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.

Twelve blind dates

This evening, all the volunteers have been on a blind date. The system worked like this: the boys met at 6 and were sent to various restaurants in the area. The girls met at 6.15 and were instructed to attend the appropriate locations (we had one main matchmaker orchestrating the whole thing). We would have to chat to our date for 1 hour before reuniting in 1 central bar. Everyone had made a bit of an effort and dressed up smart. The girls were even in make up for once.


When I arrived at the café I recognised my Kenyan friend, Charles, waiting for me. I've always thought he was quite nice, a bit of a cheeky chap but underneath it quite clever and sensitive. This assessment remains unchanged by the obligation to talk to him for an hour. Indeed we actually stretched in out to 2 hours. That's a long time to nurse a cup of tea for! One thing that really made me laugh as we chatted was the discovery that Kenyan school children are in the habit of setting fire to their dormitories when they want to protest about something such as poor exam results. Charles himself had done so twice. This reminded me very much of stories of my own dad setting off fireworks in the corridor at his school (not that I managed to say so, as I found the concept of fireworks a bit difficult to explain). At the end he gave me a bar of chocolate wrapped in brown paper, which was sweet, and asked if we could go on a date again.


When we got to the bar where the rest of the gang were (or at least 75% of them, as plenty were yet to return) it was lovely to hear the reports everyone had had a good time, even people who had been sent on dates with someone they didn't expect to like. It gradually became evident that some people had consumed rather a lot of alcohol on their dates, which I found extremely funny. Some couples were completely plastered!! It was lovely that they had done this in pairs, so no one had overdone it alone and people were able to fall over in good company.  This scenario was made more funny still by the fact that they'd have to slip subtly into religious households that mostly didn't allow alcohol on the premises. We've all been there!

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!

Every Londoner should know about The Euston Tap

This post is not a narrative for once, but instead I have to write and report a fantastic new discovery, which I feel I should have learnt about within my first week in London. I can't believe it's taken me nearly 18 months to find the Euston Tap and I now feel obliged to spread the word! One very serious blog post coming up...The Tap impressed me for several reasons. Firstly it seems to be built inside a monument reminiscent or marble arch in style. Secondly it serves pints for under £4 (which is a big deal in London) and thirdly the graffiti in the toilets is so amusing that I must have been in there for a good 10 minutes just reading it. As you would imagine, the place is full of hipsters who are quite friendly (they have to be, it's cosy) and also very beardy.

So if you haven't already been, here's another bar for your London bucket list.

Some sort of Victorian gatehouse.
Don't be put off by my crummy photography

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.

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.

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.