Homeward bound

I have some goodbye drinks with the Wellington/Melbourne crowd, which was triple radness to the extreme and I realised that I've failed miserably to see some people more than twice in the past year. Stupid old London. Mike dubbed me home from the station on his bike, which was worryingly fun, and we ate fried chicken and watched telly and chortled loudly at midnight, much to Skye's rage (she was trying to sleep). And then I had another round with the Christchurch bunch, sensibly, I thought, an afternooon affair so I'd have time to get home and pack for France. I did get home and pack for France but I was mildly pissed at the time. Good times. Red wine teeth not so hot. Sigh, is so hard being so popular and having to drink so much with so many who adore me.

So Dan and I, like, totally did Toulouse. Failed to eat my own body weight in cheese but probably got reasonably close in drinking my body weight in whisky. The weather was not clement and I'm not a good tourist so there was much sitting inside and watching True Blood, in which little Anna Paquin grows the fuck up and gets to have sex with vampires - a dream come true, no doubt.

Dan and I did manage to leave James' house to get to Carcassonne, a walled fortressy type arrangement, where I saw one of the better torture museums - educational and hilarious. Any century that produces an instrument to torture bad musicians is okay by me (of course, any century that produces nasty instruments to torture women who have sex with the devil is not, so that kind of ruined it all).

We ate some stuff that was yum. Ate more stuff that was yum. Drank semi-dubious red wine with gusto. Met all manner of nationalities, but oddly, very few actual French. All in all, had a thumbs-up time and was completely exhausted from all the telly watching when we got back.

Cue my final night in England. For which Skye'n'Mike'n'I invited Kruse and Bibby (so the old flat was together once more) for a Stratford stylez event of Chinese and zombie porn. It was magnificent. Bibby provided the projector (really, the only reason we invited him) and we ordered far, far too many dumplings, which we still managed to eat most of. Skye'n'Mike thoughtfully made me a t-shirt so I'd remember the good times - it's got a photo of our Chinese takeaway shop on the front. Skye wouldn't let me open the door to the takeaway man in it in case he got offended. And then, with the heating pumped up, it was too hot and they all took off their jumpers to reveal that they, too, had the same t-shirt! Hilarious! Oh, how I shall miss them all. Mike promptly got dumpling sauce on his.

So, a late night and then much pottering around the next day demanding Kruse make my laptop taller than God and twice as pretty and then he manfully carried my pack to the station and plonked me on the tube and I burst into tears because I am good at this, and then I staggered on my way to Heathrow. And then 26 hours and one mildly irked man next to me later (had to keep climbing over him in the plane to get to the toilet) I was home. Twenty-three degrees and I haven't worn socks since. My plan to get off the plane and spend the afternoon napping was dashed by Brandon deciding that there was no time like the present to re-blonde me and I spent the afternoon sitting in his salon catching up on the gossip and complaining about all the couples.

Made some cookies, hung with Ruthie, saw all the lads, and now I'm in welly, crashing at H's. Jess'n'me watched some Real Hot Bitches do their thing last night and now I have to start purchasing some day-glo lycra so we can join in the new year. Probably drank too much bourbon last night as well, but at 6.30am, I'm feeling pretty good. Right. Who wants to give me a job? And some new jeans? I darned mine, but I didn't do so well because the next time I put them on and bent over, well, there was more air on my nether regions than I prefer.

You really can't beat Wellington on a good day.