the new scooter

❉ jerry and i bought a scooter today. it's a gorgeous beast of a thing; a black tamoretti which is basically a copy of jerry's havana mojito vespa that he had in stockholm... i realised today that i will never ride the thing, except on the back. it's probably ten times my body weight and nearly as wide as a car. it does have a lovely padded passenger seat with back-rest though!
we drove it to work today for a tanqueray gin presentation and although we thought we'd fly there in no time, it actually took longer than the tube because of all the traffic and we were half an hour late! it probably didn't help that i was clutching onto jerry like a rabid monkey the whole way, squealing at him to go slow and take it easy. i think it'll take me a little while to get used to it. the streets of london are not as calm as those of stockholm and the double decker bus and black cab drivers smash around like they couldn't care less if they knock someone off.

we had our 'half time' staff party on monday which was a proper formal dinner event in the function room with four courses and free wine. all the managers dressed up in disney costumes and did fabulous speeches, sang songs and put on a great show. afterwards we all went out in covent garden to 'the roadhouse' and it was so much fun partying with such a huge group of people. everyone was in a really playful mood, probably spurred on by the costumes (and the free wine). one of the restaurant managers lifted me up on his shoulders and got yelled at by security. then my bar manager spun me upside down and nearly got kicked out. the guards were onto me after that and all i had to do was lift up one foot higher than the other and they'd be pouncing on me, telling me to get down.

to my absolute delight, they were doing live music karaoke, (with a really good band too!) and i immediately hunted down the karaoke girl, who put me on as the final act. i had wanted to do tina turner's 'simply the best' but someone had already taken it so i did 'sex on fire' instead. i barely knew the song but was juiced enough to wing it and had so much fun up there singing with the live band on stage and all my colleagues singing along on the dance floor below...

jerry and i skipped out at midnight, since i had to nanny early the next morning. we stumbled back into the house, running into our housemates, who took one look at me and laughed at how obviously tanked i was. our new housemates, darren and mona are a super cool couple, really friendly and interesting and laid back. we have opposite working schedules to them so we're rarely all home at the same time, but the other night the four of us had a mini dinner party and cinema outing together which was really nice. i hope they're as happy with us as housemates as we are with them... :o)