Mark's Blog: Gill's un-birthday drinks

Gill's birthday drinks nights have, over the years, tended towards disaster (or at least, I am told, she never enjoys them), so she has taken to not having them at all. However, in reality this just means that Angelique organises them instead and doesn't call them 'birthday drinks'.

Last year lived up to the high expectations of previous events, when Gill faked leaving her own party and then, along with me and Andrew (who was visiting at the time) was thrown out of a late night 'piano bar / night club' in Cremorne. As I recall, on that occasion, I did my best not to get admitted in the first place. Gill had briefed me on the standard questioning I could expect from the bouncer on the door: "How many drinks have you had? Where have you been?" etc. I was instructed to say "We've been for dinner and I've had a couple of drinks" and to 'look sober'. However, having spent the day on a pub crawl around Sydney with Andrew before meeting up for Gill's un-birthday drinks, I had every intention of going home and no desire to go to a loud late night bar. So the conversation went something like this:

"How many drinks have you had?"
"I've no idea."
"Approximately..."
"No idea. A lot."
"Where have you been this evening?"
"Not a clue. Everywhere."

At this point Gill staged an intervention and told the bouncer I was lying. I, however, was insistent, and quite convinced that I'd done enough to not get let in. I was wrong. I remember inquiring of the bouncer, as I was waved through (and dragged through by a thoroughly unimpressed un-birthday girl), how I could answer the questions differently in order to be barred entry next time; but received no reply. A couple of hours later, and we were suddenly and inexplicably thrown out. If only they'd listened to me at the door on the way in, I could have saved everybody the trouble.

Anyway, this year was very tame by comparison, and Gill actually had a fun night. She went for cocktails with her girlfriends in Newtown, after which I joined them for dinner at a great Vietnamese restaurant on King St, thinking that at least one or two of the girls' boyfriends might be there, but...