It's an important anniversary today. And I can think of no better way to have marked it than with my own Friday evening, though to be honest I mostly appreciated it for selfish reasons.
I was invited to a leaving do - I don't often go to the pub after work these days, but Fridays are different, and leaving dos are double different. So I went, and found myself drinking with, among others, a Rwandan, a Burundian, a Malawian, a Chinese, several Brits and a not sure from whereian. Let's just say it was a group of people with interesting and challenging views on just about everything.
I so love that. Belly laughing with big African men who then drive you to the next pub in their big old padded Mercs because they 'don't walk anywhere' then sharing Bombay Mix with skinny and unskinny English boys and girls who care about disempowered people from here to Asia and back.
I feel that to relate to people you have to either share their values or share their background. You mostly get the latter, but I prefer the former, and I had a lot of fun.
I left before I got messy, bumping into G at the bar on the way out. He was buying cider on ice and I took the piss out of him gently, or so I thought, before he said 'bye then, scary lady' and I spilled out onto the pavement laughing at myself.
I danced down Cowley Road in iPod assisted fashion (I think I have finally got the point) before ordering Chinese food, stopping in at the vomit-and-bleach offy for a dodgy bottle of Chilean red, stepping round the mop bucket on the way out, and heading home.
The lady bus driver who stopped at the lights for me grinned widely, and I grinned widely back. I was listening to PJ Harvey and shuffling mock-aggressively up the hill when past me wandered easy-tanned 30-something beautiful people wearing gladiator sandals and smelling of patchouli.
My world was complete. I felt better about my job, and I felt better about my country. In fact, dammit, I felt better about my life.
Go Britain!
joella
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