OOt on the TOOn

Must be a milestone of sorts; met up with wonderful old college friend tonight and actually went into town.. into not one, but two bars... attended a private view full of interesting art and fashion related people! Now this has not happened for a very.. long.. time. Part of this is due to the year of poverty and my now second nature miserliness/frugality, but part is also due to a growing fear of reverting to such situations after such an absence, and sober to boot!

Glad to report that I am still able to talk rubbish, put the world to rights and buy unneccessary accessories without the aid of alcohol; no practice required either, I was like a duck to water. The early bed-time is probably the only thing that has changed (and the horror of spending a tenner on two drinks and some olives) and that is only due to the limiting factor of drinking fizzy water. It just doesn't sustain one as alcohol does, fails to propel the body forth on a night of mystery and intrigue in quite the same way. I get, you know, tired and start to think in a far-too-rational way about dinner, slippers and cat feeding. Still, it is a good compromise between my recent life of the ascetic and the dimmer past of debauchery and waste.

I just know that when Stu gets back from his night at the stove I will feel like Bill Murray in 'Lost in Translation' talking on the phone about his night out in Tokyo.. 'it was in this really, really great house... there were Japaneses surfers there..'

No surfers in fact, but I did meet an impossibly structured Scandinavian model who looked like another species, but was very pleasant, and a Siberian-Estonian artist who knew my work. Woh.... freaky. And cool. Must get out more:)