Lost Weekend Part Deux

Last Sunday I blogged about my Lost Weekend. It was a moan really, about how I'd been too frightened to go to my friends birthday party because we had some snow, which had frozen and become dangerous to drive on.

In case you didn't read it, or didn't retain the information therein (and why would you?) I was sad to have missed it because it was an 80's themed party, and I had my costume ready.  I never have a costume ready.

I can't even think about the last time we went to a costume party without shuddering.
It was about eleven years ago. I was wearing a horrific horrendous devil costume, made of nasty polyester, and His Nibs waited for his brother to get dressed up in drag, then put on his brother's clothes and went as him.

It's the kind of thing we don't really get into the swing of, in our house.  That, and dressy up affairs.  To be honest, we usually only go to places where I don't have to wear a dress, he doesn't have to wear a tie, and neither of us has to visit a costume shop.

So I was quite looking forward to this one.

It turns out it was a fantastic party.  For the first hour, as people arrived, the music was TV theme tunes of the eighties.  I'd love that, I'm a bit nerdy about things like TV theme tunes.

One guest came as Shergar, and another as Inspector Gadget.  There was a Boy George, a Madonna, (the Like a Virgin years), and a Michael Jackson. Part of whose costume was his wife's red leather jacket.  No Cureheads were present, so I would have been quite original. 

The treats included pina colada cupcakes, and strawberry daiquiri cupcakes.  They had rum in them, and anyone who has spoken to me since my holiday in Nicaragua knows that I have a new found fondness for rum.

Best of all, the tables had large bowls of retro sweets on them.  There was flying saucers, Wham Bars, sherbet fountains, Frosties, and Love Hearts.

It would have been worth risking life and limb for that bit alone.

The cake was a rubik's cube, as was the mother of the birthday girl. 

By that I don't mean, of course, that she was wearing a massive cardboard box around her middle, it was a far more dignified outfit, with a rubik cube inspired dress, handbag, and hairpiece.  This picture isn't the Mammy of the birthday girl, but the outfit is the same.

 



The music was excellent, I'm told.  Not the usual mish mash of anything that reached the top ten in that decade.  The playlist was worked on with gusto for some nights in advance by a man with music in his heart and his soul, and only the best got through.

All in all I was still feeling a bit moany about missing all the fun.  So today I started lamenting my bad luck to a friend of mine.

She clarified with me that we'd had an inch of snow, covered by a thick layer of ice, and that I couldn't go to a party.  I could, however, drink whatever was available in my house, eat, sit by the fire and wear flanelette pyjamas, and watch dvds.

Yes, I had to concede, she was correct.

Then she told me about her partner's Saturday.

Being a good father, he had taken his son and a friend up the Wicklow mountains, where they were going to ride around on motor bikes, or scrambler bikes, or something else boyish.

Without any warning, it started to snow. This being the Wicklow mountains, there was a complete white out and within minutes the poor boys couldn't see ten feet in front of them .

Sadly enough, the two fourteen year olds were off on their bikes at this stage, so the unfortunate father had to run around panicking and shouting and trying to find them.  Which he did, eventually.

After a little while, when it became obvious that the snow wasn't going to stop, and that in fact the roads had become somewhat impassable, he rang my friend, his loving partner, for rescue.

She reasoned, correctly in my opinion, that if he couldn't drive down the mountain, it was probably unsafe for her to drive up it.
His father became involved, and apparently rang the Gardai for advice.
I think there was a few steps in between, but suffice it to say that Mountain Rescue became involved.

But Mountain Rescue were having a busy night.  Before they could rescue our adventurers, they had to save a coachful of tourists who were stuck at the Sally Gap.
Mountain Rescue have a jeep, and had to bring the tourists to safety four at a time.  A whole coachload of them. 
I won't say where these tourists might have been from, but it was a place where they don't get much snow. So the tourists kept getting off the bus and wandering off, without appropriate protective clothing I might add, and taking photos of snow on branches, and snow on rocks, and snow in general.  It was a good while before the rescuers could satisfy themselves that they had all been rounded up and brought to safety.

Four hours, our boys waited.  Four hours up a snowy mountain, waiting for rescue, frozen, hungry and trying not to get irritated with each other in the confines of one car.

They got down the mountain eventually, although he had to leave his beloved car behind and hope it would still be there, and in one piece, when he got it back.
They were dropped off in Roundwood, then they had a further wait for a lift back to their homes. 

Where our hero was met by a hysterical girlfriend who was so amused at him being brought to safety by Mountain Rescue that she hadn't even got a vat of steaming homemade soup ready for them.  Actually, she hadn't even boiled the kettle.

There's always someone worse off than yourself, they say.

The Lost Weekend

I was to be a social butterfly this weekend.  On Friday I attended a book launch for an anthology of stories by some writing student colleagues of mine.

For some reason, I thought this event was to begin at 8:30.  It turned out that it was to begin at 8.  I arrived home from work sometime around seven fifteen and decided that feck it, I’d put on a decent top and even a bit of makeup and my dangly earrings, and make the effort in general. 

I used my brand new eye makeup, which comes with full instructions on how to make your eyes "pop".  I fecked it up, of course, but at least I tried.

I even used hairspray.  A rare enough occurrence for me.  My hair is so difficult that I usually slather it with expensive conditioners, try not to blow dry it too often, straighten it, beg it to behave itself, whisper my wishes to the Gods of the crazy hair, and leave it to its own devices.

 It always ends up doing what it likes, and sometimes hairspray actually makes it easier for it to go mental, because when it stands out from my head, or curls up, or whatever other mischief it is making that day, the hairspray seems to hold it in its new position.

Anyway, it turned out that the book launch started at eight o’clock.  When my friends arrived to collect me, I hadn’t even put my mascara on.  I’d lost half an hour.  The half hour in which I was to have something to eat.

That wouldn’t have been too bad in itself, had we not decided to go for a drink after the readings.  I had two large drinks in a very short time, and I admit it, I got a bit giddy.  I’m a disgrace to my bloodline, I really am.  Anyway, after the drinks, I insisted that we couldn’t go home without our midnight chips.

Midnight chips, as I’m sure you know, are the chips you eat when you’ve had a few drinks, for no other reason than you’ve been drinking, and which you normally don’t finish, having had dinner before you go out.  But I was starving. We went to the nearest chipper, and I had chips and a chicken fillet burger.  This chipper was previously untested by my friends and I, and after my two drinks I decided that anyone with such a smiley face as the man who served me had to care about hygiene, and food poisoning and what have you, and chanced it.

That was a mistake.  On Saturday morning I was quite green around the gills.   Not violently sick as such, just generally unwell. 

I didn’t notice when His Nibs woke me first, before eight o’clock in the pigging morning, because I was so busy telling him to belt up.  I thought he was sleep talking.  He kept saying I was being attacked. 
He got so offended when I swore at him and insisted that he leave me alone that he decided not to fill me in on what was happening, that my laptop had contracted a much more serious illness than mine. 

An illness that would effectively eat up its usefulness, destroy internet access, demand that I buy some extremely dodgy non-existent software to repair same, and then steal our credit card details and rob us blind for months to come.

He waited until I woke of natural causes, quite late in the day, to fill me in.

Thank God he has a laptop too, so I was able to look all this up before I did anything.  It took hours to sort out, and we had to buy some proper software to do so.  And all the time I was giving out, and panicking because every word I’ve ever written is on the laptop, including some pieces I have to send to my current writing teacher today, and swallowing nausea. 

I was supposed to spend Saturday afternoon doing a final edit and printing out a number of pieces of writing for some upcoming competitions.  I like to enter writing competitions, if only because I think that some day they'll pity me and give me a prize for effort and persistence.

Eventually the laptop and I both recovered, and I decided that I would make it to my next social engagement.

My friend was having a 40^th birthday party, and the theme was the 1980’s.  I had watched, bemused, as the ladies attending bought colourful stilettoes, and lace fingerless gloves, and legwarmers, and boob tubes and little skirts, and decided that I couldn’t go.  I just can’t compete with skinny ladies in dresses.

Inspiration struck, however.  I’d go as a Curehead.  There were quite a few of them around in the 80’s, if I remember rightly, and some of them not a million miles away from my own homestead. 

 

I bought some leggings, and some droppy, droopy black clothes and black nail varnish and eye makeup and bright red lipstick.  Diva red, in fact, a colour I don’t usually bother at all.  I’d backcomb my hair, and I’d be all set.  The beauty of it was that I was wearing the whole ensemble with flat boots, and was looking forward to partying the night away in the most comfortable costume ever.

Once I decided I was definitely well enough to make the drive to Dublin for the party, I became re-energised.  Only to discover that it was snowing.  Properly snowing, fat white flakes that sat on my car and collected, and “stuck” as we like to say in Ireland.

Of all the talents I don’t possess, driving in adverse conditions is the biggest one.  I once drove my car to the train station in the snow, in an effort to get to work.  By the time I got to the station, and rang my boss to tell her the stupid signals had frozen and there was no train and I was too cowardly to keep driving, I was more or less in tears.  I hadn't driven the car to the station.  Not in any real sense.  I'd just sat in the drivers seat, white faced and terrified, while the car sort of danced around the road of its own accord.

I just can’t work it out.  It’s like driving in floods.  I can never remember if the car should be in high or low gear, if you’re supposed to steer into or out of skids, and what the feck that means anyway.  Surely if your car is in a skid you can’t really steer it at all?

I began to fear for my night out.  And when the snow finally stopped, and froze solid, so that there was a layer of hard ice on it, I had to give up the ghost.  I was going nowhere.  I’m far too much of a gom to take to roads in that condition.  It could only end in tears and insurance claims.

I was to stay with a great friend last night.  I see her reasonably often, but her small daughter almost never.  This little girl is feisty and wilful and funny, and I want to bribe her into loving me.  I was looking forward to it.  And obviously I didn’t get to go there either.

I’ll probably never dress up as a Curehead now.  Instead of going out for lunch with the lovely ladies today I haven't even gotten dressed yet. 

We haven’t had Sky since before we went on our holidays last month, so I can’t even watch stupid weekend television to comfort myself.   Seeing what Judge Judy’s guests are suing each other over usually makes me feel better about my life. 

I suppose this could be called a Lost Weekend.