Monday 28 January 2013

The Common Room


You know when you have one of those simple yet amazingly perfect ideas? One where the plan just comes together and falls into place? One where you get all your nearest, dearest and crudest all into one room? Well do that; add wine and food but also throw in the old chestnut of ‘absences making the heart grow fonder’. That was the cocktail of choice for my last Friday night.

I thought I’d name this blog entry as above for two reasons:

1.   The reminiscent sentiment of it all…the hours of fun spent in the Netherthorpe Common Room with these girls and…

2.   You’ll see for yourselves later (oh dear).

I thought I’d put on my best Oxford pretence and invite the Northerners around for an evening of culture and fine dining. As they all know me well, they also knew that sentiment was a load of crap! I like food and I love wine but the only way that this evening would have the word “fine” attached to it would be in the form of the sentence, “Day-um, he’s fine”  ***insert dodgy ghetto accent here***.

Before the gaggle of girlies had arrived I’d set the table (twice), planned a starter of Italian nibbles and began to sweat the onions for the risotto di pesce. The girl with the scarf longer than her skirt was providing the tiramisu dessert (in keeping with the Italian theme that was more of an accident than an actual set theme – story of my faux Italian life). Then they arrived.


The use of the letter ‘H’ and the word ‘the’ was left at t’door. My accent was back and I was not afraid to use it! 

For some reason we had two bottles of non-alcoholic beverages (Shloer) on the table, I think this is some sort of northern humour although I'm not sure; it has been five years since I became southern.

Some of these girls I had not seen for months yet we still slipped into our comfort zone of gossiping and bitching as if it was second nature (it may even be first nature for a few of us). By the second bottle of wine we had all certainly forgotten that we were in our twenties. We been cast back a decade luckily minus the skin issues and social awkwardness. It felt like ‘ome ***Southern translation - home***. And let's face it if you can't be yourself at 'ome then where can you be?

This then meant that we almost instantly went on to discuss 13 lbs babies, vaginas ripped to shreds for all the wrong reason and any other topic of conversation that would have gotten your standard come dine with me session marked down for ruining the "ambience". Luckily for these girls, nothing could kill the mood other than their respective boyfriends (but that's another story).

I was fully caught up on any northern dealings that had failed to make local Oxford news or even a simple Facebook status. The common room-ers were also caught up on any rumours involving Oxford folk too and we had been debriefed on each girl's current relationship statuses. Even the ones left off of Facebook because no-one wants to admit "it's [really that] complicated" to 500+ so called friends and random people. My personal issue with Facebook is that they only allow you to have one other name linked to yours and there isn't the option -'Such-and-such is "just friends" with...' I mean what do the Mormons do? Maybe I should feed this back to Mark Zuckerberg...

Unfortunately for all of the gang - bar myself - whilst we had been so engrossed in certain peoples' lives, their latest city breaks, ugly babies and doomed marriages it had been snowing -a lot! Sian's stinking pumps were - needless to say - the least practical piece of footwear on offer for what was about to follow.

We all said our goodbyes. I may have shed a tear (obviously a delayed reaction to the earlier onion sweating) and managed to blag myself one third of slutty-skirt's outfit (no, not her skirt or scarf, just a lovely little ring piece). It was at this stage that I went upstairs to bed; emotionally exhausted, throat killing from the gossip and sides hurting from the giggles. 

Meanwhile in Hollingwood....Muhahahahaha!

This little lot were pushing a little car up a big hill in tiny, smelly shoes. 

The moral of this story is:

If you're going to be bitches then karma will bite you in the ass later that evening. Unless you're bitching in your own home. Then you just get a free item of jewellery!