Q&A

It's late, I'm tired, I have to be up early to assist my mother with some decorating tomorrow but hey, I'm putting you guys first again. The reason being that it's quite rare for me to have a social event to blog about so it just couldn't wait any longer. On Saturday, you see, I breached the capital and delved into darkest Islington (which was actually very sunny) for Ariane's birthday party. She has one every year and they are always enjoyable affairs because her friends tend to be very interesting, sociable people. Despite being neither of these things myself, I'm a keen observer nonetheless and I don't think I embarrassed myself too much apart from when someone politely enquired how I knew Ariane. I told them, quite casually, that she'd answered an advert I had placed in a contact magazine. What I'd meant to say was that I'd placed a contact ad in a magazine. I did have a designated role in the proceedings though, which was to host a 1990s based quiz. I should be getting a dab hand at this; last year I was called upon to host an 1980s quiz. Having learned from my somewhat over-complicated Madonna v Michael Jackson tug-of-war format last July, I kept it simple this time. Questions, answers, scores, winner. It's enduring, isn't it? Still, when you're calling out questions to a room full of people you do rather hope that your voice will slip into a calming, authoritative Radio Four type of tone but of course I could only manage an annoying nasal whine. It seemed to go okay though, and the team who solved a nagging mystery by calling themselves The McCanns Ate Her were duly crowned winners. I had to then make a sharp exit in order to catch the last train home, where I read a copy of the surprisingly literary When Saturday Comes and remained oblivious, until I got home, to the fact that the cheap Sainsbury's ball point pen I had misplaced earlier had been in my pocket all the time and leaked thick black ink everywhere. I now have about five pounds in loose change that is legal tender only in Gloopville. Thankfully I was wearing black jeans, but still have a red mark on my leg from where it was necessary to scrub at my skin in order to avoid having the world's lamest tattoo. Next year I'm taking a pencil.