Little Drunk Chef

After the wedding I was exhausted, as was my Kenyan sister, Georgina, but our mum wasn’t in so we had to cook dinner. We could have bought it in town but knew that we’d be in trouble if there weren’t leftovers at home for mum. So I went home to cook. Importantly, I’d drank almost a quarter of a litre of brandy at this point, but I didn’t feel very drunk and so I’d forgotten that I wasn’t sober. I approached dinner by chopping up all the types of vegetable that I found in the fridge and making a stew. This was all going rather well but then I couldn’t find any carbohydrates to go with it. No pasta, rice or potatoes and so I decided to make dumplings. There was a hitch with this – no milk. Ever resourceful, I decided to use tea instead (because there was always a thermos of tea in the house, whatever time of day). I thought this might taste a bit odd and wanted to mask the taste of the tea with ground black pepper. Unfortunately, my hand slipped while pouring this in and rather a lot was added. This couldn't be helped though, the show must go on! Having come this far I didn’t let the next discovery that I didn’t have baking powder stop me either, so I used bicarbonate of soda instead (despite the fact that I didn't have an acidic ingredient to activate the rising agent in it). I then found that I had rather a lot of mixture. Not to worry, I poured it all into the pan to top the stew (what’s the point in leftovers right?) The problem then was that I had an enormous quantity of mixture, and it took forever to cook. The second problem was that it tasted disgusting (possibly because it wasn’t cooked). This was more of a problem. Especially when my quite nice stew was underneath. Georgina (my Kenyan counterpart) was very kind about it. She said that she liked it and then didn’t eat it. When I came home the next day from my day trip I found that it had all disappeared which was rather a relief. Jane says it makes her feel good to know that even I mess up in the kitchen sometimes and so I’m happy to think that this disgusting disaster has brought comfort to someone.

Time to let off some (more) steam

After the day of pitching had finished, the UK girls went together to the cyber café (to apply for jobs post-Heathrow) and since that was not a very uplifting experience, we went out afterwards for “one drink”. They do a very dangerous wine here called kingfisher. It’s 8%, tastes like strawberry and is served in little beer bottles. After the first one we were all sitting around giggling and smiling, coming out with ideas like “let’s be sentimental!” after the second one we were trying to take photos of each other but couldn’t because no one would stay still. I was laughing so much I couldn’t speak. Helen* decided to ring Arthur and tell him that she loved him. Evidently her feelings weren’t reciprocated as she came off the phone saying that she hated him. Catherine decided to kiss Daniel, who loved this idea and unsubtly relocated them both several meters from the main group in a terrible effort to get some privacy. Some entrepreneurs came along and one painstakingly took 20 minutes to try and communicate in English to Katie that she was like a teenager. Helen decided she hated Daniel and we have a hilarious video of her explaining why (“becausssse ofmyyy sass!”). Happily he was otherwise engaged with Catherine and so will never know. Megan lost some post it notes, 1000 shillings and a packet of rolos and the pitching panel spilt a good number of secrets regarding who would and wouldn’t get funding. I was walked back by Megan who then took herself off into the night, met some men who claimed to know where her friends were and so she accompanied them on a very high risk 20 minute walk of Njoro town. All in all it was the night that was needed to help relieve the stress of the previous 3 weeks.


* Because we've all been so badly behaved in this post, names have been changed.

How to party like a Kenyan!

After the monumental low that preceded the pitching document deadline came the post-deadline party, which I attended in a state of wild sleep deprivation and spent a good deal of the night wondering if I was drunk or just manically tired. Katie and I were warmly welcomed back to the group of volunteers, who of course hadn't seen us in a long while (4 days is ages in that kind of close community!) It was held in a 3-sided marquee in a field, with a food buffet at one end and a DJ at the other. Tequila kicked the night off.

At about 7pm I found Melissa on the floor, amongst the bags, behind the plastic chairs, saying that she was drunk. I hadn't started drinking at this stage, so I wasn't in danger of spilling anything at all by lying down next to her, having a hug, and generally ensuring that she wasn't the only one sprawled on the floor. Tim was very quickly out of his mind, asked Amy if she wanted a hug and then bit her, which she thought was hilarious and dined out on the story for the rest of the evening, made better by the fact that her audience kept forgetting and needed to be told again. The tent was soon full of dancers. Hamish was struggling to stay upright, but still managed to dance by holding on to a tent pole.  I resolved to write a formal letter of appreciation to the DJ. Catherine, always dignified, was currently experiencing drunkenness for the first time; maintaining a meek countenance like no one else alive, she danced by herself in a corner, thereby saying nothing silly to anyone. Meanwhile, it had started to rain outside, heavily, in the way that I'd only ever seen in Kenya. The locals stayed sensibly under the tent shelter, but the volunteers (including several Kenyan ones) came out to dance in the rain. It's a wonderful sensation. It also makes you feel about 1.5x more drunk than you really are. A little like reality has been partly suspended and you're in a music video. I was soon soaked through and I didn't care.

I found Kenyan dancing a bit tough, but it was OK because so did my friend Jane and she is the benchmark for dance floor morality as far I am concerned. The reason that such a benchmark was needed, was that in UK terms, Kenyan dancing is incredibly sexual. If a Kenyan friend came to visit me at home, I couldn't take them to a night club because their moves would almost certainly be mistaken for premature foreplay. One of my Kenyan friends helpfully explained the etiquette: "you just have to give them a hard-on Clare, and then leave them". This very helpful piece of advice certainly explained why so many of the men were running round with erections, but it didn't make dancing with them much easier. I resolved that as long as I was well out of my comfort zone I was probably doing it right, but problematically this benchmark didn't stay steady and the more vodka I drank, the more challenging dance moves I was required to undertake to ensure that I was always being stretched in a risque direction. While Kenyans don't attribute any significance to dance floor antics and don't see it as particularly sexual, I eventually had to extricate myself from what I felt was becoming a threesome, rather than a dance, and went off in pursuit of more vodka.

Eventually it was time to leave. At least one of the party had to be carried out of the gate, because he was sound asleep, despite the very loud music. As I stepped out into the road, I was startled to find my friend Helen, squatting down and relieving herself in a pothole. At exactly the same time our taxi arrived. Helen hared past me with the speed of a Kenyan sprinter (perhaps not coincidentally) and left a group of us to laugh uncontrollably in her wake. When we got into the taxi, it was Catherine's turn, "I need a wee". This state of affairs got more urgent until we arrived at my house and I invited her into our garden to use our hole-in-the-ground, she stepped out of the taxi behind me but the next thing I heard was "MATT DON'T LOOK!" Never before or since have I heard her sound so fierce. Clearly Helen wasn't the only one to water the road that evening.

According to her roommate, Catherine was out like a lamp that evening but was so excited by her drunken dreams that her roommate was woken hourly to be told about them.

I wish there was a moral to this story, or something intelligent to conclude with, but really this is just an important progression in the story: We'd had a tough time and we needed a break.

You can't shock a chippie. Fact

There comes a point in the night after which, drunk people should stay on the dance floor where they can't embarrass themselves becasue no one can hear them talk and their flails look like wild moves if only lit by a strobe. When they stray off it to get chips, that's when the trouble starts...

A few weekends ago I was at a fundraising party for a charity in Kenya (my own fundraising party, in fact) and all the guests were tasked with completing certain missions before the night was up in order to earn points. Some missions were easy and earned few points (hug a bouncer), others were more more challenging and so earned lots of points (turn a team of 5 people upside down in any way you like). On my way home with a few fellow party-survivors I  was very happy (not least because it wasn't my home I was going to but a friend's, thereby ensuring that the social spectacular would last another day). Much mischief had been achieved, much wine had been drunk and much funding had been raised. To make matters even better it was snowing and none of us were sober enough to feel the cold. Win, win.
You might think at this point that we were on the pinnacle of drunken satisfaction, but no, as we skipped through the snowflakes we came across a chip shop, still open at 3am. Marvellous! And once inside, with my sufficiently greasy order placed, I realised that there were still one more challenge that could be completed. Hurah! This in fact was a much more exciting pursuit than food, which I soon forgot about. It was imperative that I exercise the opportunity to take of an item of underwear and wave it in the air (thereby earning 5 more points for my team). Actually, better still, everyone ought to join in, that would be more appropriate. One female friend was keen but the other required a bit of cajoling. The boys weren't invited to join in - we needed them to hold our jackets and be the photographer. Bras were waved vigorously in the air. What a triumph! As the scene unfolded the man behind the chip shop counter tried in vain to attract our attention to tell us our food was ready (not that we were at all interested. Let's face it, it's not every night you get to wave your bra about, but it's fairly commonplace to eat cheesy chips) he was not remotely sympathetic and seemed slightly irritated that we were taking so long to leave the premises. The fact that we were in the middle of something more important clearly didn't register. It must be the case that the staff of late night take-aways have seen it all before. Customers enthralled in the tasks of being eccentric can in no way surprise them. They see the most idiotic of human antics, probably quite regularly.

Some might say, it was out of pure respect, we didn't waste his time but ran out into the night, chips in one hand underwear in the other.

At last! Proof that I've got better at drinking

A few weekends ago I ended up going to a 2-day training course in London with a load of 18 year-olds and a handful of fresh uni grads. It was funny going out drinking with that lot. I was the oldest, but not by a long way. This has only served to highlight to me how much you change from 18 to 25. It's like a social experiment. If you put us in a bar with the express and repeatedly reiterated message of 'do not get drunk' there is general confusion. The poor lambs don't know what to do.

"Shots! Yes, let's do shots! Oh I bought water"
"There's a minimum spend of £10 so I got 3 gin and tonics. Do you want one?"
"\Surely you're not going to drink alcohol?!"

I decided to order independently of this melee. Never has 1 pint of cider seemed so bold or so complicated. It's funny to think I might have matured since I was 18. It's nice to have some proof at last!

They say international athletes bond at sporting events. Now we know why.

The first surprising thing about Monaco is that it is built on an incredibly steep slope. From the marina you can see right to the edge of the city simply because everything is built on top of each other. This was to prove a challenge to the ladies on our second evening there because we were required to get dressed up in black tie and that requires high heels. We tackled this problem in a pragmatic manner and carried spare pairs of shoes instead of handbags.

All eight international teams assembled in the yacht club de Monaco. Our boys had disrupted the seating plan so as to have as many Dutch girls on our team table as possible. The rest of us played a minor role in match making and the more we drank the more ambitious we got. We started with simple actions like suggesting that all the ladies moved 2 seats to their right before pudding (thereby ensuring that the right people were sat next to each other). Then when free wine had been liberally served to everyone present, the pudding arrived and turned out to be a variation on fruit salad, some people weren’t interested in eating it and so the game of passing a 2-inch slice of banana around the table from mouth to mouth was instigated. You might think, as I did, that this would never catch on, but the initiator of the game was sat right next to the wannabe couple and so uptake was alarmingly strong. By the time 3 people had done it no one else had an excuse not to join in. Watching people with a banana poking out of their mouth seemed funny but we did get it round the circle without any compromising incidents. No sooner had I breathed a sigh of relief then, to my horror, our instigator picket up a floppy bit of mango and declared a new round. Would the Dutch girl go for it? Why yes she would. The wannabe couple found it very easy to do this but everyone else had more in the way of personal space issues. By the time the mango got half way round to me, my stomach muscles were exhausted from laughing at them all in their awkward efforts to transfer the mango from one to another. My moment in the spotlight came of course. I found it a moderately sobering one. I was faced with a grinning Dutchman, with a beard and a piece of limp mango dangling from his teeth at significantly closer proximity than you’d ever expect to see such a sight. There’s really nothing to be done but to dart in and get the metaphorical hot potato moving on as fast as possible.

After the meal and a few other formalities, the evening’s entertainment was announced: Karaoke. This was something that no one felt inebriated enough to do, which is funny considering they felt ready to pass a mango around between them. It did eventually get off the ground though in rather a spectacular fashion as the Dutch girls were coaxed onto the floor, seated comfortably on chairs and then made distinctly uncomfortable when the British boys, clutching microphones (and lunging wildly), energetically serenaded with 'you've lost that loving feeling' in an admirable recreation of that famous Top Gun scene. Unfortunately I'm not sure the girls got the reference.

When the party ended, no one wanted to go home (I think it’s because a night never feels complete until there’s been dancing. Singing doesn't count) and for that reason I’ll have to put together one final post to explain how it all ended.

#ClareInMonaco

It's a city on a very steep hill

Hungover like a Monegasque tourist

The morning after the night before, Monaco was cold, full of rain and we were tired. We were made painfully aware of the fact that we were primarily in the town to compete in a sailing competition, when our alarms went off promptly at 8am. The girls were lacklustre, but the boys even more so as they had all woken up in our hotel, without a beautiful international sailor in sight.

Having said that, our team was in a better state than some, as three competitors had been arrested the night before. It sounds like a cliché but an Englishman, an Irishman and an Italian walked out of the bar (told you it sounded clichéd), they had been distracted by some bikes and [allegedly] decided to steal one. Unfortunately the bikes had been parked outside a police station and while their drunk efforts were not strong enough to prosecute them for bike theft the 3 amigos were extremely surprised to learn that it is a criminal offence to be drunk on the streets of Monaco and so they were promptly locked up until such time as they were fit to go free.

This was considered highly entertaining by those who made it safely had to the Marina the next day (particularly those who still had a full team of sailors). We soon saw the Italian girl safe, well and (more importantly) sober but the Irishman didn't appear until 4pm! He was obscenely grumpy at this stage. This is largely because it transpires that police hospitality does not extend to feeding their short term guests. Even basic provisions like toilet roll and water are only given on request.

Sailing did not go well for us that day. It rained torrentially and I couldn't help thinking (while shivering violently) that I might prefer to be in the UK. With a sedentary hobby (board games might be nice). Indoors.

It might sound like this would be a good place to end this sequence of stories from Monaco – everyone has learnt a valuable lesson and is ready to go home. However, what we really needed was to get a grip!!! This was a 3-day event and we were only half way through.

#ClareInMonaco

The old man of Monaco

The band in the club played covers of other peoples’ songs and did so incredibly well. It all started with Avichi and we were reassured from that point forwards. At one point I realised that the guitarist was playing his instrument behind his head. It amazed me as I’ve never seen this done anywhere more proximal than youtube before but this chap was lose enough to touch. Despite the expensive drinks, Monaco wasn't all bad.
However, the real star of the show (beyond the Dutch guy upstaging the band by standing in front of them and with his truly epic air guitar) was an elderly man who seemed to be by himself. He was probably about 75 years old and was tearing up the dancefloor. When it came to getting low he was just as able as I was! Dressed in a shirt and tie, I couldn't work out if he was a rich tax evader or a cute old granddad. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and humoured him but in hindsight I think he probably had a bit of cash to burn as you can’t get hip, joint and knee replacements like that on the NHS!

#ClareInMonaco

Welcome to Monaco

Our big night out in Monaco got off to a bit of a false start, when we wondered into a Russian themed marquee full of line dancing bingoplayers by mistake. Our next choice of party was much better, not least because the Dutch team were there and our boys took an instant liking to the Dutch girls. It’s probably worth explaining at this point that we were primarily in Monaco for a sailing competition, where there were 8 international teams of 8 sailors, each composed of 4 men, 4 women.

Meanwhile, us English girls were entertaining ourselves on an empty dance floor by seeing how high we could kick. This predictably ended up in one of us falling over as the floor was covered in a good deal of highly slippery confetti. As we bent to pick her up, Jenny spotted a 100 euro note on the floor. I've never seen a €100 note before in my life and in Monaco they have them just lying around!

This discovery was presently reinvested in a round of drinks for us all (well, the 6 of us that were present). We only got €24 change for this and so politely explained to the barman that there’d been a mistake, perhaps he hadn't realised we’d given him a hundred euros (after all, we probably don’t look like the sort to be in possession of one).  He gave us an apologetic smile and turned to the till as if to get more change, then with a grin and a flourish, whirled round, produced the receipt, (confirming that 6 drinks had indeed cost €76) and said “Welcome to Monaco!”

#ClareInMonaco

Sinterklaas is coming to town

First of all, let me set the scene. A couple of weekends ago I was in Monaco for a sailing competition (which I’ll admit is not as glamorous as it sounds) and we were all gathered for a black tie dinner on the Saturday night (also not as glamorous as it sounds, I’ll justify this in a future blog post one day). There were eight international teams there (each made up of 8 people: 4 males, 4 females) and it was early December, which as I was soon to learn, is coincidentally when the Dutch celebrate Christmas.

I was alerted to the fact that it was time for the secret Santa, just after dinner, when a handful of gingerbread flew through the air and hit me in the eye. It had been thrown by a very tall elf. I was surprised then to catch sight of ‘Sinterklaas’ and realised he was to be joining us. Visually he looked like a cross between Santa and a cardinal, with a little more emphasis on the latter. He was also very tall, spoke with a Dutch accent and when his hat fell off, which it did regularly (due to the quantity of wine consumed), you could see blond hair underneath.

The Dutch team tried to explain to us who this fellow was. Apparently in Holland they have this chap who visits all the good boys and girls on the first weekend of December. In the past it was said that he removed naughty children in his sack, but now he’s more inclined to use the sack to bring presents to well behave ones. He is an arch rival of Santa Claus and they have a fight the following day after which Sinterklaas goes back to his house in Spain…or something like that*. No one was very sober at the time and so I thought the explanation might make more sense the following day. It didn’t.

Apparently in Holland they don’t really go in for present giving, they focus more on the writing and giving of poems and so this is what we all had to do. A secret Santa of poem giving. Some of the poems were great, some were terrible and some teams technically had the distinct advantage that they had a member locked in jail for part of the day who were therefore able to apply themselves fully to the task of poetry writing. Nevertheless, the most awful poet was Eddie who introduced his masterpiece with the melodramatic explanation that he’d written it during his “incarceration” and then he proceeded to read out the shortest and least sensical poem of the lot while the opportunistically formed Free Eddie Party heckled throughout with drunken shouts of “Free Eddie!” (It was apparently much more satisfying shouting this now there was the man himself to shout it at). Once the poem was finished, it was loudly remarked that, after a day behind bars, he should have come up with something better.

Over on the UK team, we had drawn Rome in the secret Santa and had also struggled to write our poem. When it was our turn to send a representative to go and sit on Sinterklaas’ knee (good old Benjie) we explained that it would be an ‘interactive poem’ and was to require audience participation. It was also the type of poem that had a repetitive theme. I was impressed at the way Benjie sold it. The Rome team would be required to come to the front and the name of the poem was ‘I have never’…you may be familiar with it. It went down a storm.





* For anyone interested in finding out about Sinterklaas through a less confused lens. Here's a link to a well explained page. It does not however explain the fight between him and Santa Claus. I have yet to get to the bottom of that!

Also if you're interested in seeing the full story of that Monaco trip, it's accumulating here #ClareInMonaco

I'd be a climbing star by now but life gets in the way

My weekend got off to an amusing start on Friday night when I failed to go to bed at a sensible time. I was just settling down at 1 am when Tim (my housemate and honorary brother) came bounding in, extremely drunk, wanting a hug. He took off his trousers (as everyone knows you can't get into bed with trousers on) and jumped in. I had a hug and heard all about his evening. Then, after being allowed to play me just 1 Coldplay song (against his better judgement as there really were a great many he thought I ought to hear!) he got out of bed, realised how drunk he was, picked up his trousers, then picked up my trousers and was preparing to put them on when he caught sight of my bra, which had been put on the chair underneath them. This terrible sight filled him with horror and so he left immediately. In the morning I put on my jumper, went downstairs, and climbed into his bed to see if he was hungover yet. Luckily he was still drunk and so agreed to come climbing.
Reflecting on this trip, I definitely think that our technique is starting to improve, even if the difficulty level of walls hasn't. We've set ourselves the challenge of doing a 'blue' or 'salmon' coloured route by Christmas (they're equivalent levels). The trouble is that people tend to put on weight at Christmas time, which then makes it harder to climb walls. A healthy eating binge has been suggested in order to conquer this as soon as possible. It's either that or we could progress by turning up without hangovers on a full nights sleep. Hmm, the 'body of a god diet' starts here.

Fancy dress is temporary. Unless you're from Plymouth.

One of the other things that made me laugh this weekend was Plymouth university, who decided to dress up as Native Indians. Freshers and graduates alike had all put a lot of effort in to look the part and as a group their turnout was fantastic. Actually, if anything, they had put in too much effort, as they had decided to decorate themselves with henna in order to create the right tribal effect. In the morning they found their arms, legs and (in some cases) faces were stained black and are now due to stay that way for at least a month. If only they had any skill (/modest sobriety) at applying their patterns in the first place their predicament might now be slightly better. As it is, I think there are going to be some awkward young graduates at work right now!

Henna done right. It's pretty hard for a drunken novice to emulate.

Beware Ginger Wine

Oh good god, I have woken up with a terrible hangover. It’s not the usual kind, I have no headache but just feel violently sick. There’s a (frankly quite detestable) person running around outside with a microphone calling everyone in for bacon sandwiches as part of the camp site wake up call. I don’t think I could keep one down! I blame it all on the curious ginger wine I had last night. It seemed like such a good idea at the time - a 13.5% bottle for £3.50. Last night I described it as "one part benylin and one part firework". Now I would probably summarise it as ‘spicy sugar syrup’. This tells me that it probably has an extremely unpleasant laxative quality. I really hope I’m wrong.

Here it is. Now you know what to avoid.

Not all Scientists are created equally Sexy

Last night at the university windsurfers' reunion we all dressed up as sexy scientists. The boys’ interpretation of this was to wear lab coats with alarming degrees of nothingness underneath. Christo was by far the worst as he was wearing leopard print boxers, a stick on moustache, an Einstein wig, an Anne Summers 'flogger' and a type of ladies underwear I’ve never seen or heard of before – it was like a pair of tights that were semi opaque, came up to his arm pits, had shoulder straps and no crotch (presumably to help female wearers go to the toilet – not so helpful for Christo though who found his manly parts all came through the hole, which acted like an inefficient tourniquet). The boys who had been planning to go out looking respectable almost all changed their minds when they saw Christo and so the ladies were called on to provide enough provocative items of underwear to transform them. We obliged and soon the caravan was full of, um, what had better be described as ‘alarmingly sexy scientists’. The girls meanwhile went out in little black dresses under lab coats and enjoyed the warmest, most practical, evening we’d had in a long time. It's nice to turn the tables every once in a while!

I can't show the boys out of consideration for public decency!

Surprised by my drunken self

I got an email at work today from a chap I don't know called Mark. Apparently I'd given him my company email address (not sure why!) on Saturday night while quite drunk and he also appeared to be under the impression I'd instructed him to use it in order to start a game of noughts and crosses. Better still, he clearly felt some need to tell me that his name wasn't Hector (I didn't like to ask why!) It's just not the sort of thing you expect to catch up with you at work on a Tuesday afternoon! I think maybe I put 'noughts and crosses' next to my name in his phone as a reminder of who I was as we had just played a game on a big toy set in a children's playground (which is where the (now not so literally located) house party had ended up). Looking back, the fact that I then asked to borrow his jeans in order to climb a large plastic palm tree, before magnanimously giving him my dress in exchange when he agreed, probably made me a little more memorable still. I hadn't thought of that. Remembering this, I put my cross in bottom left. It's the least I could do.