Last weekend a couple of friends, Ben and Emma, had their house warming party.  They’ve been living together for a couple of months now, but hadn’t had chance to get around to having a party until now.  When I first found out about them moving in I asked when the party was going to be.  I was told they weren’t having one.  Of course that meant that when I received the invitation I couldn’t exactly say no.

So off I went back up to Halifax for the weekend.  The party was Saturday night and I travelled up on Saturday afternoon.  The plan was to go up on the train to Halifax, walk to their house, stay there the night, and come home on the train next day.  I deviated from the plan sightly to visit my parents on the Sunday (and then get the train from Brighouse), but other than that it all worked out.

The theme for the party was Vikings and Princesses.  Naturally I chose to be a princess.  My costume wasn’t very ambitious: it consisted of a pink shirt and a tiara I sent Dana out to buy from Claire’s Accessories earlier in the week.  I did try to accessorise through my presents, although wasn’t very successful.  On the journey up there I’d come up with the idea of taking pink champagne with me — after all, what else would a princess drink? — the plan was to buy it once I got there as I knew I’d arrive a bit early. (Here’s a tangent: I caught a great new service provided by the open access operator Grand Central Railway directly from London Kings Cross to Halifax.  It was very interesting.  The train runs fast to Doncaster on the East Coast Mainline before taking a slightly unusual route via Potefract, Wakefield, Brighouse and Halfax to Bradford.  Both legs of the journey were remarkably pleasant (I say this as a regular long-distance rail traveller).  The train had plenty of legroom (if I’m going to be picky, possibly slightly too much — being 6’3″ I’m used to curling my legs up, slumping down in my chair and wedging my knees against the seat in front, however this wasn’t possible because it was just too far away, while there wasn’t quite enough space to stretch them out fully forwards without banging my shins on the seat in front) and comfortable seats.  The conductor was very friendly: I had the same one both ways and he was kind enough to bring me a timetable on the way out, and remembered me on the way back (actually that was kind of embarrassing — it was the next day and I was clearly wearing the same clothes, thus advertising I was a dirty stopout).  Anyway, their service comes strongly recommended by me.)  Unfortunately it seems expecting Sainsbury’s in Halfax to have pink champagne is a little too much to ask, so I had to resort to normal champagne and pink straws.  This wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t decided against going to M&S for the champagne, who would have had it, on the way past.  I consoled myself in the thought that I also wanted to by Southern Comfort and lemonade for me.

The party was pretty standard.  Some people I knew, some I didn’t.  I spent the evening with my camera, and didn’t drink (see, could have saved on the Southern Comfort as well).  As the evening wore on I began to get more tired, and with that more fed up.  If you follow my Twitter feed you’ll know I’m getting too old to stay out all night.  By the early hours of the morning I just wanted to go to bed.  A proper bed.  Next morning I was up before everyone else (this is usual when I stay over night at someone’s house) and did some tidying (this is, historically, also pretty usual and means you usually get invited back).  I got a lift into Halifax with Becca and met my mum at the Minster.

I only spent a couple of hours with my parents, but it was very pleasant.  I got to see their new solar panels, and let my dad know how I was getting on with some work I’ve been doing for him.  I also showed them some photos I’d seen on Facebook taken at my cousin’s wedding which they’d attended the weekend before.  My dad then gave me a lift to Brighouse to catch the train back to London.  I arrived home about half six and, after letting my parents know I’d got back and having something to eat, fell asleep almost straight away.

It was a tiring weekend, and to tell the truth I’ll be glad when this week’s over so I can spend the weekend in bed, but I think it was probably worth it.  It might even end up paying itself off late next year — a couple of my friends asked if I’d shoot their wedding for them.  More on that later.

All in all it’s been a reasonable weekend, although I still didn’t get around to getting my accounts up to date.  I must do that this week.  Preferably tomorrow.

Friday was Hallowe’en and a group of people connected with work had organised a party at a local bar to which I was invited (I realise just because they wanted pictures of the night — a little earlier in the day Paul asked me “are you being photographer tonight” — but I’m used to that).  With it being Hallowe’en it was a fancy dress party.  With me being me I didn’t dress up.  We started off meeting up at the office where people got themselves dressed up and ready before walking to the bar.  The back room had been reserved and the plan was to get there about half 7.  As is expected with these plans we didn’t actually leave the office until about quarter past 8.  There was a good number of people there and we had booked a buffet which went down reasonably well, although there was too much of it (it ended up feeding a lot of people not in our party in the end).

I spent the evening snapping away.  I only took the one camera because I was expecting us to be moving on somewhere before the end of the night and I’m always concerned that clubs aren’t necessarily going to be very pro-gear friendly.  This restricted my scope a little but still, all in all, I took around 135 pictures and from that came up with about 60 of publishable quality (not job-quality, but that’s ok when they are just going to be used on Facebook).

After a few hours I’d pretty much run out of things to photograph so I decided to sit down for a bit.  Amy, the girl I mentioned above, came and sat with me.  “I haven’t spoken to you yet tonight”, she said.  So we sat and talked for a bit.  About what she’s doing (a placement from University doing something with chemicals — she’s studying chemistry and forensic science), about what I’m doing, about my university, about where we’re from, about her boyfriend.

It was interesting to get her side of the story — I’ve heard about the relationship from his side quite a bit, but having never met her I’d not been able to judge his comments, or hear what she had to say about things.  She’s not happy with him.  “He treats me like shit”, “it’s like I’m not here”, “I was worried all his friends hate me because of what he’s told them”.  I know what his friends think.  So I lie: “They don’t hate you”.  Then, because I’m nice and she seems a bit upset: “I like you at least”.  It works.  We hug.  I get called away because shots are on the cards — this is an important photo op.

A little later I’m standing by the bar with everyone else and she wander over again.  She stands next to me and puts my arm around her.  That’s ok I guess, I have plenty of girly friends who I’d do that with.  The next thing I know she wants a photo of us together, so we pose — typical friends-taking-a-picture-with-their-own-camera type pose, faces together, camera up high — and she takes a picture with her camera.  And then another.  And another.  Another.  And another.  I am summoned away again, this time to get a picture of Batman and the Joker.

TIme passes, the Joker wins costume of the night, and it is decided to go to Guildford to carry on the evening.  By this time most people have given up on the party and split to go home.  There are only 7 of us left and not many of us really think it’s worth going on to Guildford, especially not by £36 taxi.  I’m in two minds — I do actually quite like going out, despite what people think, and I’m happy to go on somewhere, but I’m not so keen on spending well over £170 to get us all to Guildford and then back home again — but I don’t have much else to do, so I figure I might as well.  Amy wants me to as well.  There’s a bit of a fuss getting into our taxi.  Amy gets in next to nick both facing forward and she signals that she wants me to sit next to her.  But Steve says he wants to sit facing forward, and I don’t mind facing the other way, so he goes to sit next to her.  This causes her to move so she’s on the other seat facing backwards, next to me.  The reason for this soon becomes clear — she wants to hold my hand.

The trip to Guildford is about 15 minutes.  Throughout this she keeps trying to hold my hand and I keep moving it away.  We finally arrive at the next bar, although I have no idea what it’s called.  We roll in and head for the bar.  There Harry buys everyone a drink.  Except me and, apparently, Amy.  So I offer to buy her one.  In fact, I offered to buy her boyfriend one.  I did this strategically.  I didn’t want to look like I was offering to buy just her a drink.  He already had one — Harry bought it.  In the time it took for me to get served everyone else had gone off to find somewhere to sit.  That left just the two of us.  She latched herself on to me and rested her head on my shoulder.  I didn’t respond.  We got our drinks and went to join the others.  There I strategically sat at the other side of the table from her and didn’t talk to her.  It worked, she talked to Harry.

Soon people were fed up of this nice comfy seat and wanted to go upstairs to, what turned out to be, another part of the bar which was busier and less enjoyable.  She grabbed my hand, and we moved to the other bar.  Once there, she put my arm around her again.  Only this time she pushed my hand down onto her bum.  And not only onto her bum, under her skirt onto her bum.  I kept trying to find a way to move it away: I’m talking to Steve so I’m going to have to gesticulate; I need to check what time it is; I need to take a photo…  When I moved my hand away she put hers under my shirt onto my back.  Hmm.  We stood by the door of the bar for a while, mostly because there wasn’t room to go anywhere else, until Harry found a table in the corner with spaces to sit.  So we pushed our way through to that.  On the way I decided to say something in her ear: “I have to work with Nick, I’d rather he didn’t find out…”.  “So would I”.  “I’m not the one doing anything wrong”.

Soon enough it was decided that everyone had had enough.  Nick was looking worse for wear, Steve and Matt were fed up, Freya had convinced Harry they should go home and I wanted to escape.  So it was decided to call it a night and we started to make our way back to the taxi rank.  As had become traditional by this stage, she grabbed my hand.  Not much happened for the first part of the walk to the taxi rank.  At one point she stopped to zip up her jacket while I carried on going.  A brief stop at the cash machine gave her chance to catch up, it also gave her chance to realise she trapped her hair in the zip.  “That wouldn’t have happened if you had done it”, she said to me, before continuing “although you’d probably rather zip it the other way”.  Oh dear.

Had I really given the impression I was that interested in her?  Sure, I’d been friendly — she seemed miserable when we were talking and she seemed like a nice girl — but I don’t think I’d done a huge amount to lead her on.  Perhaps I should have more obviously moved away from her when she put my arms around her.  Perhaps I should have just come out and said “I’m not willing to do this” rather than hope she’d get the message from other things I said.  I suspect I was too willing to cuddle, but that’s what I’m like.  That comes from the lovvie group I’ve grown up with — yes actors really are like that.  I think she just wanted attention.  I know she said her boyfriend doesn’t give her as much as she wants, and from the way he behaved that evening I can see that, so I suspect she was looking for it from somewhere else.  Anywhere else.  I’m looking forward to the fall out.  I have no idea what he saw or thinks he saw or thinks he thinks.  I guess I’ll find out.  She added me as a friend on Facebook, but other than that we haven’t spoken.  She posted a few comments on the photos I uploaded but nothing directly relating to me.  I’m curious, I think, to find out what she really thinks — was it all just drunken attention seeking, or does she think more of me than that?  Does she think I think more of her than that?

You know, there’s a small part of me which is really curious.  I never said no.  Sometimes I think we all crave a little attention.  Don’t we?