Cheers to the bank holiday weekend....

Last night I attended a 'Doctor's mess' party with one of my all time best friends (when I say attended, I mean tried to sneak in through the side door so as to skip paying* , got all over the 'all you can drink' Pimms**, danced as if no one was watching for an extended amount of time***, and exited in a taxi with my friend, who insisted we went home via the McDonalds Drive-Thru. Win.)

As always it was a joyful and hilarious evening, despite the guilt pangs which seemed to creep up on me every time I poured a glass of rosé. (Yes, ROSE, we've established now I'm a not a girl of the highest class. Sometimes I even put ice cubes in it, how do you like that?!) This guilt, however, does not come from any suppressed concerns I have for my levels of alcohol consumption, as I'm happy to pour as much wine into myself as my dad pours into the pasta sauce (rather a lot) while knowing that my still quite young body can deal with it as efficiently as a Sunny D factory can process the shittiest dregs of concentrated orange and make it into something good again. Well, good tasting at least - the Sunny D, not me. I'm saving up my health concerns for at least another year and then I will definitely start taking care of myself through maturing into a macro-diet eating yoga obsessive butterfly...

But back to last night's rosé; I quickly became aware of how loaded with shame I felt indulging in some evening frivolities while discussing with my friend my lack of employment status and feeling of being redundant: which I now undeniably am, in so many ways. I'm terrified of being sucked into the vortex of liquid lunching, pub garden hanging and vino catch-ups, which are readily available occupations now that I have no professional one and as I am lucky enough to have many friends who are still students or work shifts. I find it hard to say no to a get together at the best of times but after a morning of trawling through job ads and trying to think of new ways to write: 'I'm really great, honestly, give me a job, please' it's near impossible. 

And then the cogs started moving in my brain and I remembered an article I had read in May's issue of ELLE Magazine recently which was arguing that giving ourselves such a hard time about our drinking habits and forcing ourselves in sobriety may not be so productive after all, as we are denying ourselves the opportunity to relax, speak a little more freely and churn over things with friends and colleagues in casual, dimly lit, slightly sticky surroundings. I could reel it off in quotes but I won't, the article clearly goes into much greater and more articulate depth than my synopsis, but you get the gist. (Check it out, it's amazing, written by April Long, p.49 May ELLE)

Ok, I know I said I wouldn't reel off quotes... but here's just one:

"People who drink tend to go out more than non-drinkers - and isolation and loneliness, it turns out, are far worse for the constitution than knocking back one too many G&T's from time to time. One study found that living like a hermit is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and twice as harmful as obesity; another concluded that people who have a wide network of confidants have a 50 per cent higher survival rate than those that don't. It's surely no mistake that so many glasses the world over are clinked 'to health'."

-April Long, May ELLE, p.49 ♥

Something inside me did a little dance when I read this, because it all just made so much sense. I am simply at my happiest when I am engrossed in a good rant or laugh or cry even, with a great friend, wine glasses clutched and remainder of bottle in bucket. The wine is clearly not the clinching factor here, although it is handy in aiding the slightly freer flow of conversation and coaxing out of well kept secrets; (I was blessed to be born void of all addictive tendencies and have to try hard to get myself that deep into something, perhaps facebook and past boyfriends as exceptions.) it is my friends who I can not live without, and these hours of laughing hysterically at the once unamusing, tragic incidences and then methodically dissecting every fabricated, pointless (usually man related) issue which we've flustered ourselves over that week. These are the times which generate the incredible ideas, most brilliant realisations and cement the most priceless of friendships and I doubt I would be who I am without this education.

So I feel no shame in accepting that a few glasses of wine at lunch, or a night dancing with my eyes closed to Rihanna or losing an evening in a pub garden will, rather than lead me into the unemployed gutter, quite possibly keep me sane, keep ideas flowing and possibilities endless. 

What's more, I could of bagged myself a Doctor at last night's mess party: which would potentially be a most excellent solution to my little redundancy problem! I didn't though, unfortunately. Must have been the dancing...

*Don't worry I didn't get away with it... come on though I'm facing cold, harsh unemployment here everyone. Times are hard.
**Which subsequently got all over me
***They definitely were, with pained expressions


Here's one more wise ELLE snapshot for my friends, because I love you all and you've been simply wonderful since my world started going a bit wonky.

Girl. Made Redundant.

(so here's the start of the story...)

Friday's are my absolute favourite. Large bag stashed under desk (mainly full of too many pairs of pants, multiple mini-skirts and a badly judged number of magazines for an hour's journey to my friend's house and one weekend of joyful dancing and greasy brekkies...), multiple enthusiastic tea rounds, more than usual due to that elated Friday Feeling and a general cheeriness in the office as the well deserved weekend coaxes us towards it, hour by sunshine filled hour. These are what I like to call Good Friday Times. Or at least they were, until the fifth day became associated with much darker feelings. Enter: Black Friday: "Oh my lord, I've been redundant for a whole week now *break into sobs* " and (possibly soon) Job Centre Friday.... Oh heavens!

Yes, last Friday I started with all the best intentions for a productive day and a blissful end to the week, anticipating a jolly good catch up with the girls over 2-4-1 cocktails that evening and forgetting the 9am meeting which was looming downstairs in the HR Dungeon at work.

Now I had known for sometime this was surrounding possible redundancies, and being fresh out of uni and not yet experienced in my fashion buying role I was expecting the worst: a month's notice and then the dreaded boot.

I was right on most accounts and found myself being told that, unfortunately, my role had become redundant. Oh marvellous. But then came the real bombshell: I would not be expected to work my redundancy and, just like that, my beloved Friday had just become my shock-you-to-the-core final day at my first proper fashion job, re-contemplate my life and see no future, F.M.L. Dreaded Friday.

The rest of the day flew by in a blur of the following: strange bemused sobbing, "Oh my god, are you kidding?", pub lunch, double rum, clear desk, strange bemused giggling, 3pm wish I could just leave already, eat about 5 double chocolate cookies, (then imagining myself redundant and at home, eating cookies forever more), saying goodbyes, realising how much I will miss my colleagues and trying hard not to cry. Again.

It then rapidly sped up into a whirlwind of 'bogof' cocktails, slightly slurring to all friends that I 'was guna be jushhh fffine...' and then furiously dancing to Rihanna and thinking that I would embody the strength of Ri Ri in every possible way and then perhaps, if I got angry enough at the world for doing this to me, then I would somehow end up a similarly awesome Pop Star, preferably with motorbike and one side of head shaved.

Spent next two days nursing hangover and contemplating tatters of professional life....

Still have not lost faith in Rihanna though, you big ledge.