"That's what she said."

SUNDAY:

The Blonde limps into the kitchen, still wearing her leopard skin dress from the night before. "Fuck," she exclaims.

"Barkeep, fill me up!" She sits with a glass of breakfast Bollinger, and eats ham and crackers. Her hip hurts from last night's falling over.

"Is my limp sexy?"

"Yeah, it matches my trapped nerve. We look like hot polio twins."

She lolls around on the window seat, and stretches.

"Oh sorry Punk, I think you could see my flange then."

We sit around chatting, and The Geordie says to The Blonde that she needs to decide what she'd like for her birthday from his sister.

"If you don't tell her what you want, she's getting you a mirrored bag from India."

"I don't know - some vouchers for somewhere?"

"Threshers?" he volunteers.

The Blonde just shoots him a dirty look and burps involuntarily.

We head out to The Grumpyscot's birthday brunch at a lovely bar in Stockbridge, drink the world's spiciest Bloody Mary's and discuss the photos being taken around the table.

Me: "look at my clown blusher!"

Geordie: "Tranny."

Me: "Oh my god, I'm wearing tranny blusher."

Grumpyscot: "It's ok," he says soothingly. "It detracts from your Adam's Apple."

The Blonde returns from the toilet, wearing her sunglasses indoors like a twat, and wobbling precariously. "Puffin!" she says gravely in my ear. "I nearly just stood on a dog."

Chat idly, (and inexplicably) turns to lingerie businesswoman Michelle Mone. The Blonde says,

"Yeah, she got all skinny and hot, and her husband left her. That's what might happen to me soon."

Geordie looks up from his steak sandwich. "Not because of that, because you're massively fucking annoying."

The Blonde starts chatting about her work as a spa therapist, describing the pregnancy massages she does.

Geordie: " So, you ordered the motorboat package?" We piss ourselves. My phone buzzz with a text. It's from The Punk.

"Would you like the motorboat package?x"

I say that I feel a bit violated.

The Blonde: "Puffin, you say that a lot."

Me: "That's because you're my friends."

The Blonde wordlessly grabs my right boob.

Geordie: "Do you want a bum rub?"

The Blonde: "Everyone loves a cheeky finger!"

I excuse myself and hide in the loo for a bit.

When I return, The Blonde is raging about a bloke last night poking her in the chest aggressively as they chatted.

"No one pokes me in the fucking chest! Well out of order." She demonstrates on me, it hurts.

Geordie: "Stop going on about being poked in the chest. This is like middle-class fight club."

The natural progression of the brunch suggests that the best possible thing we can do at this stage, is karaoke. We get in cabs into town, and a conversation takes place about Phil Collins. The Punk explains about someone else being called Phil being also involved in one of Phil Collins' hits. (I don't know the details, I wasn't listening.) All weekend, we'd been throwing the phrase 'that's what she said!' into conversations. With flawless timing, after the Geordie commented on the awesomeness of the tune, "double Phil!", Punk quietly said "that's what she said." It was the best one of the weekend.

Alas, (or luckily, depending on your point of view) karaoke didn't open until 7, so we piled into the world's poshest Wetherspoons to drink very cheap wine. The Geordie is telling us about his creepy chat-up lines. He leans over and strokes my face, gently, lingering on my chin.

"I like to call that The Moistener."

As The Blonde topped up from last night, her eyes morphed into the vaguely belligerent expression she gets when she's reached her drinking limit. The Geordie said we shouldn't go back to the flat to party, because she'll get into her comfy clothes then go to sleep.

"This is NOT my idea of a birthday party! Fucking leggings and headband? Fuck off." At the next bar, after this outburst, she quietly disappears and goes home.

We join her some time later, where I fall asleep hicupping with my head on The Punk's lap and begin to snore loudly. Apparently The Geordie yells, "Shut the fuck up, Puffin!" and I do.

Monday morning brings The Blonde still wearing her makeup from Saturday night, announcing that she thinks she's dying. We idly watch This Morning before Punk and I need to get our train home.

Geordie: "I hate Eamonn Holmes. I hate everyone."

The Blonde watches a horoscope advert with interest. The Geordie berates her.

"They're not real. Like Harry Potter. Or The Bible."

"I like his cool headgear."

SATURDAY

We gather in the kitchen, feeling mostly alright except The Blonde. The Geordie opens the traditional can of breakfast Tennent's and flicks through telly on his iPad.

"Ooh Puffin, this sounds like your sort of programme - 'Ashley Banjo's Secret Street Crew'." (Geordie loves street dance programmes. He's 39 and straight.)

We all piss ourselves at the show's title.

"Imagine that's your name! 'Pleased to meet you, I'm Billy Trumpet.'"

The Blonde potters about the kitchen, laughing at The Punk's amazing facial expression as he needed to sneeze and burp at the same time, so looked out of the window at some light to try and make either happen. She oversees Geordie watching the cricket. She likes to comment on sports from time to time.

"Is Monty Panesar playing?"

"Yes."

" I love Monty. I love his cool headgear."

".....his cool headgear?"

She looks pleased with herself. "Yeah, his cool headgear that he wears?"

Geordie looks incredulous. "You can't refer to it as cool headgear, he's a fucking Sikh."

"Oh." Her face falls.

We go over last night's events, including the time The Blonde barked at the Punk,

"Where's my handbag? WHERE'S MY HANDBAG?"

"It's on your fucking arm."

"Oh."

The Blonde looks thoughtful.

"You're very patient with me, Punk."

Geordie looks up from cricket coverage. "That's because he's JUST fucking met you."

So as not to waste the day of drinking opportunities that stretches out before us, we decide to get ready to go into town. Geordie frets over the fact there's a little hole in the bathroom door.

"But people will want to check out my junk." We don't. He's safe.

Our first port of call was a pub imaginatively called Tiles, because it was covered in tiles. We had a pint and the Blonde launched into a story, slagging someone off, her favourite topic.

"...her boyfriend's a right dickhead - he told me he wanted to take me down the passage by Paperchase, and you know...." She made a gesture with her hand.

Geordie looked alarmed. "Finger you?!"

The Blonde looked confused. "No, I was picking the skin off my finger."

Geordie told us about a glorious moment that we missed the night before as we slept, where The Blonde sat on the toilet, hammered, and blew her nose. She's currently obsessed with Danish dramas and inexplicably felt the need to explain to the Geordie what exactly it was all about.

"SO - Borgen. Borgen is..... congestion. Borgen is congestion, right. BUT - Borgen can also be anything you want."

"And then she sicked herself to sleep," he explained.



Soon enough it was time for The Blonde's birthday dinner, a civilised gathering at a cosy French restaurant in town. Blonde introduces her work friend.

"Have you met Sunni? She's 6ft, from Iceland, 24 and beautiful. Dickhead."

Down our end of the table, between eating frog's legs and snails, we discussed some of the horrific photos of me that had been taken during the previous evening and that day.

"I look really special in pictures."

The Grumpyscot agrees. "Basically, you're Joey Deacon with a red bob."

We move on to a rowdy bar full of dressed-up Edinburghers dancing to RnB. As we sit outside and smoke, The Blonde accosts random strangers for photos.

"Do you know who I am? It's my birthday! Did you know it was my birthday?" There's a brilliant photo of one poor stranger bloke in the middle of The Blonde and Mrs Yang, looking basically frightened for his life. During the evening, we get accidental triple measure drinks, Blonde falls over at least three times, and I see a poor girl sat in the corner at 2am by herself, crying into her pink martini. On the way home, police patrol the streets, herding drunk people. The Blonde gets inexplicably worried that we'll get arrested by them simply for talking a bit loudly.

She then proceeds to abuse Geordie for no reason on the way home.

"You RUINED my birthday, you dick!" He just laughed.

"What's your name again?"

FRIDAY

It was always going to result in a blog post of complete filth and debauchery. A visit to Edinburgh to see The Blonde, The Geordie, Grumpyscot and to introduce them to The Punk. Two birthdays, multiple pubs, some swearing, laughing 'til we're almost sick, and quite a bit of falling over on The Blonde's part.

Punk and I excitedly got ready for the trip, of course going via the Italian deli to pick up some posh ham for The Blonde. She loves ham. The journey up was fairly uneventful, except me hand-drawing a gin label for The Blonde's birthday present, and Punk managing to snag his own beard with the scissors we used for wrapping presents. (He shouldn't be allowed near sharp stuff.) At York some unbearably posh students got on the train, shouting loudly.

"Ya, ya, sorority girl, ya, the countryside gets nice after Newcastle." I was getting quietly pissed off until one of the posh twats got their iPad out and proceeded to watch the final episode of Sherlock in my eyeline. The sight of Benedict Cumberbatch pacified my rage.

On the journey a conversation took place on Twitter between @StyleCouncillor, @Ginodb, me and The Blonde - they set us a photo challenge which basically involved us making tits of ourselves in public. We are more than capable of this by ourselves.

Arriving at The Blonde's, we had a tour of the flat and decided to have 'a couple of drinks' before we headed down the local to meet everyone else. The Geordie shouted, "Gin me, bitchface!" to The Blonde and she happily obliged. I'm pretty sure this is how they talk to each other all the time. The Blonde exclaimed that she was pacing herself and saving herself for the big birthday bash tomorrow, so she only had five gins and a glass of wine pre-pub.

At the local, we met The Grumpyscot, The Yangs and some other Edinburgh friends-of-friends. The Blonde was, by this point, being quite er, direct. She addressed an unfamiliar girl.

"What's your name?"

"Jo."

"How do you know The Grumpyscot?"

"Oh you know, just from the pubs really."

"But you seem... so.... normal."

*nervous laughter*

"What'sh your name?"

"Jo...."

We all look at each other, wondering if it's time to take The Blonde home.

"So how do you know people?"

"Um, from the pubs - I've met The Grumpyscot and The Geordie one big weekend when we were all out on the piss."

Thunder flashed across The Blonde's face at the name-drop of her husband.

"SO - who would you say you know better? The Grumpyscot - or The Geordie?"

Confusion reigned over the table.

"Umm....." The poor girl wasn't sure what to say, but before she could think of the least provocative answer, The Blonde butted in again.

"What'sh your name?"

At this point we made our excuses and left. Once home, around 8pm, we decided ordering pizza was a great idea. The Blonde had other ideas, and refused to take a break from dancing wildly with a glass of wine in her hand and singing Erasure's Respect repeatedly. At one point, her and The Punk did an interpretive modern dance routine to a track, none of us can recall what song it was, but I do recall The Punk crying out about his knees hurting, and The Blonde shouting, "Look! I'm 'birthing' you! This is so powerful." Shortly before toppling over. She disappeared off for a bit, then Geordie comes back in to the lounge, with a photograph of her in the exact same position as she was found in the weekend before - sprawled between the bathroom and the hallway, asleep. He dragged her on her back through the flat to put her to bed.

"Geordie, I feel a bit sick..." she moaned. At that point, the Punk wandered past in his bedtime clothes.

"OOOH, you look SEXY in a vest!..... urgh I think I might vom again."

I decide to call it a night, but was apparently found about twenty minutes later falling asleep on the sofa in the dressing room, using a pile of coathangers as a pillow, mumbling about being 'so comfy'.

It was about 10pm.

London Munterground

Ah, the Tube. The iconic London underground. Yes it gets you about from A to B, when it's working properly (which admittedly is fairly rare) but it's not the most pleasant of experiences. Unless you're some kind of weirdo who gets off on being cocooned in a metal carriage that's hurtling along underground in dark tunnels. I'm unfortunate enough to live on the Central line. While it might be one of the faster and most well-connected lines, it's also one of the busiest, hottest and claustrophobic ones.

Since I've moved, I've found myself becoming part of the commuter Tube scrum. I'd previously mostly managed to get about on buses which are slightly more pleasant for the most part, but I now consign myself to being one of those grumpy business bastards who listens intently to headphones and tuts loudly at other passengers. What I am still coming to terms with is how bargey everyone is in the morning. Yes, we're all in a rush to get to work and deal with clients, or shout at people, or shuffle paperclips, or whatever the fuck everyone does, but that doesn't make physically assaulting someone with your laptop bag ok. Yesterday I was literally pushed out of the way of the opening Tube door by some cretin in a suit. Probably a banker. In a hurry to go and dry-bumfuck the economy a bit more before spending our cash on overpriced champagne in a twatty city bar.

As if the proximity of other people wasn't bad enough, I've noticed that the average Tube carriage plays host to a variety of smells. Firstly the classic body odour. Some people haven't discovered either soap or deodorant. When you get a whiff of the cloying body odour from these people, it's enough to make you want to puke up your first cup of tea. There should be some sort of hygiene gate people have to pass through before entering the train.

The next delightful Tube scent? Food. FOOD. Who finds it acceptable to eat on a scummy, grey, polluted train? Putting your hands in your mouth as you scoff your pungent egg sandwich? You must be some kind of pervert to think it's ok to consume food underground.

Lastly, people who think they're covering their BO by dousing themselves in scent. It's never a nice one. Never someone who wafts about in Jo Malone (except me.) It's always sickly, potent, lingering cheap scent. Enough to make me want to get off the train and snort a line of Vim powder (that's an old school cleaning product by the way, not some trendy drug that all the kids are doing) to ensure that my nasal senses are so obliterated, I never have to be exposed to it again.

As everyone knows, the Tube is fucking hot. I genuinely don't get why people actively shut the windows on the Tube in summer. Unless they're trying to make large swathes of people pass out so they can carry out some sort of mass mugging. OPEN THE FRIGGING WINDOWS!


Everyone also knows that the unwritten rule of Tube travel is Never Make Eye Contact. The thing is, I get bored on my journeys. I'm also quite partial to gazing at people and taking in the details of their appearance. The girls with immaculate makeup, the people with faces only a blind mother could love. Thing is, I'm not that subtle and often get caught which results in a hot flush for me and a glint of steel in the eyes for them. I can't smile. I'd look a mental. And get escorted off the train by men in white coats. You just don't really smile at strangers in London.

I'm a hypocrite though, of course. If someone looks at me and I catch them, I am overwhelmed by paranoia. Has my eyeliner run down my face? Am I wearing clown-levels of blusher after blearily applying my face in morning half-light? Is there some crap on my face? Generally it IS one of these things.

Tonight, The Pinup and I made our way home when the Tube carriage was invaded by a gaggle of exciteable Spanish teenagers. Joy of joys, they were filming each other. I'm pretty sure the conversation only consisted of them insulting each other's Mums, so I couldn't understand why they were filming. I'm hot, tired, grumpy and I don't want your fucking camcorder stuck in my face when I am travelling home.

The sweet relief of reaching your destination is normally tempered by further idiocy, as some muppet swipes their Oyster and it doesn't open the gate. Instead of moving out of the way, they adopt a puzzled look, like having a little think might magically open it. All the while, a swell of pissed-off commuters gathers behind them, risking pushing them straight over the barriers. This is my favourite. Along with people who clearly use the Tube all the time, who decide that they don't need to find their Oysters in their cavernous handbags until they're stood AT the actual barrier. Hey don't worry, I'll wait behind you while you drop your tampons and change all over the ticket hall.

I'd love to see the stats for Tube-related incidents of anger. I bet they get to court and the Judge goes, "Ahhh, he stopped in front of you at the ticket gate for five minutes? Provocation."

Oop north

I consider myself to be an honourary Londoner these days, and feel fairly southernified (what? It's a word.) having lived down south for over a third of my life. I couldn't imagine living anywhere but London now, but spending just shy of three weeks in Lancashire looking after my sister's dogs has made me fall in love with up north all over again. Here are some reasons why.

• It costs three quid in a cab to get anywhere. Literally anywhere. You get charged that in London for even looking at a taxi. 

• Everyone addresses me as 'love' - and not in a patronising way, just in a really friendly way that makes me grin a bit and want to share this with miserable Tube passengers.

•  It costs £5.50 for two pints of Amstel in the local pub. LESS THAN SIX QUID! For two pints! After becoming begrudgingly accustomed to being robbed in east London for a beer, this was an absolute revelation.

• Proper, Lancashire pub food. Homemade steak pie for £5.95. Ridiculous. Even The Foodie was impressed. 

• Retro curry houses full of utterly wasted Bolton girls, having chips with their curries and singing 'New York New York' to the entire restaurant, before introducing themselves to us and inviting us to carry on the night with them in Wetherspoons. If I didn't have to get back to the dogs, I absolutely would have and I can guarantee it'd probably be one of the funnest nights out ever. 

• The mega-friendly dog-walking club that you implicitly and unconditionally become a part of when you step out with a canine friend. It normally involves being bent double laughing as the dogs gambol about the park/ swim in the duckpond/  mug small children for edible treats. 

•  Amidst the suburban houses, you might just glimpse two teenage girls rigging their pony up to a trap on their driveway. Seriously. 

• Fancy new bars give you free starters, complimentary desserts and undercharge you for wine, then say 'oh don't worry, it's our fault' when you point it out, and won't let you pay the difference. That's good service. 

 All-in-all, I can highly recommend Bolton as a summer holiday destination. It wasn't even dampened by the thumb-in-dogpoo eposide (luckily The Foodie was on hand to buy me wet wipes once she'd stopped giggling and retching), or the incident with the two full dogpoo bags, the untied trainer lace, the two dogs pulling in different directions and the errant wasp. Not even by the slightly odd and bemulletted old dogwalking man who insists on never wearing a top, no matter what the weather.

Clutterfuck

They say moving house is one of the most stressful things in life. Along with marriage, divorce and having a baby.I would rather push something watermelon-sized through my pelvis right now, because moving house is turning out to be a right bloody palava.

In addition to the usual stress of sorting, boxes, packing, admin, transport, blah blah, we've had to deal with an uncertain house situation and now need to vacate the entire flat in less than a week if we're to get the most favourable contract solution.

Yesterday I started going through my stuff. This is what I learnt.

- Mice really like hanging out in my boxes of CDs which have sat under the lounge cabinet since we moved in over two years ago. I'm going to have to hand-clean every single CD and put them in a non-mouse-shitty box.

- I inexplicably have three pairs of wellies, AND riding boots. One pair of wellies had been in a carrier bag since Glastonbury 2008, and was still encrusted with the site's mud. I suspect that these contain some deadly strains of bugs last seen in the Edwardian slums, and should probably be burned by men in white protective suits, then buried off the coast somewhere.

- I have twenty handbags. I use about two.

- I own boxes of art stuff and stationery I've not opened or used in roughly four years, but I can't bring myself to part with it. What if I am suddenly gripped by the urge to do some collaging or something, and I don't have any Pritt Stick? It doesn't bear thinking about! At least I am safe in the knowledge that I have emergency  crayons.

- I wear roughly 8% of my wardrobe on a regular basis.

- Letting agents are parasite scumbags whose sole purpose in life is to make everything as difficult as humanly possible, and to rape your bank account at every opportunity. FIFTY QUID to click 'print' on a ten-page Word document?  Really? I'm in the wrong game. For the record, dear letting agents, don't lecture me like some sort of authority on contract clauses, when you are a spelling moron and you cannot differentiate between 'your' and 'you're'. One more unprofessional and shitty email, and I will send you back your correspondence with red markings all over it and 'see me' at the bottom.

- I have an excellent collection of early-noughties photos of my dear university friends where we all look young, stupid and badly-dressed. These will be collated and archived to be easily sourced for future birthdays/weddings/anytime I feel like busting out a photo of flared jeans and Acupuncture trainers.

- I own a box of tangled cables which I have no idea about - but I do know that if I chuck it, I'll suddenly realise what they were for, and that they were in fact essential to my existence.

I'm seriously weighing up just tossing a match in my room and walking away to start again. Best go crayon and cable shopping.

Puppetmaster

I’m being played with by Fate. Or whatever it is controlling my destiny. Some sadistic puppet master, yanking my strings and conspiring to plot my clumsy little path through the chaos of existence and make it a little bit surprising, and more often than not, a teeny bit weird. 

This week has involved finding a great housemate to replace me for my forthcoming move (yay!), said housemate not being allowed to move in because of stupid fucking contract beaurocracy (fuck’s SAKE), having one of the most wonderful, spontaneous London days out I’ve ever had (hurrah!), watching a heron silently fish in Little Venice at midnight (ace!), getting some pretty awful family news (grim) and weirdly, running into someone who’s been on my mind. Twice. Via the medium of almost being randomly hit by their car on two consecutive days.

Obviously I styled it out, not looking at all like I’d just walked three miles home from work, hurriedly, with the world’s heaviest bag on a muggy east London evening. Or that my makeup had fallen off. Or that my hair was a massive frizzy mess. Or that I was seconds away from being actually hit by their car because I was in my own little world flouncing home from work, and crossing side streets perilously after some twat rollerblader almost took me out on a pavement. (Note to east London adults: if you MUST rollerblade around like some childhood-regressive Californian tit, do it on the roads and not on the narrow Hackney pavements, or next time I’m not moving out of your way. PS. Your Lycra shorts are disturbingly revealing.) 

Maybe there’s some alternate version of me out there who inhabits all the could-have-beens from my life. She got a housemate to replace herself, and moved into a new flat with minimum fuss. She didn’t almost fall over someone’s car bonnet, TWICE, because she’s cool and not a total specialton like me. She would have breezed through the serendipitous situations effortlessly. She probably has really good hair too.

What a cow.