Kate & Emily

NEVER GO OUT WITH SOMEONE WHO'S DRUNK AT THE START. Hindsight's a wonderful thing and has taught me that as soon as you know your 'date' is pissed bale out, no need to be nice and stick around as they'll only fall asleep at the table - TRUE!!!! Luckily lots of sympathetic couples welcomed me to their tables for a chat while he slept, but still not my finest hour. I'm now off going out. Hopefully it'll pass....

I'm childfree this weekend - phew and hurrah! I'm planning on spending it lying in, flopping around, doing DIY jobs - anyone know how to mend a shower?? It feels like an expensive job to get done so I thought I might try and do something myself but all I can think of to do is to keep on turning it on and off in the hope that it'll change it's mind and work. BUT, in the evenings I'm out - I'm up West with an old friend (male, single, purely platonic!) and we'll go bar hopping and rub around with the great unwashed, have a sherbert or 3, and make a new friend or 2. I always save these 'paint the town red' nights for my childfree weekends so that I can start them early, get ready slowly, and then stay out as late as I want to and get home in any state that I want to!!

Happy New Year!!!!!!

Well, the year ended with a party and as I see it, it's the best way to continue. I don't mean spending every day slurrping champers and snogging strangers, I'm talking about the 'party in your mind'....

January is usually a time of contemplation, hope, regret and general feelings of failure (come on, how many of you actually stuck to the resolutions you made last year?), so I am not going to submit myself to a future of failure by making promises I don't intend on keeping. I know that the self help books make a killing in January too. Everyone is setting goals, targets and milestones and generally analizing every part of themselves. In my experience, this self help euforia is often short lived. I suppose it's like a hit to an addict. At first the high is unbelievable, and then you need more to feel the same, however with self help, the more you have, the worse you feel after a while. Lets call it 'self help overload'. After feeling indistructable for the first few weeks of January, ready to 'think positive', 'love thyself', and 'feel the fear but do it anyway', how many of us start to get a wee bit sick of all this positive energy? So I have come to the conclusion, that in order to keep my mind healthy, I am simply going to think of my head as a 'party zone', with rooms for dancing like crazy, smooching to love songs, chilling in the zone, spending time with loved ones, and meeting new and interesting people. So, if you're sick of self help and new year resolutions........ Come join the party!!

and that promise of entertaining hasn't coem to much. Though in my defence I FEEL fairly busy on the work and home front and rather content. However, I did have a mental run through (not mental manic but mental in my head) of my muckers as I fancy mixing and matching a bit, don't just want one gang round as part of me thinks it might be a lazy thing to do and I'm sure the married ones see each other a fair bit anyhow so it'll just be a re-run of what they did the week before at their house, so I think it's all a bit key to put new faces in the mix. This is a long-winded way of saying that I haven;t come up with any new mixes so I've invited favourite family over for video night on Friday which means that the children see their friends and other grown ups and it's not just me, but also the children who get that lovely feeling of a busy, lively, weloming house.

It's been party season with everyone reaching 40 and 'celebrating' and now I've got one left and then it's back to my quiet life with the paper, radio and off-spring, oh and a medicinal glass or 2 of fine wine. Actually that's an up side of hosting a party (in case you needed persuading) lots of wine left over for the cellar (or for the wardrobe if you're me and prefer that to a cellar - I stress a personal decision NOT needs must). Anyway - I've had a horrible realistation that the fact that invitations have dried up and my party's been and gone, that I need to be pro-active and organise something else otherwise all that lovely warm stuff abiut being in touch with old and new friends again will wear off and disappear.