Mahinda’s Little World

Now that I’ve blogged this weekend, I thought I’d best blog the last one…which seems like absolutely ages ago.

Friday

It starts. The initial plan was to go out for drinks with Ceilidh Sarah, it being her birthday on Saturday. However, she cancelled as a course meal was organised instead — she’s doing an MBA, and it was the last day of it. Back to her later.

So, Plan B was formulated. It involved Risk, cricket and drinks, all at Pete and Rosy’s. The cricket was technically taking place in the West Indies, but we were resigned to watching it on Pete’s television.

Rosy had just been accepted (ish) on to a PhD course, so we had reason to celebrate (ish). Reason enough to take a decent (ish) bottle of wine over with me.

Anyway, Risk. A strange game, where Rosy basically spent the whole time attacking me, leaving Pete to eventually win the game by wiping me out. It turns out that Rosy wiping me out (or indeed, booting me out of South America) would serve very little purpose. Bizarre.

Sarah (not of the Ceilidh variety) turned up, and we moved on to Monopoly. She won. I was doing well…until I landed on her properties (with lots of houses or hotels) FOUR TURNS IN A ROW. Close to £4,000 and I was out of it. She’s vicious when she gets going, that girl

Then, drunken Scrabble. I came second to Rosy, despite my best efforts. It got a bit silly towards the end!

So, time to head home, at about 2am. But I got into a txt conversation with Ceilidh Sarah, who was out with her coursemates and a bit bored. I ended up meeting her (and her friends) at Withington Library, and heading to a random student house-party in the back streets of Withington.

It was the sort of party where everyone knew everybody…and I wasn’t really feeling at my most sociable. Sarah and I just chatted a lot, before heading off at 5am.

5am. Not bad, considering that I was trying to get an early night in preparation for the last hockey match of the season.

Saturday

Hockey. Chester. We lost. Bugger.

This season was rubbish, and I was pretty rubbish at the personal level. I missed a lot of games, which really didn’t help.

After hockey, it was back to the club for a drink, and later out for the 3rd XI social. They’re very much the drinking team, so I fit in well

The social featured a variety of locations:

1. The Peveril Of The Peak — somehow, we all ended up playing killer pool with random Man Utd fans. Very very random. I bumped into Sam, formerly of MUGSS.
2. Tai Wu — Chinese buffet. Very tasty, and very plentiful. Strangely enough, Ceilidh Sarah was there.
3. Yates’s — Oh Dear. We met up with some of the ladies’ section there. They were very happy, as they’d just got promoted right out of the Northwest league system, right into the Northern leagues.
4. The Ritz — Oh Dear part II: The Return. Well, we were drunk. Crazy dancing happened. Classy.

Sunday

I returned to Sale Hockey Club, to keep Hockey Dave company while watching the Spurs game — we’re pretty much the only Spurs fans at the club, and he takes a lot of abuse when they’re on the telly. I saw dead people, thanks to the carnage of Saturday night.

After that, it was back home, and eventually over to Pete and Rosy’s for some 24 action.

— * * * —

So, quite a drunken weekend. That’s more like it!

Come to think of it, the highlight of it all was nothing to do with that little lot (well, not directly, anyway) — ’twas a hug and a kiss (just on the cheek) from an unexpected source. Well, the source wasn’t unexpected, but the warm embrace was. You take what you can get when you’re me!

You know what I’ve just realised?

I got through the whole of today (technically yesterday, but who’s counting?) without a single phone call, txt msg or personal email. Is that a good thing? Probably not, but it’s definitely a change.

This whole weekend has been very unlike me, to be honest. Friday started off a bit more like it, though — Linden, Mark, Rosy and I had a day of tennis, Pimms, scotch eggs and drinking. Oh, and pool and quiz games and darts and more drinking. And huge food.

Saturday, on the other hand, was spectacularly unproductive. I’d tossed and turned all night, to the tune of indigestion (possibly due to the aforementioned huge food)…so there was a long lie-in, followed by:

1. Lazing around watching cricket and general rubbish ont’ telly.
2. Heading over to Moss Side leisure centre to pay for this week’s badminton courts.
3. Swinging by Workmate Maxine’s place to feed and water Willow, her cat.
4. Getting back just in time to get a call from Twinkle and Carol looking for an emergency babysitter.
5. Heading over to Twinkle and Carol’s place to, if not babysit Hazel (who was very asleep), then at least make sure that the house didn’t burn down while they took Dave to the MRI (he’s fine, apart from a chest infection). Watched Doctor Who.
6. Getting home, opening some wine, cooking some duck and noodles (vaguely hoi-sin saucy) for Housemate Paul and myself.
7. Watching Bangladesh finish a famous victory over the Saffers.

So today, Easter Sunday, was spectacularly uncommunicative. I did leave the house…but only to go as far as the back yard, which I tidied up a bit. Well, swept, anyway, and gave the apple tree a pre-emptive dose of bug spray — it suffers from quite an infestation of woolly aphid, which I’ve been combating over the years.

Cooked a curry for dinner, and have since then been watching cricket, golf, Buffy, and other random television.

I think I should take to ringing up old friends a bit more. I don’t do it enough.

Still, this weekend was kind of necessary — it’d been quite some time since I had a properly quiet weekend, where I could just chill out and relax a bit.

I must be getting old!