The Weekend I Spent Mostly with Strangers

I seriously don’t know where to begin to tell you about last weekend. I keep sitting down to write this post and then my brain goes “Nooooooo, too much information to sift through....must...shut.......down.”

In these circumstances there is nothing for it to make a list of all the things that I want to tell you about.

1. Like how I met up with The Curious Cat. In real life, not just over the internet. Like person to person. I touched her! (Not inappropriately.) I really did feel like I was going on a blind date – I know this person but I don’t know this person, very odd feeling. Thankfully she’s not a freak and we had a lovely lunch surrounded by lots of people, but it was all cool, not everyone knew each other so actually in some ways it made things easier for me. There was lots of chat about blogging which was very interesting, talk of possible redundancy/job losses and the best way to keep partying until 4am.

2. I really should have taken a photo to prove that I met her. Damnit.

3. I totally met Mr Woo as well.

4. I went to Putney (and got temporarily lost but totally found my own way again – high five!) to meet another stranger – this time one of the hen’s bridesmaids who was putting me up for the night. By now I was well versed in talking to strangers so I wasn’t too scared.

5. Karaoke is possibly the most hilarious thing you can do on a hen night. 15 over-excited women in their late 20s/early 30s singing Wannabe? It was kind of special.

6. Floridita is nice. But. I would only go again after taking many salsa lessons. There is a teeny tiny dance floor and you can go on it if you can but you can’t really dance to salsa music in a big group, it doesn’t work. And you stand a real risk of getting whipped in the face by hair as someone gets twirled passed. Also quite a few lechy people on the sidelines wanting to start dancing with you. And all the time you’re on the dancefloor, you’re just getting stared at by the people sat around tables eating. Not sure how I felt about that.

7. The cocktails are good. But super pricey. Have the Eureka. Hello sloe gin!

8. I'm going to create a league table of all the hen dos I'm attending this year. One of the criteria upon which I will mark them is how organised the night/weekend was. This one is going to be virtually impossible to beat, those girls had taken care of everything.

9. The traffic in London at 1am is still bumper to bumper. How is this possible?

10. If you have been cocktailing all night some people would be dreading getting up at 8am to get ready to go to the Stitch and Craft show at the Olympia but I am not one of those people.

11. Only joking. By the time I got there I was ready for falling flat on my face and dying.

12. It really was a weekend of hanging out with strangers, I was there, along with the other Stitchettes at the request of Mr X Stitch who asked us if we’d come and hang out and volunteer for him, helping people to cross stitch.

13. Look that’s me with Mr X Stitch – he’s a very nice man. That’s me doing my excited face.

14. I helped a 70 year old man to cross stitch. He was called John and I loved him so much I almost kidnapped him and brought him home with me. I felt pretty proud when he stitched a ‘J’ all by himself.

15. I bought a load of DMC threads because they were only 60p and that excited me because I can only ever find them for 75p or more. And now my thread box is full and I’m kicking myself that I didn’t buy myself another while I was there.

16. I met Emily Peacock. Yep that Emily Peacock. Just call me awesome. She came to talk to us Stitchettes after she'd done a demonstration at the Crosstitcher Magazine stand. It was brilliant although I missed out on some of it because I was helping someone else learn to cross stitch - what can I say? I'm a good teacher!

17. When leaving any destination, it is always sensible to check that you’re on the right train, otherwise you’ll realise you’re on the wrong one and look like a complete twerp as you hurry to get yourself together and rush across to the other platform to get on the right train. And I’d like to point out that it was not my fault that we were on the wrong train.

18. Megabus is a brilliantly cheap option and I did get from Hull to London and back again for less than £20 but I really need to register the fact that the coach doesn't get back to Hull until 10.30pm and after all the goings on of the weekend, it might be a good idea to take Monday off work so you don't want to peel your face off the next morning.


And now I'm going to go AWOL until next week because The Person is coming to see me tonight and I haven't seen him for a month and quite frankly I've bloody missed him. No time to blog!