The joys of shared accomodation

I love my housemates, all five of them. I do not, however, love hearing my dear friend J snoring loudly straight through the wall. He must have been drinking, he only snores when he is drunk.

The fact that I can tell how much alcohol he has been drinking by listening to his breathing without even being in the same room just goes to show the walls in the Warehouse are too thin.

Thin walls also lead to the following embarrassing exchanges:

J: So did you and D enjoy watching Silent Hill last night?

Me: Yes thank you J, it was very scary indeed.

J: So you had a good night then? Oh wait, I already know the answer to that one. You certainly sounded like you enjoyed discussing the film afterwards. All night loooong. Ooooh yeh.

Me: Shut the fuck up. [WHILE BLUSHING PROFUSELY]

Delightful. But at least thin walls mean you can hear someone else starting to get out of bed and dive out yourself, beating them in the race to the one bathroom we share. Every cloud...

Hoxton Square birthday celebrations

Yesterday was my housemate's birthday, and we journeyed over from west-London to Hoxton for the celebrations. I love Hoxton Square, nestled in the east London borough of Shoreditch, its bars and eateries are magnets for the creative crowd. Young fashion types, film makers and artists can all be found here, their edgy style making it the perfect place for people watching. For the fashion of Hoxtonites think cool and ironic, vintage inspired with a touch of nu-rave thrown in for good measure - boys in skinny jeans and girls in prom dresses.

Seven of us dined in the cheap but delicious Yelo Thai where I had, what I think could have been the best chicken and cashew nuts of my life. Granted I was hungry… ravenous in fact, but it was seriously good. We sat canteen style on long benches (think wagamama’s without the crowds), sharing our table with a Jarvis cocker-esq trendy boy; complete with floppy hair, square glasses and a retro velvet shirt, accompanied by his polka-dot prom dress wearing girlfriend. Did I mention Hoxton Square was good for people watching?

Food devoured we hot footed it next door to the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen for cocktails. Feeling I should branch out from my usual choice of a cosmopolitan I decided to try the classic gin martini. It is safe to say I have not been converted. A gin martini I have discovered is basically cold, straight gin with an olive on the side. An olive with a stone in it for that matter, raising the dilemma of what to do with this stone once the olive has been consumed. Fight your way back through the crowds to the bar to get a napkin? Swallow it? Throw it at someone? Hmmm.

Martini woes aside, a fun night was had by all. Somehow we managed to make it onto the last tube home and there the vino was cracked open, maybe not such a good idea on a school night…

I wish my bed was in my office today.

Tales from the land of Brum

So I've just had one of those weekends when you wake up Monday morning and realise you are going to have to survive for the next three weeks on a diet of baked beans and soup. My online bank statement kindly informed me this morning that I had pretty much pissed all my money up the wall and I now have little over £100 to last me until payday. Luckily payday comes early thanks to Christmas, but that means I am so going to feel the pinch in January!

I started my weekend with a visit to the Covent Garden Comedy Club in central London. And it did exactly what it says on the tin, I laughed so much I nearly cried. The comedians were so funny, but probably the funniest moment of the night was a woman on the front row who started shouting at the headline artist for his joke about the blind. Apparently she had a blind son. Now the thing is I could maybe empathise if he had been offensive to the blind, but his joke was mearly saying the blind get a bum deal with a dog, and things should move with the times supplying sticks with sat-nav and inbuilt MP3 players... Not really that offensive. Well, this lady stood up and started shouting at the comedian telling him to move on... of course he told her to pipe down. If you are prone to be offended by certain themes then maybe a comedy club should not be high on your night's out agenda, let along taking a seat on the front row!

The next morning I woke with a heavy head after a long night of drinking and dining, and caught the train back up to my university city of Birmingham for one of my best friend's birthday. Birmingham is amazing at this time of the year. The German Christmas Markets are in town, which means festive shopping and large quantities of mulled wine and frankfurter sausages. So the day was spent catching up with old friends and warming ourselves in the freezing temperatures with large quantities of warm alcohol.

When our toes reached the brink of frostbite it was time to head back and get ready for the night ahead. And surely a birthday night out back home with the girls could be nothing more than perfect?? Oh dear. Well me and my two friends spent so long drunkenly getting ready at the hotel we didn't make it out until 11pm, by which time the birthday girl was already in tears due to an argument with her friends from home home. Not a good start. We had a few drinks and pep talk with our lady and things looked on the up so we all headed onto Gatecrasher Birmingham, where we were supposed to be on VIP guestlist with free entry. Only the birthday girl's friend had not quite come up with the goods and there was a disgusting door bitch who was rude to the point of insulting and made the poor girl take her coat off to check what she was wearing.

So we all pay ten pounds a head to get in, minus the VIP wristbands we had been promised and entered the worst club we have ever been to. Gatecrasher is a revamped nightclub in a venue that used to the The Works - a cheesy club right on the corner of Broad Street. It used to be chav central and awful music ahoy. Well lets just say a lick of paint and a few fancy chandeliers does not a good club make.

It was simply awful, and so falsely pretentious now since the make over. I love house music, and glamor, but this club was something else. There was no atmosphere, just a thousand back-combed wannabe's and men looking for some easy skirt. The music the cheesy end of house, and the dance floor was packed out but lacking any atmosphere whatsoever. My idea of pure hell. Combine that with a half hour bar queue and crying birthday girl and a good night you do not have.

Soph ended up leaving after an hour, leaving me, E and LM with no option to drink ourselves into oblivion. An utter disaster of a night, but a lesson well learned. Never, ever to return to the Gatecrasher in Birmingham. A leopard never changes it's spots and the Works on Broad Street will always be the Works even if you patch it up with designer wallpaper. I wish we had gone to Bushwackers, our usual Brummie haunt - small, fabulous atmosphere and amazing dirty electro and speed garage all night. Bad club aside though, it was still so good seeing my girls who i miss so much down here, and plenty of laughs were had.

So I arrive back in London Sunday dehydrated and hungover to hell to see D, whose birthday it was. I was to cook him his favorite meal of rare steak, only i fucked that up good and proper thanks to my hangover. Oh well, he was kind enough to pretend he didn't mind being presented with a cremated well done piece of meat. What a nice boy he is, and the cuddles more than made up of my empty bank balance and shriveled liver.

Note to self: next time leave the bank card at home!