The Party

I am SO hungover. So please excuse any typos. In fact, it's a miracle I'm able to type at all. My brain is like an arid desert today.

Anyway...

I took James along to Nadia's party last night. I was feeling a bit nervous about the prospect of introducing him to my friends; James is so different to my usual type that I had no idea how they would react. My usual type is creative, unconventional, radical, with a definite edge - the total opposite to James. So I was working on the assumption that he might come as a bit of a surprise.

By the time we get to Nadia's flat - she lives in this really cool factory conversion in Wandsworth - the party's been in full swing for a couple of hours. All the usual suspects are there and they're all very well lubricated. It's like the Fall of the Roman Empire with Ikea furniture. I find Nadia, give her a kiss hello and introduce James. She looks him up and down, gives me a wink and goes, very nice. Where did you find this one then? I'm like, oh you know, just another conquest from The Club. You know I like to keep the punters happy. James gives me a look. I look back, smile and say, James, I'm joking. Sometimes I don't think he quite gets my sense of humour.

By this point, the rest of the posse figure out that we're here and within minutes we're surrounded. All my friends have heard about James, with varying degrees of detail, so naturally they all want to take a look at him. It all starts off well. My friends behave themselves, refrain from dropping any major clangers and the piss-taking is mild. The girls are drooling over him, James is loving the attention and on a total charm offensive, and even Joe and Paul are more friendly than they usually are to any of my men (they're kind of over-protective and extremely suspicious of any new testosterone invading their patch). So I'm happy, relaxed and knocking the wine back like it's going out of fashion.

Then Dave, Evie's other half, rocks up. I like Dave but when he's drunk he's unbearable; a fully paid-up member of the Angry Pisshead Club. And Dave is totally hammered tonight. As usual, he launches straight into his favorite subject, football, directing a slurred, Who do you support, mate? at James. James goes, Chelsea. Who else? Dave, a lifelong Arsenal fan, goes ballistic. I won't go into the details, suffice it to say that James gets all pinched around the mouth and starts frowning, there's a fair bit of swearing, aspersions are cast as to Frank Lampard's sexuality, to which James' rejoinder is that Thierry Henri couldn't kick his way out of a paper bag. Dave loses it and throws a punch that lands right on James' jaw.

I mean, for fuck's sake! What is it with men and football?

As you can imagine, being physically assaulted totally kills James' party spirit, and since Evie has dragged Dave home for a major bollocking he can't even get his revenge. So I call a minicab and take James back to my place.

And that's when it all started to really go wrong.

I'm too knackered right now to write any more so I'm off to veg in front of the telly. More tomorrow.