Giving it large

I've just had an unusually exciting weekend.

You will recall that on multiple occasions over the year I get together with 2 friends, one from Horsham and one from Glasgow.

Usually the outcomes of these get togethers are somewhat messy. Sometimes we meet in Horsham, sometimes Glasgow and sometimes somewhere else. This time we met in Brighton.

My friend from Horsham has a significant birthday this year and their idea was to do something fun or unusual every month, rather than one big thing. This isn't just with this friends group - she's one of those people with about 500 friends all in different groups. August was cabaret with us.

Normally I pick up my friend from Glasgow from the airport and we go back to mine for the first night. This is usually disastrous because we tell ourselves that we'll be good, but we lose the will for good behaviour and end up going to bed at about 3 in the morning. Famously I remember waking up one morning afterwards with no recollection of the night before, walking down to the sitting room and there in the middle of the aftermath of our night was a solo disco ball (I didn't now I own), just turning away on the sitting room table!

This time though my friend from Glasgow got on the train from the airport and went to stay the first night with another friend. They then made their way from that friend to my Horsham friend to head down to Brighton.

This meant I woke up on Saturday morning feeling fresh as a daisy and ready for the weekend. Once they had set off from Horsham I got myself ready to meet them in Brighton. 

Meeting up was remarkably easy, as Horsham friend is in a wheelchair in the end  we sat at a pub opposite the hotel we'd booked (very strange spending a night in a Hotel so close to home). We sat in the sunshine and caught up with life, having a few glasses of wine and then had a look at the takeaways in the local area to have some lunch. The pub said it was ok for us to bring the food to the table and much away there. All this meant that my friend in a wheelchair had a nice easy afternoon without having to get in and out of the chair. Always a challenge.

In the end we settled for Korean food, I had rice with chicken it was yum. It turns out having a good lunch was a clever solution - more about that later. 

Once we could check into the hotel we did so, and immediately all decided to have a quick nap (it's our age you know - though could have been the 3 glasses of midday wine and food as well). Once up we got ourselves tarted up for the night out. The dress code was sequins. 

I mentioned before that I have multiple sequinned items - though it turns out not one of them make an actual outfit. So I took 3 of them with me and in the end was satisfied with what I was wearing. Friend from Glasgow really went for it and had a complete sequinned dress - impressive stuff.

All glammed up we then headed to Haus of Cabaret in Kemptown where we were spending the evening. I have to say it was with some trepidation, the write up promised us drag queens (which I sometimes like), acrobats (really not fussed about them), burlesque (open minded, but wasn't sure if it would be my thing) and male strippers (definitely not my thing). But if this is what my birthday friend wanted I was willing to go along and make sure they had a good time.

Once seated we got a bottle of wine - and some cocktails turns out we were lucky about this. The evening started and the drag queen came in singing. Wow what a voice. Absolutely amazing. AND SHE WAS AMAZING. So funny. She did a few songs and interacted with the crowd (largely hen do's and stag do's, but a few couples and other tables like ours as well). She spotted one group of 3 boys, all cringing in the environment, goodness knows why they had turned up - basically they provided fodder for her for the whole show. 

She announced the acts that would be on that night and to my joy there were no male strippers. I absolutely hate male strippers. I just don't see the joy of watching the mens tackle being thrown around with baby oil, but the worst of it is how much the men fancy themselves and it irritates me so much that they think I fancy them too. Just not my type of guy at all. Shudder.

She also said that the house manager had been in an accident and they'd had a recent turnover of staff. Therefore for many staff it was the first night an they'd had to bring in an emergency manager for the night.

So let's step away from the acts for a moment and talk about what chaos this caused. With the tickets you got food, we knew it wasn't going to be posh because you had the option of 'meat' or 'vegetarian'. That was it. It turns out that they'd earlier had a bottomless brunch, which had been utter chaos and had basically wiped out all the new staff. As they served the food there were 30 minute gaps between each table getting their food. In fact we'd finished (or given up) with our main before the people at the table next to us had even had their starter.

The starter was some sort of cheese with some other stuff smeared on the plate. It was utterly disgusting, but I ate it because I'd had some drinks. My friends didn't eat theirs, but wished they had in the end. The main turned up - lamb, cooked little gem lettuce (which actually I like) and well I'm not sure - they looked like potatoes, but that's not what they tasted like. The lamb was impossible to cut, you literally had to put your whole body weight behind it. Friend in a wheelchair just didn't have the motor control to cut through the meat. She was lucky. 

Once you'd managed to cut a bit of the lamb you put it in your mouth and chewed, and chewed and chewed and chewed - it was literally going nowhere. After the first mouthful I discretely removed the lump of meat with a tissue and put to one side. I started on the next bit assuming the first mouthful was a bad one, it took me 4 goes of this, with 4 bits of meat discretely put to one side before I actually gave up completely.

As far as the booze was concerned, after our first bottle of wine and the cocktails we couldn't get our hands on another drink. It was waiting staff service and they were all completely backed up trying to get the food out. In fact the table next to us didn't even get any wine and had to ask the table on the other side of them if they'd be kind enough to share a glass of wine, that they'd repay when their wine turned up.

Sounds like a disaster doesn't it - very strangely it wasn't. The whole evening was a rip roaring success, so much fun. All the acts were excellent and I actually really enjoyed the burlesque, not at all sleezy, very empowering and a lot of fun. The acrobats also were really good, just the right length before you got bored and in between the amazing drag queen kept it all together with jokes and her AMAZING singing voice.

It really was the funniest night - I can't wait to go back.

At the beginning of this post I mentioned the boys - the place was so chaotic and so much fun that by the end of the night they had pulled and actually moved tables to spend the rest of the night with some ladies they had met.

After this 10/10 night we took a cab back and met up in one of the hotel rooms for a few glasses of wine (we'd sensibly bought a bottle with us) and I popped over the road and got some cheesy chips so we could have a supper at long last.

Of course the benefit of this chaotic night was that we all woke up on Sunday without hangovers (who even knew that could happen). We wandered around town for a few hours then just went for a light lunch at Leon, before Horsham friend drove Glasgow friend to airport.

I headed home and suddenly felt shattered, looking in my purse I could cobble together just enough money to catch a cab home. Much better than a bus and a walk, especially as I had luggage. Before you knew it I was back at home and the weekend was over. 

I'm now a huge fan of cabaret and want to go back. I tried to persuade husband to come with me next time, but it was a hard NO! I'll have to get together with Horsham friend for a night. It's the only solution.