Musicology

Today was a long day, a full day, a day of many pleasures. Not a day on which I should have stayed out late and got steamingly drunk. Ah, well, I suppose I was seduced by the rare luxury of not having to work on Monday morning....

I really wasn't intending to come back so late, though. I was quite pleasantly exhausted after.... showing friends round Panjiayuan flea-market in the morning, having a big Chinese lunch, hanging out with the cutest girl I know in Beijing for a while in the afternoon (well, she's only 20 months old.... but her mum's rather lovely too), helping to fire up a rooftop barbecue in the evening, and then squandering a couple of games against my new pool nemesis, Mr Yang, in the Pool Bar on my way home. 10.30, full belly, dog tired, mildly tipsy - that would have been a good time to call it a day.

However, I had learned that a couple of friends were in Huxley's, my favourite local sleazepit, so I looked in there - purely to be sociable, you understand (and it really is on the way home). And it was quite a large, raucous crowd, most of whom I didn't really know - so I was not inclined to stay. That was my 'Jeffrey Dahmer time': "Just one drink," I thought. But then...... well, the bar staff's choice of music was a bit shite (how we miss The Barman, now 'retired'), but we persuaded them to hook up the sound system to Josh's i-Pod..... and Josh really does have an excellent and diverse taste in music. I found myself wanting to wait around a little longer and a little longer, just to see what song would come on next. Yes, it was only my love of music that was keeping me there.

But of course, while I was waiting, I had to have another drink, and another, and another. Gassy Tsingtao beer was not sitting well on my over-full stomach, so I decided to switch to more refreshing gin & tonic. Then, worrying that the G & T's were not particularly strong, and that I wasn't really getting high quickly enough, I started slamming them. And that did get me high.

And that is how I come to be blogging here at, oh, 2am or so.

I suspect there was probably also an element of desperate escapism at play here, wanting to take my mind off the possibly momentous job decision I may have to make tomorrow (later today). Aaaagghhh...... to BED.