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Mar. 30th, 2007 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eiffel_71Last night was the Mayor of Southampton's Ball.
During preliminary drinks I chatted to David from New Forest and Kirsty (Charles from the Isle of Wight's friend). When I asked Kirsty where she was staying overnight, she revealed she'd be driving back to Guildford where she lives.
I nodded at the glass of orange juice in her hand. "So you'll be on the orange juice all evening."
"I don't drink alcohol anyway," she replied. "I'm a cheap date." David immediately burst out laughing (they'd been flirting moments earlier) and suggested she might like to rephrase that; at the same time she was thinking exactly the same thing, and revised her self-description to 'inexpensive'.
"Since my finances always seem to be tight, maybe once our mayoral year's over, we ought to hook up," I grinned. She smiled, but just said "I'm sure your friends are generous when you need them."
When the call came for us to go in to dinner, most of the 'Chain Gang' didn't move a muscle and just stayed standing in the reception area having a good Doris! I made my move soon after the call; my mother followed close behind as she wanted to see who we were sitting with. Maria was well miffed that she wasn't on our table :( So we were among the earliest to arrive in the dinner hall. David got there about the same time as us; he was on the table adjacent to ours, so talked to us before we sat in our seats ready - he waxed lyrical about Kirsty and what a nice girl she was, before his wife Rosemary arrived :)
We had Brian and Audrey on our table. It really irked Brian that my mother was next to Kirsty - two women together - and he was next to me - two men together; he actually insisted that my mother and I swap seats, making it boy-girl-boy-girl all round the table. As my mother was having salmon for starter and I soup, that meant we had the rigmarole of swapping our cutlery over. Not that I minded having Kirsty next to me instead of Brian :D Kirsty and I had a long interesting chat the whole meal, touching on football (she's a Wolves fan, being a Shropshire lass originally), women's football, foreign travel, international cuisine, my and my mother's civic duties, life in London, and her work for Britain's leading powerboat promoter. Once again, the food was simply first class. The thick tomato and basil soup was perfect; the chicken, spinach and potato rosti and Mediterranean vegetables were pure delight. I'd always wanted to try the delicacy that is rosti, especially after failing to sample it when I visited its home, Switzerland; I can now tell you that I LOVE the stuff. Chocolate mousse pyramid made a fine dessert. Audrey was surprised that we got cheese as well as a sweet - "Oh yes, you're at a swish party here, you get a four course dinner," I told her. Kept up my Lent abstinence, resisting the chocolate squares and chocolate petits fours on offer with the coffee.
The St Winifred's School Choir opened the entertainment with a few songs from The Sound Of Music. Kirsty, Vic (Deputy Mayor of Havant) and I joked about how they should have reformed the Choir that gave them their number one hit - "imagine all these women in their late thirties singing There's No One Quite Like Grandma". Next we had a Tom Jones tribute performer - he really had the guy's sound and look, and got the place rocking - followed by a sultry Marilyn Monroe tribute artist.
After that came a disco. I sat down with a Coke. Three songs in, Pat, the County Council Chairman, asked me to dance and we got up and had a bop together to Queen's Crazy Little Thing Called Love. One song with me was enough for her, though - at the end of the record she thanked me and went off to talk to someone, so I returned to my Coke and Kirsty. She and I saw a pretty girl in a red dress go up and talk to John and Sheila, the Southampton Mayor and Mayoress; we thought she was Melanie Slade (daughter of John and Sheila, and better known as footballer Theo Walcott's girlfriend), but it was actually her sister Emma.
We had an auction - all the lots went for massive prices; good news for John's Mayoral charities - then John introduced 'Abba Rival', an Abba tribute band. They were fantastic! They really had Abba's sound and look, and got everyone in the room up grooving. My only little niggle is they left 'Fernando' out of their set, but all the other favourites were included. 'Benny' jokingly introduced 'Bjorn' as "looking great for his age, you know he's 59 now!" (the real Bjorn's current age). I was dancing on my own in a corner near the end of their set when my mother came over and hauled me off to join her little group of mayors and mayoresses all dancing in a circle. When 'Agnetha' announced "We're going Spanish now for our next song," my hopes of Fernando were raised - but then we heard the intro to Chiquititta. Margaret tried to pair me with Maria, but Maria recoiled and walked off the floor. Clearly, I thought, she'd seen enough of my sub-standard dancing to know it was too much for her (only later did I hear that Maria actually had terrible back-ache from spending all day spring-cleaning her son's house). So Margaret took my hand herself and I had to slow-dance all through Chiquititta. That was a long four minutes. But I gamely gave it a try, and Margaret was appreciative of my efforts.
I did get to meet Melanie. Sheila introduced me to her and Emma - she is even prettier than she looks in the photos, and she's really pleasant and down to earth. I didn't ask her anything about life as a WAG or even mention Theo, as I'm sure she gets sick of it. Nice lass.
The Chain Gang had started to leave from 11; we were still standing at midnight, when things had all but totally wound down. As Peter picked us up, he congratulated us on going the distance and not letting our town down!
Home at 1 am, and straight to bed - back to work this morning...
Hooray, hooray, it's pay day. The BACS glitch thankfully didn't affect me, and I bagged a welcome back-dated pay rise and some excess hours worked last month. For the first time in more than a year, I'm financially comfortable and in no need of missing football matches to make ends meet. Touch wood.
Unsurprisingly, was tired through most of the morning. Come 12.40 I did a whole interview feeling half asleep! At 2.10 I got a lady willing to answer for both herself and her partner. The last thing I wanted was to miss the bus - I had stuff to do after work - so wrote a message on a piece of paper asking for someone to relieve me by 2.25, stood up (all the while carrying on interviewing, and betraying no sign of rufflement to the blissfully unaware lady on the other end), waved the bit of paper and tried to catch Christine #3's eye. After some minutes, Sally appeared and took the paper from me, then at 2.21 she returned and tapped me on the shoulder. I finished the section I was asking my lady, explained to her that I was handing her over to Sally, and hopped into an adjacent workstation to look at my internal e-mail and enter my payclaim.
In the end, the bus was a quarter of an hour late anyway.
Went into Gosport to buy a Mars & Friends Easter egg, a big posting box, a roll of masking tape and a roll of bubble wrap, sit in the Post Office assembling the box, packing and taping, and send the egg off to Lady Mélisande. Once that was done, moved on to the shoe shop to buy a pair of US Brass, as the sole of one of my Richleighs is now the consistency of paper in places and extremely close to having a hole.
Home to book the flights for my holiday - cheap thrill!
During preliminary drinks I chatted to David from New Forest and Kirsty (Charles from the Isle of Wight's friend). When I asked Kirsty where she was staying overnight, she revealed she'd be driving back to Guildford where she lives.
I nodded at the glass of orange juice in her hand. "So you'll be on the orange juice all evening."
"I don't drink alcohol anyway," she replied. "I'm a cheap date." David immediately burst out laughing (they'd been flirting moments earlier) and suggested she might like to rephrase that; at the same time she was thinking exactly the same thing, and revised her self-description to 'inexpensive'.
"Since my finances always seem to be tight, maybe once our mayoral year's over, we ought to hook up," I grinned. She smiled, but just said "I'm sure your friends are generous when you need them."
When the call came for us to go in to dinner, most of the 'Chain Gang' didn't move a muscle and just stayed standing in the reception area having a good Doris! I made my move soon after the call; my mother followed close behind as she wanted to see who we were sitting with. Maria was well miffed that she wasn't on our table :( So we were among the earliest to arrive in the dinner hall. David got there about the same time as us; he was on the table adjacent to ours, so talked to us before we sat in our seats ready - he waxed lyrical about Kirsty and what a nice girl she was, before his wife Rosemary arrived :)
We had Brian and Audrey on our table. It really irked Brian that my mother was next to Kirsty - two women together - and he was next to me - two men together; he actually insisted that my mother and I swap seats, making it boy-girl-boy-girl all round the table. As my mother was having salmon for starter and I soup, that meant we had the rigmarole of swapping our cutlery over. Not that I minded having Kirsty next to me instead of Brian :D Kirsty and I had a long interesting chat the whole meal, touching on football (she's a Wolves fan, being a Shropshire lass originally), women's football, foreign travel, international cuisine, my and my mother's civic duties, life in London, and her work for Britain's leading powerboat promoter. Once again, the food was simply first class. The thick tomato and basil soup was perfect; the chicken, spinach and potato rosti and Mediterranean vegetables were pure delight. I'd always wanted to try the delicacy that is rosti, especially after failing to sample it when I visited its home, Switzerland; I can now tell you that I LOVE the stuff. Chocolate mousse pyramid made a fine dessert. Audrey was surprised that we got cheese as well as a sweet - "Oh yes, you're at a swish party here, you get a four course dinner," I told her. Kept up my Lent abstinence, resisting the chocolate squares and chocolate petits fours on offer with the coffee.
The St Winifred's School Choir opened the entertainment with a few songs from The Sound Of Music. Kirsty, Vic (Deputy Mayor of Havant) and I joked about how they should have reformed the Choir that gave them their number one hit - "imagine all these women in their late thirties singing There's No One Quite Like Grandma". Next we had a Tom Jones tribute performer - he really had the guy's sound and look, and got the place rocking - followed by a sultry Marilyn Monroe tribute artist.
After that came a disco. I sat down with a Coke. Three songs in, Pat, the County Council Chairman, asked me to dance and we got up and had a bop together to Queen's Crazy Little Thing Called Love. One song with me was enough for her, though - at the end of the record she thanked me and went off to talk to someone, so I returned to my Coke and Kirsty. She and I saw a pretty girl in a red dress go up and talk to John and Sheila, the Southampton Mayor and Mayoress; we thought she was Melanie Slade (daughter of John and Sheila, and better known as footballer Theo Walcott's girlfriend), but it was actually her sister Emma.
We had an auction - all the lots went for massive prices; good news for John's Mayoral charities - then John introduced 'Abba Rival', an Abba tribute band. They were fantastic! They really had Abba's sound and look, and got everyone in the room up grooving. My only little niggle is they left 'Fernando' out of their set, but all the other favourites were included. 'Benny' jokingly introduced 'Bjorn' as "looking great for his age, you know he's 59 now!" (the real Bjorn's current age). I was dancing on my own in a corner near the end of their set when my mother came over and hauled me off to join her little group of mayors and mayoresses all dancing in a circle. When 'Agnetha' announced "We're going Spanish now for our next song," my hopes of Fernando were raised - but then we heard the intro to Chiquititta. Margaret tried to pair me with Maria, but Maria recoiled and walked off the floor. Clearly, I thought, she'd seen enough of my sub-standard dancing to know it was too much for her (only later did I hear that Maria actually had terrible back-ache from spending all day spring-cleaning her son's house). So Margaret took my hand herself and I had to slow-dance all through Chiquititta. That was a long four minutes. But I gamely gave it a try, and Margaret was appreciative of my efforts.
I did get to meet Melanie. Sheila introduced me to her and Emma - she is even prettier than she looks in the photos, and she's really pleasant and down to earth. I didn't ask her anything about life as a WAG or even mention Theo, as I'm sure she gets sick of it. Nice lass.
The Chain Gang had started to leave from 11; we were still standing at midnight, when things had all but totally wound down. As Peter picked us up, he congratulated us on going the distance and not letting our town down!
Home at 1 am, and straight to bed - back to work this morning...
Hooray, hooray, it's pay day. The BACS glitch thankfully didn't affect me, and I bagged a welcome back-dated pay rise and some excess hours worked last month. For the first time in more than a year, I'm financially comfortable and in no need of missing football matches to make ends meet. Touch wood.
Unsurprisingly, was tired through most of the morning. Come 12.40 I did a whole interview feeling half asleep! At 2.10 I got a lady willing to answer for both herself and her partner. The last thing I wanted was to miss the bus - I had stuff to do after work - so wrote a message on a piece of paper asking for someone to relieve me by 2.25, stood up (all the while carrying on interviewing, and betraying no sign of rufflement to the blissfully unaware lady on the other end), waved the bit of paper and tried to catch Christine #3's eye. After some minutes, Sally appeared and took the paper from me, then at 2.21 she returned and tapped me on the shoulder. I finished the section I was asking my lady, explained to her that I was handing her over to Sally, and hopped into an adjacent workstation to look at my internal e-mail and enter my payclaim.
In the end, the bus was a quarter of an hour late anyway.
Went into Gosport to buy a Mars & Friends Easter egg, a big posting box, a roll of masking tape and a roll of bubble wrap, sit in the Post Office assembling the box, packing and taping, and send the egg off to Lady Mélisande. Once that was done, moved on to the shoe shop to buy a pair of US Brass, as the sole of one of my Richleighs is now the consistency of paper in places and extremely close to having a hole.
Home to book the flights for my holiday - cheap thrill!
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-31 12:38 am (UTC)Pay day...I love that word!!