Weight 13st 9. CNPS cars spotted 4.
I took 15 to a party at the House of Lords. Look at me, Mr Swanko (at least I think that's what the kids in my street call me. They love me so much they shout it through my letter-box in the middle of the night. I am quite a local character).
This was actually a party organised by my old college, St Catherine's. I would never usually go to these things, but having a first date at the House of Lords seemed too good a thing to miss.
As regular readers will recall I do not have particularly fond memories of my college and didn't really hang around there very much. I have hitherto been delighted not to have contributed a penny to the Catz fund that has been set up to raise money for the college. Last year just after I'd moved into my nice new house I got a call from a student asking me to pledge money. She said most people were setting up direct debits of twenty to fifty pounds a month. She asked me what I did and I said I was a comedian and she said "Oh, well, with your job you probably wouldn't be able to make a regular commitment for so much."
"No," I lied, "it would be difficult." I laughed like an evil genius internally. I could afford twenty pound a month, easily. But I was never going to give it to her or her stinky posho college.
Of course, had the student in question bothered to do a bit of research into the people she was ringing she could have flattered me by pretending to know about who I was and what I had done and I'd probably have been so impressed I would have sent off a giant cheque (not for very much money, but of the size of those cheques they give to Pools winners). Just look how it worked for that homeless guy the other week. St Catz should get him working their phone lines.
However, in return for getting to take a date to the House of Lords I had had to contribute over fifty pounds to the fund, so they'd got me in the end. I had instructed 15 to consume at least thirty pounds of wine and canapes (and I would do the same) to make sure the fund did not benefit from my presence. However, canapes and wine were sparse and I can't imagine we got through more than a tenner's worth. Giving them over forty pounds profit. Damn St Catz. They will spend that on sticks to beat the poor children with. And harpoons to kill foxes. The overpriveleged swine.
The party wasn't as glamorous as I had expected. We weren't in some grand chamber filled with old men in gowns and wigs, but in a little room with an awning tacked on to the side. Admittedly we were right by the river Thames, which was somewhat delightful. And in a way going somewhere both ostentatious and slightly disappointing is almost the perfect date.
I had always wondered what kind of person would come to these kind of events; it is not the coolest thing to come back to an old college do. And sure enough, not many people do. There were only four people from my year there and quite remarkably (as I didn't know many people at my college) I knew two of them reasonably well and recognised the third. Age had withered us all and the years us had condemned. But then that's our fault for not dying when we were young. What a load of idiots.
One of the four was a guy called Paul who had also done History and who I'd copied quite a few essays off of, word for word, because I was more interested in doing comedy and sleeping than writing about history back then.
Paul possesses quite a phenomenal memory and was able to reel off conversations we had had over fifteen years ago. He was able to do this with everyone. What made these anecdotes even more remarkable was that the incidents he recalled were often quite mundane. In a sense this made them much funnier than most actually amusing anecdotes would ever be. I have trouble remembering anything from college; I even struggled to remember the surname of my main tutor. Paul's stories amused 15 and helped turn a potentially awkward situation into something very funny.
I don't think I would come to another of these dos (though it was nice to see people there who'd been involved with the college - before it was officially a college- in the 1940s. Maybe I'll come to another one when I'm 80. I hope Paul is still there. He will be able to remember some of the things that happened today, but that I have already forgotten.
On the way out we stole some of the unclaimed badges with people's names on them - people who had been foolhardy enough to pay for tickets, but sensible enough not to come. I put on the badge of a man called Chandos who had studied metallurgy in 1968. I wondered who he was and what he was like and what he was doing now. 15 chose the badge of a woman called Rebecca. We went into the night pretending to be people that we weren't. The tight House of Lords security did not realise the trick that had been played on them. I could have assassinated Tony Blairs and framed a 54 year old metallurgist.
