Abi and Georgie's Barn Party (15/05/07)

I do not have good luck when it comes to my car and parties. Last party I went to, I may/may not have run over a small kitten. This time, I got a parking ticket about three hours beforehand. Eighty bloody quid for parking on a road I have parked along dozens of times with nary a drop of complaint! It was bloody annoying. Although I guess I was bang to rights - not only was I parked across TWO clearly marked residents parking spots, I wasn't even properly parked there, and was kind of sticking out across the road. And as it happened, it turned out to only be £40; they halve it if you pay within two weeks. However, the cheeky knob who gave the ticket folded it over inside the little plastic wallet so when I picked it off the windscreen I could only see the £80. I think that this is all part of a cunning ruse; they hope that people will see the ticket, only see the eighty, and then be like 'SCREW THAT' and throw the ticket on the floor and drive away. Then when the time rolls along when you are forced to actually PAY the fucking thing, you have to pay eighty instead of the forty. Clever, Kingston Borough Council, very very clever. So I was annoyed about that for the entirety rowing session we had beforehand. However, my head coach gave me some good advice which really made me feel better about it.
"I once got a parking ticket for £50," he solemnly told me. "I ignored it and then it went up to £100!" He looked really pleased with himself. Then he added "But that's ok, because I was at a GIRL'S house! Having sex!" I think expected me to yell "BOO YA! HIGH FIVE!" and do that jumping chest-bump thing with him. As it was I kind of glared blankly and then slowly, silently, turned around and walked briskly off.

I'm not sure how this parking ticket actually relates to the party in question, other than the fact that this party will forever be known as 'The Party When I Got The Parking Ticket'. I also started to relate everything to how much it cost compared to the parking ticket. I had a shower and got dressed. The clothes I wore were some socks and boxers I didn't pay for, the KAZAKHSTAN tshirt that cost me £11, some awesome jeans that cost me £40, some shoes stolen off my little brother that probably cost about £29. So in monetary terms, the option was 'Park on a road illegally for an hour' or 'Buy the clothes that I went to the party in'. Not gonna lie, I preferred the clothes. Oh yeah, I also wore my amazing Boat Club hat, which I will discuss later.

The party itself was held in a big-ass barn thing at a golf club. According to a poster on the wall of the toilet, to rent the golf club for the evening cost £200. So the option was 'Park on the road', or 'Rent an entire golf club for an hour'. Not impressed.

Inside was filled with smoke and the hideous writhing bodies of nubile teenage girls and the ironically bouncing spectres of far-too-cool-for-this teenage boys. I'm going to estimate that 80% of the boys were wearing stripy shirts. I'm also going to estimate that, other than one knob wearing a flat cap, and a wifebeater OVER his stripy shirt, I was the only one wearing a hat. The hat in question is from a limited run of Hampton Boat Club hats produced by our school shop about ten years ago. They were so ugly and hideous that they couldn't sell them and ended up shifting them at cost of about £2. Naturally, I bought two. They are literally the biggest ugliest hats you have ever seen. Formed of some weird foam/cotton hybrid, there has not been a person born who has managed to wear one of these hats and not look slightly ridiculous. The only real way to carry it off is to just place it at an angle on the side of your head and pretend that you are being ironically gangsta. Therefore, I kind of bounced sideways into the party, walking with that 'My pelvis is jelly' swagger that typified the gangsta genre, singing some ghetto music and ignoring any greetings that came my way.

"Tom! Hello! How are you?"
"Ladies come, ladies go through my revolving door, some ladies never come back - most come back for more."
"What?"
"Aint no need for me to brag about the way I'm hung, lets just say I got the skillz to get the flyest girl hung."
"What?"
"I'm gangsta."
"... yeah."

It is imperative not to underestimate the impact of wearing a huge ugly black hat at a party. For reasons unknown, people at parties are fascinated by hats. Frankly, my hat had a bigger impact at the party than I did; I must have had about 20 conversations about it over the course of the evening. It was constantly twisting through an endlessly repeating cycle of being stolen, placed on my head, rotated, flipped, argued over and reclaimed. At one point I thought I'd lost it for good; some random chav was wearing it and was refusing to give it back. However, I managed to rationally defuse the situation by calmly explaining that I indeed had purchased the piece of habidashery for £2 several years before, and thus the hat did technically belong to me, and as he was not a member of the Hampton Boat Club, there was no call for him to be wearing it anyway; he understood my argument and returned it without any quibbles. Nah, joking, I just got Rose to jiggle her boobs at him, then when he was distracted got Amy to steal the hat. Then when he was trying to get it off Amy I stole it back and ran away. And so I bought her and Rose a lemonade in thanks. That's teamwork, right there.

Frankly, I can't really remember much more about this party. It wasn't because I was drunk, it was just because not much really happpened. Kris got really drunk, I guess, and started doing imitations of people and animals. "Do a chipmunk!" we cried, and she started acting like a gorrilla and making a stern face (?). "Do a mouse!" we yelled, and she just closed her eyes really tightly. "Make some sunglasses with your hands for your eyes!" I suggested, and she sort of punched herself in the face. Then she picked up a chair and started waltzing with it, at which point the burly black security guard stepped in. There was a brief tug of war for the possession of the chair, but fortunately the black security guard won over the 5ft pissed Kazaksthanian (KRIS IS FROM KAZAKSTAHN! I pointed this out to her in relation to the tshirt and she kind of stroked the picture of the mountains on it) and order was restored.

That was pretty funny.

In conclusion.

Horribly Unimpressive Photographic Summing-Up of the Soirée