13.05.05..3:49 pm

So I'm out last night with my friend Jon (who I went to highschool with, he's moved over for the next few months on business). We have a nice dinner at his new flat located BEHIND THE RITZ and practically ON TOP of Hyde Park and then go down to the Strand as he is a Business Tycoon in Training and needs to practice his ruthless workaholism and has to go into the office for a couple of hours. However, not wanting to Tycoon himself just yet, we go into Fancy Bar Schmancy (where the countertops are made of marble, the walls tastfully decorated in purple ostrich feathers, the tables with rare single orchids)* for a quick drink whereupon I go into the toilet, bang my head on the door AND MY GLASSES SNAP! IN HALF! With me having told my Mum just yesterday afternoon, I have no more contacts at all, I'm contactless, quit bugging me, I REALLY HAVE NONE AT ALL LEFT IN THE WORLD.

I can�t exactly panic in the Fancy Bar Schmancy where a single shot of whiskey is �8 and I�m wearing a spaghetti stained skirt and my green converse with socks AND nylons because I�ve not waxed in ages.** So I put the pieces in my pocket and he leads me blindly to the bus stop, we say good bye, he heads off, I reach into my pocket... I've only one half. I don't know where the other half is, the half WITH THE NOSEPIECE: It's not in my bag, nor my other pocket, it's not on the ground. So there I am, blind, alone and lost in an area of London I'm totally unfamiliar (because I don�t DO the tourist trap) with in the middle of the night (10pm, but still), not wanting to use my newly manufactured monocle and thus advertise my helplessness, so I walk. In the rough direction of the bar, through a couple of side streets that I think MIGHT be the ones Jon wielded me, and end up BACK at Trafalgar Square which just goes to prove that theory about people not being able to walk in a straight line in unfamiliar ground, like when you're lost in the woods and wind up traversing in vague circles trying to find a way out until you're more lost than lost.

Fortunately, blind as I was, I had the good sense to use Nelson's column as my North Star and, with the guidance of some very nice people who neither robbed nor threw me into traffic, found Charing Cross and then the bar. SUCCESS! Except not because they didn't have the other half of my glasses.

One mild anxiety attack later I figure there's not much I can do at half10pm and finding a bus stop is currently the more pressing matter. I end up walking about 1 1/2 miles in the general direction of a stop that I thought might get me back to Stoke Newington and as it turns out, my inner navigational panel is in top condition for 20 minutes later I was passing through Angel. Which was roughly the time I got a text from M saying "You're in Luck! You've one pair left!"

Mum laid a heaping dollop of gleeful I Told You So on that little story.

So instead of taking the day off to book eye appointments and glasses fittings at my nearest SpecSavers (my friends are rich, not me), I'm here at work. Archiving. I'm beginning to think it would have been better not to have looked.

*for the other record, there� weren�t really purple ostrich feathers, but there WERE orchids in crystal vases and marble countertops.
** I know I know I�m a terrible girlfriend: Happy Anniversary I�ve Got Hairy Legs!

I�m spending tonight in the company of Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Universe. I can hardly wait.

****meeplet