I might not be in the best frame of mind for literary creativity.
This is because I might be a little intoxicated.
I might even be very intoxicated indeed.
This is because it has been a lovely day, which has incorporated wine at several points. Actually it even incorporated rum at one point, but that was just after breakfast so it does not really count by now.
I have had enough now, which is long after breakfast, almost one in the morning, in fact.
Actually I had had enough ages ago but somehow my glass kept being topped up and somehow I just kept drinking it.
Ah well.
We have done almost all of our Christmas shopping now. We did this mostly on the Christmas markets, so everybody who has been secretly yearning for Chip Shop Curry Flavour Cheese is going to have a delightful surprise this year.
It has been a good day. It is considerably warmer than I had even begun to expect, certainly it is a jolly lot warmer than Scotland last week. It is positively balmy and this evening I even removed my thermal vest.
I have not done this for a very long time.
Obviously this is not a literal statement, I have removed it lots of times, every time I get into the shower for a start. I do not wear it in bed, nor when I go swimming, although I am prepared to concede that I have not done the last for ages. Not only that but it is a replacement vest after the last ones became so thin that when they made their way down the dishcloth food chain, they skipped being dishcloths altogether and went straight to the bottom of the scale to become dog sick cloths.
What I mean is that I have worn a thermal vest every day for months and months, probably since August, and here in Manchester in December it is so warm that I have no need of it.
I shed it with some anxious reluctance but was still too warm even when it had gone, which was this evening in the continental buffet restaurant, where I ate far too much as well as became drunk.
It was such a lovely time, and I laughed more than I have laughed for a long time. This was over a recollection of the past where a friend of mine accidentally set himself on fire in front of a school full of impressionable children.
Nobody else laughed so probably I shouldn’t have either, but laughter is so soothing and healing in a fraught lifetime that I thought I had better just take my kicks wherever could find them, and laughed until my eyes streamed so much that I had to blow my nose on the napkin.
I get cross with Mark when he does this.
It was so lovely to be together with so many friends and children that laughing was easy. It is jolly good food there, of every imaginable kind, and it is heartbreakingly difficult to stop eating when you have not nearly eaten some of everything, but I had to, mostly because I had been obliged to stuff my discarded vest down the front of my trousers. It needed to be carried somehow, and my pockets were not big enough. One can hardly waft a discarded vest around as one walks when one is trying to impress one’s friends with one’s middleclassness.
It is now after one in the morning, and we have made an agreement to reconvene at breakfast, and so hence I am not going to write much more. The breakfasts are ace in here. This morning I had salmon and cheese and chocolate bread and melon, followed by a full English breakfast including mushrooms and coffee.
I had better make sure to leave my vest in the bedroom in the morning.
We have a friend here with us whose stage name is Full English.
I am sure there will be opportunities for ribaldry at such a comical situation when next we convene at breakfast.
What a marvellous thing alcohol can be.
