Ug! A party...

The whisky had been blessed with magical powers, this night. So I tend to shy away from it and instead stick to the three bottles of Stella Artois and two bottles of real ale that brought. I sipped at the whisky instead, and insisted the the Colonel drank the lion's share.

The theme for the omens of the night, was Turkey. No sooner had I finished murdering 'thank you' in Turkish to a girl downstairs, than I found myself repeating them to a different girl upstairs. As all Turks seem to, she looked non-impressed with my pronunciation, but begrudgingly allowed that it sounded almost correct.

I had arrived upstairs, hoping for the toilet, bursting with urgency that only beer can bring to a man.

'Oh god, why do people wait until the last minute, to when they really need to go desperately, when at a party?' I ask the Turkish girl I haven't met yet.

'I'm a pretty nasty person,' she says to me, 'I wouldn't speak to me if I were you.'

Which is certainly an interesting conversational gambit. However, I take the bait.

'Surely, that's for other people to decide, not you?'

The door opens, and she gestures for me to go in first.

'See?' I tell her, 'You're not nasty at all.'

She gives me an icy glare of the kind only ever seen in science fiction films where the fearsome queen of the desolate ice-barrens is about to stab the hero through the heart.

Downstairs and I'm talking too much, loving the sound of my own voice -- I get cocky with alcohol, filled with the mistaken imagination that I'm pretty goddamm cool. I have advice for everyone, if they want and / or need it or not.

I find myself saying to Delia, 'Look, if your hiccup cure doesn't work it's because you're not in control of your body. Not in complete control. But look, this is your body, you should be able to decide if you hiccup or not...'

I'm surprised that people take the time to listen to me at all sometimes.

And so it continues until only a few of us remain and I'm drinking half a glass of flat cider, which is all I can find left on the house.

So we leave, in the pouring rain, at 5am.

DIY - The Loft

I’d like to say that changing the loft insulation in a 100 year old house is fun, and full of amusing stories. But so far it isn’t, and there aren’t any. It’s simply dirty, nasty work in a loft full of cobwebs, dust and other unspeakable grime.

The loft was insulated, at some time in the past, with ‘Clinker’, which is defined as:

A local term used for remains of coal that have burned and the surrounding rock that has been transformed during the burning of the coal.

In other words, the Victorians and slightly later folk thought it a good idea to throw coal dust up there every now and then for good measure.

We filled 21 bin sacks full of the stuff. Never, ever been so filthy.

Now installing some kind of space-age (ha) insulation...