Hogmanay

Woo hooo! Welcome to 2009! Yes, that's it gone - 2008 is over - another year - another 365 days of singledom - another 12 months of life with no pension plan - another 52 weeks of wondering what the hell I'm doing with my life as I hurtle towards old age and the ever-present threat of incontinence, dementia and death...

Oh, sorry. Did I depress you?

No, really. Old age does seem to be encroaching ever more quickly, but not quick enough for me to forget how to partaaay. And I am a girl who does love a good party. Preferably one with lots of eligible males and a copious supply of pleasing alcoholic beverages (oooh, and a nice cup of tea to round the night off). Even so, Hogmanay way planned as a bit of a diet-version of a knees up for me, as this was my first night out in town since I returned from Taiwan. I was planning to ease myself in gently with a couple of vodkas, and see in the bells, then trot off home just after 1ish.

Clearly it was not to be, as the few vodkas turned into a few more... and around 1ish I decided to stay out just a little bit longer...

Oh, and get as many New Year kisses as I could.

Tsk tsk.

And so it was that I drunkenly and rather unattractively staggered around the local dive/my old drinking haunt (the kind of place inhabited by a sweaty mix of stoners, students and pseudo-punk-goth types) with the immortal words "New Year kiss?". Bizarrely (and this says more for the intoxicated state of the kissers, rather than my potential sexual allure) the success rate was quite high. Naturally, I avoided couples (no need for a fight, eh?) and men that would probably smell bad. But there was a disproportionately high number of men-of-beardyness - never a good look, and even worse for me. Ouch.

And so on to a party held at a friend-of-a-friend's-friend's house, which quickly transpired to be student flat, inhabited by a couple and a dreadlocked stoner who just managed to really piss me off in the wrong way by spouting all sorts of shite about economics and politics and generally being one of those smug know-it-alls who makes an extraordinarily stupid comment/opinion and then sits back and grins at his self-importance. Now, I'm not one for arguing (ahem) but having a 'discussion' with stoners is like arguing with a 2-year-old. It's infuriating, and made more so by their incessant giggles and smug I've-got-dreadlocks-and-so-I-must-be-cool fucked-up logic.

The culmination of the argument ended with him declaring that he knew more about Asian politics because he knew Cambodia was the capital of Vietnam, and I didn't.

Huh?

I was sorely tempted to get a world map and ram it so far up his backside that it reached his eyeballs - so that he could, for eternity, be made aware of the fact that the country of Cambodia infact borders Vietnam, and Hanoi is the capital cityof Vietnam, with Ho Chi Minh city it's largest city by population - but I decided it was best to leave before any more blood could be shed over petty squabbles and tit-for-tat style I'm-right-and-you're-wrong-nah-nah-nah-nah political one-upmanship.