Member's Night

I had originally been supposed to meet my friend Joel for drinks after work, but as is becoming his habit as of late, he cancelled on me. So instead, I met up with my friend Doro at the club, and then afterwards volunteered to be a club representative in all of the cocktail party chatter about why the club is such a great place. I must admit, I got a few confused looks as I ran into people I knew taking prospective members of the club on tours around the place, but I assured them, "I'm coming later, I promise!"

I then ended up spending a while engaged in polite chit-chat, convinced quite a few people to sign up, and then even ran into a girl I recognized, but embarassingly mis-identified her (I thought she was a girl I played polo with at Oxford, turns out she was a girl at my college at Cambridge. Oops!)

After the event started to wind down, a chap who I've mentioned previously in this blog, the one who is apparently a reincarnated llama, and the slightly wacky Vice-Chair of the Younger Member's Committtee and I all decided to grab some dinner in the club dining room downstairs.

It was kind of an odd dinner, for while the Reincarnated Llama was as delightful, fascinating, and entertaining as always, the Slightly Wacky Vice-Chair kept getting up and leaving the table at various points at random. I had no idea what was going on, although something leads me to suspect that it may have had something to do with the emotional impact of seeing a man she had once been involved with (although I have nothing to confirm that this was the case, it just is simply the only explanation I can come up with that makes any sense). Still, despite our randomly missing dinner companion, the Reincarnated Llama entertained me endlessly with stories of how he'd decided to stop being a vegetarian (apparently he was just too exhausted all of the time from not being able to get in enough protein when he was eating on the run) and tales of his 24th birthday party. (Once again, why are all of the wonderfully charming guys I meet so YOUNG?)

In the end, we finished our dinner, and then the Reincarnated Llama walked me to the Tube Station, even though I suspected he didn't really need to go there, that he was just being gentlemanly. Indeed, once we arrived at the Tube station, he gave me a peck on the cheek and sent me on my way, as he'd just wanted to make sure I got there safely. {Sigh!} Sometimes I remember why I adore English gentlemen after all...