I’ve been in England for about three months accumulatively and only just had my first party night out on Saturday.
That’s partly because I’ve developed an aversion to hangovers, but mostly because it’s been too cold in England to be out gallivanting in little party dresses in the middle of the night.
Even during the dead of winter, girls walk about the streets in tiny black dresses, high heels and little handbags. No coats, no scarves, no gloves. And the temperature would be about 0°C.
They would hang around in the cold, outside clubs and pubs, waiting for friends or just being seen, I don’t know.
I would see them while walking home with Piers after a late night movie. I would be bundled up in 5 layers of clothes, face hidden in a hood and scarf, and freezing, and think that the party girls must all be robots or vampires or crazy.
Seeing as it would be uncool to go to a club looking like an Eskimo, but there was no way I was going to subject myself to hypothermia otherwise, I never said yes to a night out.
Until last Saturday, that is.
Piers’ best friend’s sister’s best friend was having a farewell party because she’s going off and getting married in Scotland.
So we went out and had a party in her name but the darnedest thing was that, the entire night, I only saw her once for like half a minute because Piers doesn’t really know her that well.
It was about 10°C that night but warm indoors. I brought a coat to put on during the times we had to walk about, like getting from Club A to Club B. It was cold even then.
We had originally planned to eat out and then go to the party but Piers had a craving for dumplings when we went to a Korean supermarket in the evening.
We ended up getting a huge bag of groceries because he said, “Get anything you want cos we might not come back here again for some time.”
So I got tofu and and luncheon meat and rice. Yes, NORMAL rice. Fortunately, they have small bags of Thai jasmine rice in the store. We also got kimchi and raspberry wine and the dumplings.
On the way home, I said, “Where shall we go for dinner, then?”
And he said, “I don’t know. All I feel like eating now are those dumplings.”
So we went home and cooked.
We didn’t go to the party until almost 10 pm.
It was great. I got to meet more of Piers’ friends.
And I discovered the people who had been making fun of Piers in my blog comments. Piers had suspected it was his friends but they had vehemently denied their mischief until recently.
I find it all quite funny, though. We had suspected it was someone he knew, very likely his close friends, because it was just the kind of thing they would say to each other in real life. I think slagging your friends off for fun is a great British past-time.
So, this is them, the naughty people.
(From left: Rich, me, Sarah, Piers, Jamie, Stan)
They were really nice and friendly to me but I wasn’t surprised because I’m sure Piers wouldn’t hang out with nasty people.
Yeah, but now their secret is out, they can’t make fun of Piers anonymously anymore.
The night life here is very much like in Singapore. Just a lot of drinking and dancing and yelling in each others’ ears.
Piers and I also spent half the night getting drinks because the bar was neverendingly busy and you had to wait ages to be served. We were drinking cocktails all night so finished them fast and had to keep going back for more.
It was a nice night out. But I would probably be happier partying during the summer when I don’t have to worry about hypothermia.
Maybe one day I will get used to the weather and be able to walk out into the cold practically naked like one of them robot vampire party girls.
Hard to imagine that ever happening because I so hate extreme cold, but who knows?
