Tuesday 25 March 2008

When The Rhumba Rhythm Starts To Play

Today is my first official post as a 28 year old. When I posted on Saturday, it was before 1pm, which is the time I am told I made my noisy entrance into the world. So now I am older, but still feel no different. The only thing I feel is terrified, as Mark got paid today and we got rid of more than half his salary in a matter of minutes, with the cost of moving house still to come. The fact that we spent it on necessities like travel and not on frivolous shopping expeditions doesn't make me feel any better. My entire salary is going towards the move this month, and I actually still fall short of the total cost by £150. I've never felt quite this vulnerable in London... up til now we've always had a Plan B, and now there isn't one because there is literally not enough money for the job.

It will all be fine once we're in - it's the 6 weeks deposit we have to come up with on top of all the other costs of moving that is killing us. Deep breath. It's going to be fine... I hope. Can one survive on baked beans on toast for a whole month? I don't even like the damn things, but I'll eat them if it means we can pay rent.

Anyway, on to other things that don't make me hyperventilate.

Saturday night eventually did feel like my birthday. We all went out to Sway Bar in Covent Garden, and had one of the best nights out we've had in ages. Mello and I were born on the same day, and so decided to share our birthday and have a theme to mark the occasion. Everybody had to come dressed in white - well, at least half in white. White tops / shirts were mandatory, and where possible we asked for white pants or skirts, but we accepted blue jeans as well since not many people actually own white trousers, especially the guys. We then dressed in black and red, so we really stood out from the crowd. I was tempted to post the group photo on here so you can see how cool it looks, but I decided to stick to complete anonymity. ;-)

When we first arrived, the bar was really empty and the few patrons scattered across the cowhide booths all looked to be in their late thirties or early forties. We thought we'd misread the blurb on the website - was this a "throw your name away" type of bar or a sedate, pre-theatre drinks venue? The music was pretty atrocious too; Come on Eileen by Dexy's Midnight Runners was followed quickly by I'll Be There For You by the Rembrandts. The Friends theme is not cute when you're glugging champagne and trying to get a party going.

We decided to tell the barmen their taste in music left a lot to be desired, and to our surprise, they completely agreed, launching into a tirade about how they had no say in the tunes played and how tough it was to stand there night after night and have their ears assaulted. They promised us it would get a little less cheesy as the night wore on. We had good reason to doubt that anything was going to happen at all though, when by 8pm we were one of only 2 tables left in the joint.

By now Mello and I thought we'd made a grave mistake. We'd picked Sway on recommendation from two of our friends who are connoisseurs of these type of "chick bars", as we like to call them. We were about to call them and tell them what we thought of their taste, when a waitress reminded us that it was the middle of a bank holiday weekend, and nothing major was going down before 9-9:30pm. We didn't really believe her - we thought we were it in terms of party guests.

Luckily, we were wrong and she was right, as 9pm rolled around and suddenly the place filled up. Really, it went from empty to three quarters full in about 15 minutes. The main dancefloor opened up, and the music improved ten fold. By now everyone had had enough time to chat and socialise, and the time had come to bust some serious moves. La Poo was jumping up and smacking the disco balls around (which earned her a stern talking to from the bouncers), G-Days was having the time of his life in a dancing sandwich between two hot girls, Scarf and I were giving it all we had in the very middle of the dancefloor and the guys, usually reticent when it comes to dancing and commercial music, actually put in a better performance than the girls. We knew we'd hit the jackpot when the boys, so full of adrenaline and Magners that they stopped caring what song came on, started getting down and dirty to Christina Aguilera's Dirrrty. Ka-ching!

It was a fab night, voted the best of it's kind that we've had in London. Hopefully getting older can always be like that!

2 comments:

KaB said...

Dude...will read your post now now...but just to let you know...you've been tagged!

AngelConradie said...

oh yeah- it sounds marvellously spectacular!
happy belated birthday, and may there be many many more!!!