is in full swing, but it is not yet here.
LATER:
Obviously the game arrived with me at that point because I stopped writing, and now I am in a disgraceful state of extreme intoxication. This is because it is many hours later. I would have thought I would have learned a lesson from last night. Indeed, Lucy did. She has groaned and refused alcohol all day today. If only I had learned such wisdom.
Instead it is two in the morning and I have just crawled unsteadily into my beautiful Midland Hotel bed having spent the last hour of the night drinking a last bottle of wine with my friend Kate and her other half Kevin.
They are a really bad influence on us.
I can not believe that I have been so stupid.
It is not really the last bottle of wine that has done the damage.
It is the half dozen bottles that precluded it.
I am writing this even without my glasses on, because I have had so much wine that there is no point. The best glasses in the world will not make these words anything other than an incomprehensible blur.
Goodness me it has been a lovely evening.
We have had the best company, the best Chinese meal, and the best pantomime.
The Chinese dinner was ace. The food was ace, and everybody talked and laughed, and it was safe and happy and familiar, like coming home.The restaurant man looked at Ritalin Boy and remarked that he remembered how round and cheerful Number One Daughter was when she was expecting him. Ritalin Boy is almost nine. We have been going there for a very long time. The restaurant man told us secretly that he is not grey because he dyes his hair, but we promised not to tell anybody. This is probably why he has aged better than me.
The pantomime was ace as well. I laughed so loudly that they must have been able to hear me on the stage.
There were two dames, the dame himself and another dame, and they were both ace. One of them was a judge in a television competition, I can’t remember what after the six bottles of wine, but he was brilliant. We booed and yelled and laughed and applauded until we were completely exhausted.
Honestly, pantomimes are brilliant. We have had the most fantastic evening imaginable.
Look, if it is all right with you I will fill in some of the missing details tomorrow. It is very late and I have got to get up early tomorrow, because of meeting everybody for breakfast. They are all asleep and I am sitting here rubbing my gritty eyes. I am going to give in. It has been utterly, completely magnificent, a joy beyond joys, but I will have to tell you tomorrow.
If I do not sleep I think I will collapse.
It has been ace.
