Blissed

Just downloaded the photographs from Paula’s party last night, all but one of Mark in armour. PHWOAAARRRR! OK, so I’m biased.

Clothes, packing, on time, even with having to get petrol on the way.

Hotel, sod’s law; last week, smoking room and no Mark, this week, Mark and no smoking room

~ tag reminders ~ Shoe bonding, Tony watching us do the amateur dramatics tango, Sarah feeing me tequila, me being demanding about a big wine glass for my scotch & coke and then demanding P's personalised one-and-only bone china mug for my coffee the next day.

Mark getting utterly, utterly shitmarac, pleading ‘get me out of here’, at some unknown hour: I wasn't far behind him on the drinking stakes as it turned out.

Neither of us remember the taxi or getting back to the hotel. He doesn’t remember paying it, and must have done since I hadn't taken any money with me.

Not content with wearing one watch, which is pretty strange for me anyway, I ended up wearing two; mine that Mark gave me at Christmas, and his one which he'd taken off during dress rehearsal cos "men in armour don't wear watches". I offered him his watch back in the hotel room and he did the funniest double-take panic when he automatically looked at his wrist and found it naked.

~ CENSORED~

And we saw another fox! Ghosting along the road and looking rather startled by the white cocoon in the window ~ CENSORED ~ nary a smudge on the landscape.

Well, one smudgette but it turned out to be a mere shadow. In telling the watch story at P's, I asked Mark where it was. It wasn't on his wrist, then he couldn’t find it in his many (wearing jacket AND overcoat cos we were sitting in the garden) pockets. I remembered we’d remembered about it in the morning, and he couldn’t find it then. Remembered suggesting his back pocket, but we got distracted because he found his phone there and we'd started trying to piece together how we got back to the hotel.

We phoned the hotel. Said watch isn’t exactly a Timex, you could buy a few thousand cheap watches for the price. They said they’d look and would call me back. After about ten minutes they called back, no watch. I asked if we could come back and look for it ourselves, which was the plan. Remembering his clothes had been dumped on top of my bag in the wardrobe, I thought maybe, maybe, it had fallen into my bag. Trot out to the car, bring in my bag and the other bag now full of books and DVDs heading for London, tip my bag out onto the sofa and ~ zilch. No watch. Rotten horrible thing to happen on an otherwise perfect weekend. P demanded that Mark search his pockets again, and we were threatening him with a strip search when he found it in the top pocket of his jacket.

I was kind enough to call the hotel housekeeper and let her know we’d found it. Apparently the others wouldn't have bothered? Everything back on the green, breakfast to follow, a raid on the eviction order piles of books, lovely breakfast and proper March weather, sunshine, freezing wind, torrential rain, thunder, hail, all in the space of a couple of hours.

~ muchas lateres ~ another remember ~ Mark had bought one of those 3 for a tenner wine deals, drunk one bottle the night before and set off for the car/hotel/party with the other two in a bag; and a bag of rubbish to put in the huge bin outside his house. He slung the rubbish into the bin, heard a death-knell clank as the full bottles hit the bottom of the empty bin and realised he was still holding the bag of empty bottles and assorted trash. Being dressed in properly debonair syle he chose to arrive empty-handed rather than stinking and dishevelled so didn't clamber into the bin to retrieve the wine.

Back home in the late afternoon and, eventually, after a two hour 'forty winks' (hence being awake now) waking nicely in time for G&B coming back. Proper dinner at the dining table with rather a lot of wine and extended conversation. Blissed. Happy weekend. Happy Birthday P!

Sorry, I missed lots of bits in that, and hope I deleted all of the stuff I don't feel appropriate to share. I'm left with a lovely loved and warm feeling ~ might update and fill in some of those gaps later.