I've definitely felt better some mornings than I did this morning. I woke up, glanced at my phone, and realised I had a text from the Tall South African inquiring, "You were texting from [the Young Dutchman's] chest?" Oh dear... I replied, and then he gave me a call, basically using the opportunity to laugh at me, knowing I must be horribly hung over.
Apparently the BBQ at his place the night before had been about 4 people, including a girl he ended up sleeping with. (I'm the only one who knows, because obviously this constitutes cheating on his girlfriend, although that relationship is so dysfunctional anyway I'm not sure it really matters). I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised, but it did surprise me what a bastard he'd been about the whole thing. He told me, "I'd forgotten how good it felt to be a man. To just take charge, telling a girl what to do, and she being so in thrall to me that she did it." The kicker though was that he hadn't actually "slept" with her, not wanting to share his bed (it's tiny to be fair) and so made her to go find somewhere else to sleep apparently. I don't know, to me that's just a horrible thing to do. Even when I haven't necessarily wanted to stay with a guy, I've always been glad that they offered. Because what kind of guy kicks you out? Let's hope she left of her own accord, anyway...
Despite my uneasiness with this, he made me laugh anyway, and it's hard not to be flattered that after all the fun of the night before, I'm still the girl that he wants to call and talk to. Plus, I do find that the Tall South African is often good at talking me through hangovers, so it was much better to talk with him than to focus on my throbbing head.
An hour later, when I finally got off the phone with him, I saw that I had a text from Zhan: "Lunch?" I agreed to that, even as I realised that meant I only had an hour to get showered, dressed and over to our friend Andy's place. That was going to be a challenge...
In the end I was only 10 minutes late, which I don't think everybody realised what a miracle that was. I was still feeling incredibly dizzy and queasy, so was glad when we decided to go to Waitrose to get sandwiches and go eat them in Hyde Park.
I love those guys though, and after sitting in Hyde Park, eating sandwiches for a while, I was feeling noticeably better. Not awesome, but better. Had a nice time talking about public vs private schools, and what the standards are like in the US vs the UK. Overall, a good time, with good company, and great sunshine.
At 3 PM, I realised I needed to get moving to my friend Sweedy's flatwarming, and after the disaster of the flat keys, had promised to drop off a spare key with my letting agents. So I ran to get copies made, dropped them off at the letting agent (I didn't have time to check if they worked, let's hope they did!) and then made my way down to south London for this house party.
Luckily due to the nice weather, we were able to spend most of our time out in the back garden of this lovely little flat. Not sure I was a huge fan of the neighbourhood (between being so far south, so far from any Tube station, and well...just south of the river, it was a bit...run down), but it was a charming little flat, and it was good to see so many hash friends.
Slowly, the sole cure for hangovers, just letting time pass, had me feeling better, and I had plenty of nice chats with various people. Had a lot of fun chatting with Roofie and his brother, and showing off how well my knee was doing compared to their recovery time. I've been lucky though, beating their recovery benchmarks the whole way through. But then again, they both had to have their surgeries re-done, let's hope this is a one-time deal for me!
Late in the afternoon, I saw that I had a few missed messages from the Tall South African, so I wrote him back to keep him happy, and a missed call from the Young Dutchman, so I called him back. He ended up telling me some story about throwing a Boris Bike over fences in Green Park and getting stopped by security, but somehow talking them out of arresting him and even helping him get the Boris Bike over the other side. Of course. He even tried to explain how he'd been responsible the night before because he had a lunch this afternoon, but the who or why of that was lost on me. And even then, I got the sense that "being responsible" simply meant, "I did drugs that wouldn't leave me in a bad state the next morning instead of drinking." Sometimes drugs do seem appealing from that standpoint...
When those of us at the party realised it was 7:30 PM, we dashed inside and fired up Sweedy's computer (she didn't have a television either), and found ourselves screaming our heads off as we watched Mo Farah win the 5000m, to add to his 10000m victory from last Saturday. It was again crazy, this Team GB effect, as you watched other runners pass him, but then in the final lap it was like he just decided, "Nope, I'm going to win this thing" and blew past everyone. Everyone was screaming and hugging, it was awesome.
Then we flipped over to watch the diving, where Tom Daley was going for it. At the end of the 6th round of diving, I was stunned to see that he was in the lead (although his lead was by a hair's-breadth, I wondered if he could hang onto it).
He did another great dive, but unfortunately not as complex as those of the USA and China guys he was going up against, those two eventually won gold and silver. But he hung in there for bronze, which he was so excited about that he and his whole team jumped in the pool, leaving us all to wonder, "Wait, did he win gold? Or just bronze?" Oh well, the guy was excited, you've got to give it to him!
At this point, it was past 10 PM, and everyone was heading out to a local pub, as apparently we didn't want to be making too much noise given that the neighbours had a baby upstairs. So everyone head out, but knowing that it was going to take over an hour to get home, I just decided to hop on the bus.
I was joined by the Rae sisters, who were much drunker than I was (easy to do, given that I'd not touched any alcohol all afternoon, I'd been feeling so queasy), and so somehow I ended up in a discussion with them about their relationships, and how they felt like the guys they were dating wouldn't really be bothered if they never saw them at all. And then were turning to me for advice. (One even implored me, "Tell me what the answer is! Tell me what to do!" Why on earth is it that people think that I, the single girl, is so knowledgeable about relationships?)
I just can't understand why people stay in relationships however that are so obviously dysfunctional, as although I'm not always happy with my single state, I at least don't seem to suffer the agony that so many do in relationships that aren't working. At the least, why not try to do something to address your issues, instead of being so constantly unhappy?
And so I talked to them about how the best thing often about our favourite people, is that they equally prefer us above all others. And I gave the example of Matt, who every time he sees me is just thrilled beyond belief, as I am when I see him. They laughed at this but admitted it was true, and agreed that this is what we all look for: Not merely people who like us, but those who prefer us to all others. Those are the truly extraordinary people who form our closest relationships, and what it seems we should have in our romantic relationships, no?
Not sure I exactly changed any lives, but hopefully at least gave them something to (drunkenly) think about on the way home. I at least, was headed home for some well-deserved, sober rest!
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