Anatomy

Ok, so I fibbed a little bit about yesterday being like any other day despite it being my last Friday before the new job begins, because I did have a little, just a teeny tiny girls' night out. In Soho.   Literally a stone's throw away from where I'll be sitting in a couple of days for what I hope is a very long and successful time.

At about 4pm I developed a splitting headache while waiting for the number 328 bus to collect The Lish from daycare.  Of course I was sure it was the start of a brain aneurysm.  Having forgotten my good pain killers at home, and I do have a case full of the good stuff, I reluctantly popped a couple of shop's own brand ibuprofen (tic tacs really) and hoped for the best.  You want to catch pain before it hits the point of no return and I was skating on wafer thin ice. At this point, I wasn't exactly feeling the girls' night out.

Once at home I had to stop myself reaching for the jim jams.  Instead, with begrudging patience and the dedication of someone who knows they have a lot of ground to cover, the ritual of 'getting ready' began in earnest.  I'm sure conscript soldiers feel the same way about going to battle.

I started with the slap (employed every trick in the book), then the hair, the Spanks (body sculpting knickers - which feel like a tourniquet) and the heels - the metamorphosis was complete (or as The Silverback put it: you look like a cougar).

The headache continued to niggle so I popped one more pill, the good stuff this time and disappeared in a cloud of perfume. 

The girls were already at the meeting point by the time I arrived: a thai restaurant in St. Anne's Court, Soho.  It's a little alleyway where Marianne Faithful lived for 2 years as a homeless junkie.  Of course today it's so trendy, it's painful.   Watching us eat (I say 'eat') you'd be forgiven for thinking we'd just been released from a Japanese prisoner of war camp, we chit chatted about things that you really shouldn't talk about with your mouth full.

Next?  Why dancing of course!  What kind of a girls' night out doesn't involve dancing? not even a girls' night in skips the dancing. We headed to Freedom, one of Soho's oldest gay clubs.  Of course we went to a gay club.  When you've had to put on your make-up with a 4 year old velcroed to your lap, you don't need any more harassment.

I would like to thank Brazil at this point.  Soho's gay clubs salute you and your fine supply of the buffest gayest men on the planet.  Obscenely good movers too but I didn't see anyone covering their eyes.  This particular batch of harmless male tottie, we discovered, were air cabin crew for Air France.  BRAVO!

We knew it was midnight when the trannies arrived.  Huge in all the wrong places, they were. Still, 10 out of 10 for effort.  And then of course came the drunks who couldn't get in anywhere else.  Gay clubs are like the UK of Europe - they let anyone in.  And do you know what? I haven't laughed so hard in a long time.  You see, straight drunk men are terrible dancers except they all think they're in a boy band for the night.  In reality they look like they're spring cleaning.  All elbows and hyper-extension.  The pole dancing (oh yes, did I mention there were two dance poles in the middle of the dance floor...) the pole dancing was indescribable, we only hoped there was a doctor in the house ( a paramedic at least).

The rest is like a scene out of Desperately Seeking Susan. 

We found a cab relatively easy to say we were in Piccadilly Circus and it was 3 in the morning.  Slumped around the Statue of Eros in the famous glare of the electronic billboards that make Piccadilly so instantly recognisable, I noticed Eros looks more like a pigeon than a cherub. 

You know that headache? yeah, it's back.