bee feast

Where was I? Oh yes, on a boat at Westminster Pier, sober, surrounded by modelly fashionistas with cheekbones in vintage clothing. Right opposite my place of birth. Rather an inauspicious box, but right under the watchful glowing eye of that big clock, which makes me sooooooo the proper Londoner and thus able to claim a certain air of sniffy superiority. If only to myself. Ah, territoriality, how else would we have figured out where to piss.

I wasn't optimistic about the evening - I knew few, and the rest didn't seem too approachable - but I had been nicely softened up the previous night by a too-brief almost perfect time in a truly lovely pub. Me and five others, proper beer, great view, people with guitars and violins twiddling about in the corner, good conversation - I don't know, there was something simple and Christmassy about it, or like you think Christmas should be. That subtle balance of atmosphere where you're completely relaxed and content and all is as it should be. No undercurrents, no awkwardness, no social splinters to get snagged on - just copious, freely flowing human goodness. I'm surprised in my knackered state I didn't blub. I want more of that in my life, please.

Yes, so I was apprehensive when the boat set off into the encroaching darkness - I realised I wasn't going anywhere for the next six hours, and it wasn't an especially pleasant feeling. But of course it was the same for everyone else, and clearly imagining that should an old-western style chair-hurling brawl commence it might last until the end of time, they all got their friendly on. Maybe I'm just out of practice, or I'm more gregarious than I generally imagine myself to be, but it seemed particularly fertile ground for the blundering up to of strangers and the bellowing of pleasantries. (It wasn't just me, I hasten to add. I was blundered/bellowed also.)

And! We'd hardly set off before I ran into someone who was in a band at university and I knew him as a music-scene mate kinda thing and then they got a bit successful and moved to London and then I did too and I was a music journo and I did stuff about them, and then they split up in the end and I left and ah the passage of time. He's in another band now who are more successful than the first one, and seems pretty content. And he is no different. I love it when I run into people I haven't seen in years and it might as well have been last week, except for the joyful zingy element of 'aaaaahhh haven't seen you in AGES' enhancing it. One of life's little plaisirs. And! I managed another and sort of bigger one - my colleague and mucker of days of very yore, the Snapper. Snapper is one of those fairly posh well-spoken young men who parties like Beavis and Butthead would if they were transported into the body of Oliver Reed. I mean, people talk about people who party hard and it's all a bit stupid and childish, but there's something magnificent about the way some people pull it off. Y'know, they succeed in elevating the act of putting champagne bucket upon head to a minor art form.

On this occasion he only managed to; tell me he didn't recognise me as I'd lost a lot of weight and then receive some kind of message from deep in his brain that made him clap a hand over his mouth and groan; consume all manner of substances in some mystic sequence; exchange shirts with someone about half his size (oddly, it was the bigger shirt that ended up rent asunder as if by angry dogs - Snapper's eyes widened at the sight, but they couldn't really have been wider to begin with, so perhaps they didn't widen at all); insist that I use my 'feminine charm' to acquire the more mundane paraphernalia; burn a small hole in my dress (I can only assume it was him); and have astonishing hair not unlike Tom Hanks' after several months conversing with Wilson on an island.

But it was more than enough.

So I drank and danced and met people and was flirty and silly and took pictures and had pictures taken of me and remembered what it's like to do all those things. Social situations to me have often been like traipses into the rocky wilderness with no compass and hopelessly inadequate footwear - how odd, though, the grim persistence of ideas even after they've been disproven. If my psyche were a religion, it would be fundamentalist Christianity as practiced by inbred rednecks in Alabama. I mean, really. "Ah buhleeve ah am uh social inadequate PRAISE-UH CHEEZIZ." I don't venture out expecting to re-enact Carrie's prom, but somehow I'm never prepared to come away going "well look at that, I met many new people and collected several propositions and nice things said". It's good, I suppose - it's good arrogance/complacency insurance, and means I'm constantly pleasantly surprised. I mean, I'd rather be entirely assured of my own personal and sexual attractiveness and waft around the place like a beautiful balloon, but then again, who wants to be a millionnaire? (Put that hand down and begone Satan.)

Despite having stopped swigging before midnight and switching to water, I was still pink-cheeked enough to shout "BONGGG" as we walked beneath Big Ben going off at 2. Morning brought huge home-cooked breakfast, noisy music and easy wittering. And I was almost happy that my journey home took about 20 minutes longer than it should have, because the light was so gorgeous it was as if the sun was having an extra-long set that lasted the whole afternoon. I love the train. If I can get a backwards-facing seat by a window, no one next to me, with music on, at a time of the day when it's light, I'm fulfilled. There's not much music that isn't improved by a scrolling view of fields and trees and sheep and big sky. It makes the constant burbling thought that my brain seems to feel is necessary for it to earn its keep seem perfectly natural - in fact, it makes it go a bit more snoozy and peaceful, like a fat bee full of honey.

One of my clearest childhood memories is of my mum finding an enfeebled bumblebee in our tiny garden, and putting a knifeful of honey down for it. It sat and licked and slurped for many minutes until the stuff was all gone, by which point it had swelled noticeably. It had got its strength back, and so it turned and waddled onto the path to take off - when it did, it could hardly gain any height. It bounced in the air, dropping almost to the ground, raising an inch, dropping again, ending up on the ground, starting from scratch. It finally got about two feet up, seemed to decide that was as good as it could hope for, and flew off with this mighty low buzzzzzzzzzz. We laughed.

I didn't think of this on the train home, but I might as well have done.