Hen Night!! Or, the Orange Juice Incident...

[alixandrea]

First of all, can anyone who has photos of Friday night please email them to me? Or, if they're on 'reel' film, give the reel to me when it's finished and I'll happily have it all developed for you. :-)

So, a whole weekend of Hen then? ;-) It started Friday night when I met up with a few friends who couldn't make the Saturday at the Fort (in the non-smoking section for Tish). It was actually more of a 'Hag' do, as we had Erik and plenty of other boys present. Role call:
Tish and Oli
Kier and Vaimoni
Jon and Sonja (thanks Tish!) :-)
Alyzande
I think that's everyone - I was somewhat tipsy by the end of the night and things aren't too clear. I decided in honour of my detox to drink red wine, but swiftly spoilt the idea by eating the chips Sandy got for us (OK, so I ate most of them...) Oh well, I knew I'd be having a weekend off the diet, and I've already lost the weight I wanted to. So, anyway, we all got very drunk and silly, and I paraded around in my Hen Night goodies (thank-you Alyzande!) It suddenly brought home the whole getting married thing - I've mostly spent more time worrying about organisation for the big day, rather than what I'm actually going to be doing! But it was good in a scary sort of way. :-) A few photos were taken and lots and lots of alcohol was drunk, none of which I paid for! Thanks all! :-)

Stumble home to bed and worry about getting up in the morning. As it happened, Ziggy woke me as is his wont at 5:30 in the morning (the time his dad normally gets up). I wish you could turn off cat alarm clocks... It turned out to be a good thing this time though - I woke up with a horrendous hangover (haven't had one in a while), drank a pint of water, took ibuprofen (yep, it was THAT bad!) and went back to bed. I couldn't sleep for the pain, but finally dozed a bit before my alarm went off. And then I felt fine (if a little wobbly). Yay cats and painkillers!

I wobbled up to the beauty salon opposite the registry office to get waxed around 10am, and had a great conversation with the lady who spent 40-odd minutes pulling out my various (numerous!) hairs. I got my bikini, eyebrows, legs and underarms done in honour of the wedding, and was high on endorphins by the time I left the place! I HATE getting waxed, yet spent the rest of the morning wobbling around Cambridge with a HUGE grin on my face!

I'm glad I was high, it was frustrating morning spent trying to get things for the wedding. Would you believe not a single fabric shop in Cambridge has a full rainbow of colours in one width of ribbon? Anyway, the morning was made worse when Lucy called in a terrible state to tell me she wouldn't be making it to Nottingham with us that night. She has a really really bad case of sinusitis and had only just got medication for it, so she was feeling completely wretched (poor thing :-( ). I had already had a call from Hanna the night before to say work had imploded and she wasn't going to make it, then a text that morning from Lex to say she was still throwing up and wouldn't make it either, so I was down to the few. I rang up Fiona in a panic, unable to remember if she had said she would be able to come - she could thankfully, and Marcie was already driving us up in her van. Three was enough for a Hen, with two I just wouldn't have bothered.

I met my two faithful companions in the Fort shortly after my phone calls. Vamoni (not present in Nottingham due to morning sickness) was also there to give us a champagne send-off, with a bottle of the stuff in a basket with four flat-pack plastic champagne glasses - I kid you not! Such a sweet thought, I appreciated it even though I hate the stuff! ;-) It is, however, a rather lovely drink with orange juice, so we got some at the gas station when we went to fill the van. Fiona and I opened it shortly after, spraying champagne all over me and Marcie's furniture! Who was responsible for shaking the bottle then?? ;-P Anyway, there was enough left for us to drink, so we did so - saving some for Marcie at the end of the journey.

The road up was clear and quiet, the scenery gorgeous and the skies beautiful. I love the A1. Sad isn't it? Anyway, we got to Erik's Mum's place in record time (despite going the 'scenic' route) and found another bottle of champagne waiting for us! ;-) More Babycham then?! Also chocolate and salted nuts - my detox was fully defenestrated. There was cat trauma – Marcie brought Iris (good as gold) and Pumpkin (a friend’s cat she’s looking after) who promptly attacked Chris and Sarah’s cat Buster. Back to the van for Pumpkin, he’s pretty but far too vicious. We finally decided getting ready was a good idea, did so, and got a taxi to town.

We were going to eat at a Red Hot Buffet Shack but the prices were somewhat absurd, so we went three doors up to the Pizza Express instead. Very yummy pizza and a waiter with RHCP and Metallica tattoos on his forearms, and of course more orange juice, followed. Then on to the Old Angel, a favourite pub of mine, where Fiona flirted with the old barman and I got IDed, much to our amusement! It was lucky I had my old railcard ID with me - that hasn't happened to me since I was 18! I was on the Vodka and Orange by this stage and having a great time. Surreal moment of the whole evening was just before we left - a string of about 15 girls walked in through the door, all in short skirts and trendy tops, all with exactly the same bleach blond haircuts. They trooped in, looked at their surroundings, turned around and trooped straight back out the door! We followed them shortly after, having finally decided where we were going. We had had two choices, either Distortion at the Rock City, which is where we were originally going to go if there had been more people, or The Wake at Spiders, one of my favourite clubs in the world which actually plays a full night of REAL GOTH MUSIC rather than the industrial electronic shite we have to put up with at The Calling. Obviously, we chose The Wake. :-) I chose the chance to dance to All About Eve and New Model Army over the chance to dance to HIM and Evanescence. Does this prove that I’m not a Sp00ky Kid after all? ;-P

A LOT of dancing followed, as did a steady consumption of Vodka and Orange. They played many wonderful songs by bands including The Mission, New Model Army, Alien Sex Fiend and Killing Joke. One song really grabbed me – turning out to be by that DJ’s own band ‘Deep Eynde’. Very silly, but much fun. I bugged every DJ to play Vagabonds, which was the last song of the evening. Totally toasted, I stomped and sang my little heart out, failing to break my heels this time!

Home to bed for Fiona, Marcie and I sat up chatting until we heard the birds singing, after which point she went back to her van and I made crumpets with honey and sat at the French doors watching the dawn. Bed for three hours, the room was still spinning when I got up, but there was not even a hint of a hangover the whole of the day. :-)

We went out for lunch with Chris and Sarah to say thank-you to them for letting us stay. Chris drove us to The Ferryboat right on the banks of a particularly pretty stretch of the Trent. The food was two-for-one, so I paid for all of it and spent less than I had been intending to do on three of us. :-) Yay for cheap yummy food, even if we did have to have chips with our curry because they had run out of rice, and even if we did have an hour to wait for it. I also had more orange juice...

Snoozing on the way back in the sunlight I felt fantastic, if slightly catted-out. ;-) Marcie is thinking of changing her van for a bigger one at some point, I’ve told her to keep me posted. :-) She and I had a drink (guess what I had?) at the Fort, then I went home for some dinner. Erik had txt me a grand total of three times that weekend, and showed up around midnight poppering his tits off and full of amusing stories from his Stag night. We had fantastic sex (there’s nothing like a night away from your lover to leave you craving!) and curled up asleep with our kittens. :-)

I'll obviously have more photos from people soon, I'll try to get them all posted up here when I do!