The girly get-together

Last night we had a little dinner party where we had the following:

X 1 very drunk guest who passed out promptly after dinner and proceeded to sleep for 12 hours
X2 very opinionated guests who shouted at the drunken guest and talked over each other
X1 very poorly wheezing asthmatic but diplomatic guest with rosy cheeks
X1 slightly perplexed but very sleek and skinny guest

‘Guest’ is somewhat of a misnomer as 3 of the guests were in fact inmates. And the drunk guest was in fact drunk from the second she staggered in the front door with a man in tow (girly dinner party no-no). The man was soon despatched and we got down to the serious business of gobbling chinese and slurping wine.

I have to say that if any man had been a fly on the wall last night, or worst still had the misfortune to be a guest they would have been shocked to their very core. 5 normally fairly well behaved ladies when thrown together to discuss a contentious topic quickly became a shrieking, voice raised, me-me-me-ish cacophony each trying to get their VERY important point heard first. And of course there were no shortage of extremely well thought through opinions, it’s just that they were delivered somewhat haphazardly.

At one point Lindsey pleaded with us:

“Please can we all try and speak one at a time?”

Tricky. We did try, but of course it wasn’t possible and within seconds we were all screeching again with Lindsey resting her head in her hands.

And even when the victim of our well rounded advice finally passed out (or at least feigned passing out to escape) we turned our attentions to other important topics such as a health concern of one of the boyfriends- we helpfully diagnosed a likely inner eat infection and suggested treatment of a simple course of anti-biotics, a ‘how to’ guide for some of the most gruesome bedroom antics helpfully provided by Samantha which almost provoked a scene from ‘In bed with Madonna’ and also an in-depth examination of the nations sexual habits (based purely upon ours so extremely well rounded).

We were like a pack of Tasmanian devils, whizzing and whirling at dizzying speed between topics polishing them off and then swiftly onwards towards our next prey. When I went to bed I was utterly exhausted. We all need at least a fortnight to recover before another similar event, if nothing else but to hone the skills Sam taught us.

Gavin- you deviant.

Chocolate porn

As a women, when you receive a giant bar of chocolate it stirs up a whole raft of emotions. Excitement, anticipation, greed with a little fear and distrust thrown in for good measure.

Last night upon return from Geneva, Steve pulled the biggest Toblerone I've ever seen out of his duty free bag like a rabbit from a hat- only much better. He then gave it to me as a gift.

She twinkled and shone at us from her mantelpiece vantage point, surveying the lessor mortals in the room, pondering her wonder and the likely destruction her mere presence could create.

At some point in the evening I caught Steve looking wistfully at her, as if she were a curvaceous lady in revealing bright red lace underwear and he casually asked me whether I was going to put her in the freezer.

"Why would I do that? I hate cold chocolate" I responded.

"No reason, I just thought you might" He answered.

"I was thinking about taking the chocolate to work, and then home to share with the girls" I countered, feeling more than a little put out that he clearly had made designs on my bar.

"It wasn't meant for you and your work colleagues" he snapped.

"Oh, so it wasn't meant for me?" I asked and waited for the reply.

"I didn't mean that, I meant I hadn't bought it for your work colleagues."

"Well it's a gift for me, so surely I can do what I want with it, and I choose to take it to work and then home."

"Fine."

"Fine."

In hindsight of course I realise this was very greedy and I ought to have agreed to put a small amount of the bar in the freezer for Steve and I would take the rest. But this is what happens when you're in the presence of 'my precious'.

This morning I gently took her from the mantelpiece and placed her in my bag. She peeked out in a provocative fashion, just enough to glimmer and catch the eye of passers turning a few heads as I strolled towards the underground.

In the tube I worried incessantly about whether she was comfortable or whether we were pushing the boundaries of her ideal conditions, 'cool and dark'. She made it though, and barely broke a sweat on her gleaming golden wrappers.

Once in the safety of the office I unveiled her. Riddled with a maternal protectiveness when people saw her and wanted to touch her, I had to suppress an urge to shout 'Stand BACK'.

Before I knew it, we had hit 11am and with a cup of steaming tea on my desk I caught her looking at me and she seemed to say, 'I'm ready." I peeled back the wrapping and exposed her mountainous nougatey peaks. She didn't succumb easily to my gentle pressure and demanded more force so I placed my clammy hands on her soft surface and snapped away a giant piece.

Cramming her into my mouth, I felt her soften and succumb to me, melting into a chocolaty oblivion with only the tough nutty bits remaining as proof of her existence.

I'll never forget you little piece of heaven from Geneva.

However, If I have to eat another piece of you I might be sick, so I'll let Natalie devour the rest.

The flip side....

Ok, so there’s a flipside to yesterday’s posting. It may well be a trauma for a female of not 100% body confidence to leave a jacuzzi full of ogling men whilst wearing something which is riding further up her bottom as she climbs the stairs. It turns out (after additional market research today) that men suffer from a similar disorder.

I’ll call it the humili-clingy-effect.

It happens when men opt to wear baggy shorts or anything other than Speedos. Maybe to maintain their dignity, maybe to leave something to the imagination or maybe to not look like an utter twat. Whichever. It matters not. What matters is that these materials are most certainly not kind upon exit of the pool. They surge towards any protruding (or in very unfortunate cases, not very protruding) ‘item’s’ and create a ‘vacuum packing’ effect around the entire area. What tends to ensue: much panicky tugging and releasing the vacuum in a desperate bid not to give away any secrets (or lies might be more apt).

I imagine that if a man with a giant willy was exiting the pool, they probably wouldn’t rush to re-adjust their vacuum packaged knobs. Instead, they would strut, thrust and be quite sure that every lady eyes in the vicinity would be inexplicably drawn south of the shorts hemline to have a damn good ogle.

So I guess all’s fair in love, war, and swimming pools.

The F Factor

Today’s topic for discussion is that of ‘filth’. I know you’re probably thinking, oh god, Ali, please NO. Not more chuntering on about cleaning and Kim and Aggie and top tips for getting pesky ‘Masters of the Universe’ stickers off your cupboards which at one point belonged to your big brother.

This is filth of a very different nature. A much grittier version.

My very lovely housemates and I took to this discussion last night after it occurred to us that one key thing all men strive to discover when their mates have slept with someone is not, ‘do you like her’ or ‘are you going to see her again’ or even, ‘was it good’ but instead….‘how filthy was she?’

The high-brow ones amongst you won’t necessarily admit that this is the case, but let’s be honest, that’s what you want to know. Why? So you can gage just how jealous you ought to be about the night of passion your mate has had and exactly what you might be missing out on in your seemingly mundane sex life.

So this prompted Lindsey to ponder the question of whether she would be classed as ‘filthy’ and on a sliding filthometer, what one might have to do to be considered in this category (not that it’s a desirable category of course). We then pondered over whether a bloke might want his girlfriend to be filthy, or whether this might be only desirable on a short term basis, and become redundant when you want to start viewing the lady in your life as the potential mother of your children- then you don’t want her popping up in crotchless knickers brandishing a heinous sex toy.

So lets ‘get down’ to the nitty gritty. I want a man pole (hehe). What, men, might you class as behaviour of the ‘filth’ variety. Personally, I reassured Lindsey that all ‘filth’ is as a classification is simply a girl who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to demand it, someone who isn’t demure and coy, someone who makes some noise, who’s happy to experiment, but who also knows when to say…’well now you’re just pushing your luck, put that Swede AWAY’

Something we all excel at in all areas of life.

Men? This posting needs some thought please. If we’re to provide a ‘scale’ we need some input.

Over dinner talk

Last night us ladies went out and did what ladies do best, eat loads of curry (it’s amazing how we can scoff when there’s no men around and we don’t have to pretend to be demure- Gavin has seen this dark side on more than one occasion I suspect).

During our curry munch-athon we caught up at great gusto, trying to cover off as many topics as possible in between bites of chicken and mouthfuls of rice. The most striking conversation for me was a dilemma one of our mates is going through at the moment, namely, she has picked up an STI from someone and really doesn’t know who. As Lindsey pointed out, ‘it could be anyone’ which prompted me to spit out a piece of my poppadum (it wasn’t meant THAT way) but she had a point. The thing with the STI in question is that you really wouldn’t know you had it, until you were tested. Just so happened one of her ex’s notified her that he had this affliction and accused her of being the infector. Outrageous. The thing is, he had the symptoms so was likely to have had it for longer, hence, HE was the infector (this may well be tenuous, but us girls stick together you know).

Anyway, what got me pondering was if I was in this position, how would I feel about the prospect of phoning around my ex’s and telling them about this rather delicate situation. How on earth is it best coped with?

The ‘You f**king f**ker approach’

‘I thought you ought to know you are diseased and have in turn poisoned me with your germs, you are the scum of the earth”

The ‘hands-up- approach

‘It turns out I seem to have Chlamydia and therefore, I’m afraid there’s a fairly strong chance that you have as well. Sorry old chap.

The ‘sitting on the fence approach’

‘I’m just phoning to tell you that I have this STI, I’m not sure how I got it, or who gave it to who, but it seems reasonable enough to suspect that you might have it also, so you’d better get checked just in case.’

The gutless approach (best administered by a text- even better if the text is sent anon)

‘I Think you’ve got Chlamydia, why? Because I have. Get checked.’

My favourite is the top one, but I know, faced with this situation (because this REALLY is a friend, and not me, honest….I’d tell you) I’d take the easy, softy, namby pamby route and hope that it wasn’t me. I guess the moral of the story here is, you never know what people have been up to and with whom, so the best bet, whatever kind of relationship or otherwise, is get checked regularly…you’re probably saving yourself a whole load of admin in the long run. I know we hate to think it, but people do cheat on each other….and men, are. Well. Men.