Scarred Liver Tissue ;-)

I'm snatching a couple of minutes to scribble a quick post in between my considerably expanded list of tasks today. S is on holiday - in Turkey, no less... what's up with that; before this year I never ever thought about Turkey, now everyone and his mother are off on a quest for Turkish Delight. Anyway, S is on holiday, and I therefore have to look after my own team and also my Team Director, Fi. S is Fi's full time PA, as when you're as important a person as a Director, you don't share PA's with other lowly employees. My experiment this week is to determine whether this is actually necessary, or if it's just a snobby status thing. The fact that I'm posting at all suggests maybe organisation leaders are suffering from Pedestal Syndrome, but let me not be too caustic, lest I tempt the office gods to rain down meeting mayhem on me. I get enough of that with my team alone, I don't need to outrun another storm while trying to look organised and efficient for Fi. Luckily, she is very laid back and incredibly nice, so I don't anticpate too much furore.

This weekend was a cracker. The guys had Guys' Night Out on Friday night, and on Saturday it was the girls' turn. Yes, I know, it would have made more sense to do them on the same night, but as we weren't even planning a Girls' Night this weekend, when the idea came up on Friday it was unexpected and everyone was unprepared. So Friday was a lovely chilled night for Scarf and I. We came home, cracked a bottle of wine and got stuck into our new favourite series, What About Brian. It's fabulous - think a cross between the OC and Friends, but with more serious relationship issues and less teenage angst. The characters are all 20-somethings as opposed to fresh-faced 16 year olds, which I am enjoying much more. As much as I love the OC, it gets a bit melodramatic. I mean, how many times does Marissa have to run out of a room when faced with conflict - will she ever grow up enough to actually talk about the problem? I've just finished Season 1, having started watching backwards with 3 and 4, and now moving onto 1 and 2. A bit like Star Wars. But wait, I digress. So we caned four episodes in a row, stopping every now and then to pour more wine, make more popcorn or go off on a tangent girly chat. The great thing about two chicks watching a programme all about relationships is that inevitably you identify certain things in the show that relate to your own relationships, and of course each discovery has to be fully explored before you go on with the episode. So it took rather longer than expected to finish, but it was a really great night.

Shoes, Eyes and G-Days eventually arrived home at 5am. They then stayed up for another hour drinking whisky shots - shame the poor things, it's been so long since they had a good old-fashioned male bonding session that they couldn't quite let it go. I am just thankful that Shoes had the consideration to showet before coming to bed. They slept half the day away, and Scarf and I dutifully went and did the grocery shopping on Saturday morning.

We spent the afternoon just chilling out - I read a lot, because I simply can't put my book down at the moment. I'm reading Scar Tissue, the autobiography of Anthony Kiedis, lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. His life story is absolutely fascinating, especially because it is so far removed from the kind of upbringing I had. He smoked his first joint at age 11, took his first hit of cocaine at 12 and then basically went on a 13 year drug binge that culminated in him getting kicked out the band because he was so wacked on heroin he was barely able to get from A to B, let alone actually write songs and participate in the creative process. During this time his best friend and Chili Peppers guitarist Hillel died from an overdose, and he spent the night of friend's death shooting up everything he could get his hands on. Frightening, disturbing and very compelling stuff.

Scarf and I really weren't in the mood for going out come Saturday afternoon. Although we didn't drink heavily during our marathon tv session on Friday, we could feel that we'd had a few, and we just felt like chilling at home. However, the arrangements were made, and Mello and Mands were looking forward to it; and we knew once we got there we'd have a great time. We made it to Charing Cross by 6:15pm, and found our way to Motion Bar by Embankment station. It was quite a cool place, all wooden floors and furniture, quite pubby in atmosphere - and smoky enough to fit right in that genre - can't wait fot the no-smoking laws to come into effect at the end of this month! Happy Hour ended at 7pm, which was why we piched up so early. We figured we'd buy enough of a stash to keep us going for the rest of the night. We were just getting down to some serious chatter when we saw a group of guys at the bar, one wearing a magazine cutout of the Queen shaped into a crown on his head. I couldn't resist, I had to ask.... Why are you wearing the Queen on your head? Because, says Crazy Patriot, she's fucking great!!!!!! And then he proceeds to lead his buddies in a very loud, very enthusiastic rendition of God Save The Queen, fists over hearts and everything. First kooks of the night. Second kooks of the night belongs to Team Charades. Two guys walk up to us, and one starts miming the hand gesture for "movie", as you do in charades. Of course, we're instantly hooked, and we all go: Movie! So he holds up three fingers - Three Words! Points to finger number one - First Word! It took us just seconds to get the movie - The Lion King. And then we were off, bouncing movies between us for the next 10 minutes. I got the vote for the favourite of the night: One word - Blow. You can imagine the action, of course. It ran out of steam eventually - as fun as it was, we knew it was a pick-up, and we were there to party with our girls. I did congratulate them though, on the most original pick-up act - not even a line - that I'd ever seen, and I asked if it always worked. They said they couldn't really speak in terms of scoring, but it always got people's interest and they always had a few minutes of fun.

Then the music started and we hit the dancefloor. It was fabulous for the rest of the night - Mello was doing her usual dancing with all the hotties she could find, Scarf and I were running around joined at the hip like Siamese Twins - our regular double act. Then we get to the rather ironic part of the night. We decided Mello and Mands were very pissed. And we got on our high horse, as you only do when you're pissed, and appointed ourselves Guardians of the Group. This involved going to the bar to get the next round, and ordering two plain cokes which we passed off to Mello and Mands as vodka and cokes. Meanwhile we bought ourselves alcoholic beverages. Not very long after that, Scarf disppeared, and when Mands went to find her, she saw she wasn't in great shape, so took her outside for some air. And that's how one half of the Guardians of the Group found herself sitting on the pavement in front of the club, a spot of her sick in the gutter, while the bouncers organised us a cab and fetched her glasses of water! It was quite strange, as for a change I was fine, and we drank the same amount. But then, I suppose part of the fun in going out is you have to expect the unexpected.

Sunday we took the opportunity to do the chilling we'd wanted to do all weekend, and finished it off by watching the finale of Britain's Got Talent. I, like the rest of Great Britain, am now Paul Potts crazy; FYI he is the Carphone Warehouse employee who sings opera and who has captured the hearts of a nation, culminating in his winning the competition last night and going on to sing for the Queen at the Royal Variety Show. A heart-warming tale of the underdog getting his, and the cherry on the top is that he makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when he sings. :-)