commitment ceremony & grumpy h-ls.

[baratron]

Yet again, haven't been doing much that was interesting. Alexa & Rowan (that's alexa_robinson and rowan_leigh for those who don't know) came round for the weekend. On Friday night, we went to our usual noodle bar in New Malden, because Rowan had never eaten there - and as we were finishing our meal, some sort of Incident was going on outside. By the time we left, there were no fewer than 10 police cars and 3 police vans parked on the street, with a very large number of policemen directing various intoxicated young people away from each other! Not bad for a town that consists of one street, and doesn't even have a police station!

On Saturday we were all supposed to be going to lizw and djm4's commitment ceremony. Rowan felt ill, so decided not to go, and I felt ill enough that I persuaded Alexa to drive rather than take the train. This turned out to be A Mistake. Not only did we get stuck in the most enormous tailback on the A3, we also discovered that High Holborn was closed at one end - and stupidly, there were no signs to tell you of this until it was too late. So we drove round the block twice, before the useless "Diverted Traffic" signs diverted us halfway to the Angel, finally abandoning us altogether. Luckily, Richard and I know our way round Clerkenwell fairly well, and we eventually got to Holborn Circus only 25 minutes late. Which meant we missed the actual commitment ceremony.

I arrived at the venue in a terrible mood because I had been dying for a pee for the past half hour. I completely failed to recognise ailbhe, and brushed aside several people who wanted hugs. After going to the toilet, I felt a bit more human but I couldn't find the no-smoking part of the room anywhere. People seemed to be smoking throughout, and I already couldn't breathe well due to rampant asthma/going down with a cold. In addition, the combination of a narrow room, low ceiling and lots of people made me feel horribly claustrophobic. So I ended up withdrawing completely and spending what felt like half an hour with my face buried in Richard's hair before we went off to eat. By the time we returned, a lot of people had left and I could actually stand to be in the room, but I felt embarrassed by the way I'd behaved earlier, and awkward and out of place.

I hope Liz and David enjoyed themselves. I am sorry that I was bad-tempered and unsociable for most of the evening, and especially sorry to have been bad-tempered at meirion, who I hardly ever get to see. A suggestion for future event-runners: please make it really obvious which parts of the room are supposed to be non-smoking, and if necessary, get someone to police it. I didn't want to go up to Liz or David and complain about the smoke when it was supposed to be their celebration, and it (anyway) seemed churlish to have complained about anything when they were surrounded by well-wishers for most of the night.

I'm going to give up on this entry because I'm having trouble wording things in a neutral way. I'll just post it now, and maybe try to edit it later. I don't want to upset people when I'm already trying to apologise for behaving obnoxiously, but I'm feeling frustrated by my complete lack of brain at the moment...

Comments

[lizw.livejournal.com]

You're right, it should have been more obvious; we realised slightly too late that we'd forgotten to make signs. The non-smoking room was the narrow one that ran parallel to the room with the bar in it; I don't think anyone used it.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Ah, hmm... using that as a non-smoking room would have been difficult, seeing as for a lot of the night the bar staff were carrying chairs through that corridor. Never mind - there's nothing you can do now! I'm just extra-sensitive to smoke whenever I have a cold, and go from being able to tolerate it in small amounts to wheezing if anyone dares breathe it at me.