Friends

My office is off to Paris this coming Friday for our Christmas lunch. Sounds much more extravagant than it is. Basically, one of the awards we won this year included a small sum of money, and we thought of no better way of spending it than to blow it on a one-day trip to Paris with a restaurant lunch and booze on the house.

A colleague has come up with a game to kill time on the outward journey. All employees draw an intentionally crappy portrait of themselves, e-mail it to her in advance and she collates the drawings into a booklet. Once on the Eurostar, she gives everyone a copy. Much merriment ensues as people attempt to guess who is who and hopefully fail.

So I suddenly remembered that today was the deadline to submit the scribble and spent the best part of two minutes this morning trying to come up with something... E-mailed it to her, only to receive a response that it looks too much like me. Still, she decided to include it... Heh.

(  This is what I'm capable of given a 60 second timescale. )

I love being in public places on my own. The murmur of voices, cutlery clinking on plates, the occasional sound of a broken glass and the resulting commotion; people at a table next door talking about how disgusting Christmas food is ("Brussels sprouts are a Devil's vegetable! A Devil's vegetable, I tell you!!"). Villiers was choc-a-bloc full of prams today and the air was heavy with the scent of mulled wine. I sat in the corner with the laptop drawing up for next week's work deadline, drinking coffee and doing my best to resist the smell of spices and warm alcohol. When I eventually cracked and attempted to buy a glass (around 6pm, having been there for seven hours, a feat) I was told that the next batch of mulled wine wasn't ready yet and that the barman was going to pop out to the shop for more spices in about an hour. So I left before I got the chance to sample any.

Drawing finished. Above ground and rainwater drainage details, including soffit mounted pipework runs. Whoopee. You go girl.

Feeling sad and empty for entirely unrelated reasons. Have some Glenn Gould while I'm at it.

Had lonely dinner in candlelight (Yankee candle, cinnamon scent) in the company of Christmas tree and Goran Bregovic. Dinner was baked pumpkin and red onions with marinated tofu and fresh rocket.

Reorganised my collection of sex toys.

Switched on the fairy lights-stroke-garden hose wrapped around the antique fireplace in my room. And another candle - scent of cut roses. Actually smells like cut roses, too. For this reason, I now have a Yankee candle loyalty card.

Grateful for the small things in life.

The not-so-pleasant things in life consist of coming home from work at 9pm every night this week, and booking the office laptop for this Saturday and Sunday. I haven't worked at weekends for quite some time. Yes, it's that bad. Fucking Christmas deadlines.

Dinner with Mr B and a rendezvous with kostriko and romanthefirst are in the works for Friday night and the weekend to distract me from the suckiness of having to draw rainwater drainage and single ply roof details and writing outline specifications for bespoke bleacher seating...

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[23:32] Tym: dress him up like a giant daisy. like in green spandex body suit and flower petals around his head