Date with a mashed up Cupcake

On Sunday afternoon at 2pm I have a date with my friend Cupcake. We are meeting at Victoria Station with some of our offspring in tow and travelling back to Brighton together. Our plans are simple – put the kids to bed at hers, throw a couple of drinks down our necks and catch up.

When I arrive at Victoria Station I am ten minutes early and as I surface from underground I get a text message from Cupcake which says “I’m here”.

Instantly I feel that something is amiss.

Cupcake’s usual style is racing for the train with several children balanced on the pram, her red hair trailing behind her, a coffee in one hand and making the train with just seconds to spare.

Cupcake doesn’t do ‘early’ and if she ever was to do ‘early’ she would try to squeeze in some kind of activity, which in turn would make her late.

I find her seated in a café and it would be fair to say that she’s not looking her best.

“I feel like fucking shit.” she says

The whole point of Cupcake’s trip to London was to attend a friend’s birthday party on Saturday night. Naturally I wasn’t expecting her to be the brightest ray of sunshine but the ghostly figure I see before me is quite worrying, especially given Cupcake’s relentless capacity to party. Cupcake usually brushes off hangovers fairly quickly because she simply doesn’t have time for them.

“Oh god” I say “What happened at the party?”

Cupcake goes on to tell me that before she’d arrived at the party she received a text message from the hostess. It seems that the party wasn’t in full swing and swing was exactly what Cupcake was being asked to provide. Cupcake isn’t usually asked to bring swing to a party because it’s taken as given that that’s exactly what she will bring – so if you ask her to liven things up you can pretty much bet that this will be cause for regret come the morrow.

Cupcake breezes in to the beach-themed party in a loud sundress, hat and sunglasses with a bottle of vodka. It seems that everyone has come with a bottle of spirit, but that about half of the guests are light drinkers at best.

Now we have a situation: stacks of booze, nobody drinking it and one Cupcake asked to bring ‘swing’ to a party. And so, rather unsurprisingly, Cupcake starts to drink.

and drink,

and drink

and refill

after refill

after refill

until suddenly……….

she opens her eyes and finds herself in her mother-in-law’s house, laid out like a starfish, still in her party dress (a minor victory there I feel) with absolutely no recollection of how she got there. Somewhere, in the distance of her memory, she sees herself gyrating against a palm tree and trying to leave the party without any shoes on.

It turns out that the host had decided to call Cupcake’s mother-in-law at one o’clock in the morning and ask for her to be collected.

Unlike most mother-in-laws, this one seems mildly amused by her antics and says to her

“Well dear, I haven’t seen you that drunk since that time you lived in London and came home and took all your clothes off.”

Now, if that doesn’t fill you with that creeping sensation of utter shame ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know what will.