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I spent last night on Emilie Ems’ fold-out settee, which made getting up this morning a far more pleasant experience than it might otherwise have been. Time enough to shower, drink a mug of tea, flop around reading a book for 45 minutes and still be in work on time after a detour to Boots to buy deodorant, toothpaste and a toothbrush (it had been an unplanned stopover) and breakfast in Gregs.

We’d been out with Leo to celebrate his engagement, with Mark and Kathryn and a bundle of PCW faithfuls, starting out in the White Horse where it was so cold we kept on our coats and scarves almost all night. When a warmer table away from the door came free, we shuffled across, but that left us on the edge of the stair to the toilets. They had no guard rail and as Dave stood up to demonstrate how you can stick a stamp to a pub ceiling no matter how high it is (unfortunately in full view of the glass catcher) the chair tipped backwards and tumbled down the stairs, racing towards the toilets like it was going to wet itself.

That was followed shortly by Gareth arriving and smacking a painting with the chair of a leg as he carried it across the room, and Leo leaning back on his, only to tumble backwards into the next room.

Clearly it was not a good night for the furniture.

Actually, the stamp trick was quite clever. What you do is take a pound coin, place it in the middle of a handkerchief and then twist around the rest of the hanky until it looks like a jellyfish, with the coin being its small, concealed head. You then balance the stamp on the top of it (sticky side up) and throw the wrapped coin at the ceiling, with the twisted materian acting as a kind of wake to keep it upright.

You can throw it a long way like that, and the stamp doesn’t seem to drop off. When it hits the ceiling, though, it sticks, and there’s apparently been one on the far higher, unreachable ceiling of the S&G for ten months now.

So having all learnt a new skill, and feeling hungry and cold, we decamped to Porters, sat downstairs where it was deserted and ate unhealthy cheesy chips. I put my coat on to leave at half ten, but somehow got talked into staying, which is how I ended up on Ems’ settee.

We made utter fools of ourselves on the tube, and probably annoyed everyone around us, but got safely back to Brixton where the council still hadn’t got around to gritting the pavements. I slipped around, clinging on to every available lamp post and wall.

But who cares - it was late.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2004 at 11:33 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.