NYE 05

Nick drove me down to Pouldu Beach for a mini stroll. When trying to find mini lunch in a nearby town we popped into a newsagent to purchase some postcards we saw an amazing bit of eye candy. He was the shopkeeper’s teenage son who had stunning dark features, enticing smile with a fit body to match. In a few years time I hope he manages to leave the countryside to become a successful model in the city. When this happens I will then be able to accidentally bump into him backstage at some fashion soiree whilst looking for the DJ (who just happens to be one of my best mates). Our eyes would momentarily stare at each other and ahem....I think all you sex&the city-ites better start thinking about outfits to wear to our wedding bash.

When we finished tarting up the lounge into our casino new years theme we all got dressed up for our NYE evening. Most people’s outfits were in classic black. Uncle Ben came up with this stripy charcoal grey top shop version of a kilt.

Something which I’ve never tried before was having a Raclette dinner. This is basically an electric hot plate where we able to chuck various pieces of veg and meat onto. Underneath the hot plate was where you placed the Racellte cheese in various triangle dishes to get it to melt into a fondue texture.

Celebrated at midnight French time with further glasses of champagne, sugar sniffing, photo posing and jumping around to cheesy muzak. Not quite managing a full gathering for midnight UK time I think we peaked too early.

dance & flicks

Part of the this afternoon’s discussion was focused on the broken part of the sofa. This eventually turned into a scene from Bob the builder with Ashley & Richard mending the broken parts. Kate, Nick, Uncle Ben and Lynn went absolutely crazy on the dance mats trying to work out the secret formula of how to clock up super duper high scores playing Dance UK.

Mellowed out with a film evening as most of the dance crew were practically paralysed. People upstairs watched Pirates of the Caribbean whilst the downstairs lot were going with Monty Python’s classic The Holy Grail. I found the gags in The Holy Grail slightly on the puerile side. It hardly managed to yank my giggle chain. There were too many jokes that ran on for far too long. The humour displayed in the introduction of the subtitles would be typical of the circular e-mails that go flying round on the interweb.

Day one of the big britain household

After breakfast we took a mini stroll around the local area. Enjoyed being out in the open air but not having glacial ears and fingers. As we were buying groceries we noticed how environmentally friendly the supermarkets were. They charged 20 cents for grocery bags which strongly encouraged people to recycle carrier bags.

Reports came flooding in that Nadia was improving Anglo-French relations with these French boys in the pub directly opposite our house. Some of the gang managed to get talking to the pub owners and invited them over for a drink in the evening. The time the pub family arrived was also the moment I had also had my toenails covered in nail varnish courtesy of cheeky Tina. When Ashley saw them he instructed me to put on a pair of socks. Naturally I refused and went sauntering through the house with my newly dyed tootsies. We felt slightly awkward as the pub owner had two teenaged daughters (13 and 16yo) who spoke very little English.

Trouble ensued when Alison and Nick accidentally broke one of the sofa extensions whilst disco dancing on them after our fajita dinner. This wasn’t enough to disrupt the playstation dancing and karaoke that occupied most of our evening. Uncle Ben kept trying to encourage Richard to do solo’s during the karaoke session. Reason being is that Richard had a very erm "unique" karaoke voice. The basement room we had downstairs was unfortunately not sound proofed enough to prevent all of our midnight wailing from distressing the ears of the local residents.

Portsmouth to St. Malo

Most of us congregated round Ashley & Richard’s flat before catching our ferry from Portsmouth. Uncle Ben and Nadia (his newly acquired fag hag) came merrily stumbling in from the pub shortly after our arrival. They were mightily exuberant and oozing party vibes. Apart from a few sexy grey sideburns and a tiny protruding tummy he physically looked the same. In our traditional greeting fashion he dropped the yella jokes (mixed in with popular TV references) but I was too Juiced out (from recent activities) to drum up any witty repartee.

Following frantic packing, joking around and pizza eating we managed to set off. Finally found out why Ashley told me to pack light. He had filled up all most of the cars full of party gear to entertain us with over the new year period. The only thing that was missing was a naked Santa Claus and Reindeer thongs. Nick drove us down in his mum’s flashy BMW to Portsmouth.

Ferry trip to St. Malo was uneventful. First time I had ever slept in a cabin. Surprisingly the cabin mattresses were comfortable even though it still didn’t have that visco-elasticity I have been accustomed to.

We took directions given to us by Wendy (Ashley’s sister) when driving down. It was a very scenic route but the journey was extremely sluggish. Eventually bum cramp and frustration crept in which was partially relieved by our trip to McDonalds. Part of the final route involved going through these smelly factories that had a cabbage like aroma. The dynamics of our group (five gay men and six straight women) has worked really well. The newbies (Lynn, Tina and Nadia) have turned out to be very sociable and definitely deserve silver membership to Big Britain.

Last one

hey my fellow oh fivers

This is going to be my last post for this year. Am going away to St. Malo (France) this afternoon with a some of the Big Britain posse and some new additions to our gang. Before I depart I would like to send out a big heartfelt thanks to all the people who have put a smile on my face.

Enjoy the remainder of this calendar year and don't forget to keep the invites coming. Nearly juiced out....

Lily's Xmas bash - part deux

Had Xmas lunch at Lily’s new opulent house in Brook Village (Blackheath) this afternoon. Thought it was going to be typical Chinese hot pot but it turned to be a traditional turkey roast with extras (goose, ox tongue, roast beef, Salmon and Caviar). There wasn’t much entertainment laid on for the young folk there. Sure enough we improvised with playing a few rounds of Mah Jong. Nearly forgot the opening stages but towards the end of our game I started to develop tile withdrawal symptoms.

Final friday fun

Hooked up with Londan & Crazycakes to join them for their first Fiction experience. It wasn’t a particularly electrifying way to fire up our disco cylinders. This motivated us to go down to A:M which provided us with much delightful amusement. Heard some awful scratching during Paul M’s DJ set. Not sure whether this improved his musical performance or not. This boy definitely needs more guidance and musical inspiration.

On the way back to my flat this morning I got a tad bit introspective and kept wondering are these morning sessions immoral or not?

Lily's Xmas bash - part uno

Lily hired out the upstairs section of a Chinese restaurant in Great Portland Street for her Chinese soiree. Tonight saw a lot of the Chinese Welsh lot who I haven’t seen in absolute ages. It has been 10 years since I’ve seen Wing, Yo-Yo, Howard (Be-Bo) and Chris (To-To). Didn’t recognise any of them but it was good to see them after all this time. Be-Bo and To-To both had additional Canadian twangs to their Welsh accents. They were quite amazed at how young I looked for a 30 year old. In a very relaxed manner I told them all the secret was to only consume exactly 78 grains of rice each day to achieve my present stage of immortality.

Won some money during Lily’s annual prize giving raffle. Wing gave me a lift home back to Acton in his chavmobile. For some unexplained reason there was a large amount of traffic on the A40. Most of our conversation was centred on where we partied and who we hung out with. Think he was slightly shocked that as I did so much clubbing for a yella poof.

Xmas Cards

Amongst the Christmas cards I have received from my artistic friends this month there are two that caught my artistic gaze. Will there be a last minute entry to take the top spot?

Tom & Bouncy's Xmas Dinner

My drug of choice tonight was Zirtek (antihistamine) which was essential to prevent myself from reacting to Tom & Bouncy boy’s female puddy cat (called Mouse). Arrived at their Kentish Town flat for their Xmas dinner party tonight. Got introduced to vegetable crisps which slightly visually looked very much liked pot pourri. Tom was slightly taken aback when I asked for a touch of tomato ketchup during the main course as he had slaved away in the kitchen preparing gravy, bread sauce and cranberry sauce.

Bouncy showed off their funky metallic cork screw. Wes showed off his lovely $200 eagle skin shoes. Josh showed us the funky “ok go” video. I showed off my new King Britt t-shirt.

Do I hear wedding bells?

This morning my mobile kept ringing. When I finally got round to answering the call I was greeted with Cynthia’s voice. At first she started off with normal chit chat and then she suddenly launched into the surprise she received this morning. Here excitement stemmed from the marriage proposal she received. As the proposal wasn’t from George Clooney I obviously wasn’t as excited as her but I did like the alternative technique her potential hubby used.

Will reveal the technique in more detail once I have got confirmation that all is going to plan.

Canapés & Champers

David Wantsome reminded me this afternoon about Paul M’s champagne and canapés get together tonight. Arrived at Paul’s bash situated in the heart of ghetto Chelsea a few minutes before David. Slightly nervous as I had only met Paul once at a house party and not sure whether he would be able to remember who I was. As soon as I got past the buzzer and sauntered down towards Paul’s lovely basement flat I was glad I had got past level one.

Walking through the door I noticed Amy Lame surrounded by a small gaggle of Paul’s acquaintances & friends (which consisted mainly of cabaret performers on the London circuit). Unquestionably I did find it a small challenge blending in amongst this lot. Much of my entertainment tonight was watching many of these artists trying to come up with better and more amusing one-liners. Some of the better rehearsed classical quotes flowed as freely as the champagne being served to us.

I noticed that there seemed to be quite a few US folks in attendance tonight. One of Paul’s magician mates performed a trick which was entertaining but it wasn’t very exciting. If you can’t levitate I will not be adding you to my mobile phone.

David’s matching stripy Jasper Conran yellow&black tie, shirt and hankie was impressive. Obviously I saw a different side to him tonight as he was amongst his peers and learnt a lot about him from his friends and fellow performers. Stayed briefly in Babuska’s before going home with an enthused outlook. Various individuals I met tonight had day jobs doing stuff they hate but I felt their determination to make it.

Sick at Folies Pigalle

At long last I got to see Julien G’s newly acquired flat in La Chapelle (18^th arrondissement). His new gaff felt a bigger than his other flat and had this very cute little bath tub. Julien got Christophe to put up some of his pictures. Even though Christophe has got a good eye for placing objects his maths definitely would score a GCSE grade D.

Made a bad mistake tonight and consumed something which I’ve never consumed before. Initial effect seemed quite pleasant but then about 45 mins later I felt very sick (very much like the first time I had gay sex). Should have known better then to let Christophe egg me on. Was forced to ride it out whilst Christophe got down to some DJ’ing at Folies Pigalle’s BBB (Black Blanc Beur) night. Nearly most of my final evening in Paris was spent trying not to fall asleep in the club. Part two of my challenge involved meI rushing outside every 20 minutes to prevent myself from throwing up inside the club.

From what I remember the venue was nice and intimate. It had the feel of a 40s theatre and an upstairs balcony which peered down onto the main dancefloor area / stage. Think my experimention days are over!