Hmmm? Isn't it? Banana?

Housewarming ettiquette.

Ok. I was at a house warming party at the weekend, and there were a fair few people there (for a small flat, anyway) and I only really know the flat owner - the DIY slave driver- so I was gently mingling and saying 'hi' to people enigmatically.

Actually, that's bollocks. I was standing in the kitchen (always the best place to be for the beginning of a party) handing out the drinks and pointing out the food on the kitchen side (for the benefit of the poorly sighted, vertically challenged and terminally stupid) as people came in. There is method in my madness, you see. When people arrive, you get first look, get to appraise based on their manner with the people they know (quite easy to assess a personality like this) and if they are duller than shite (as happened a few times) you have the excuse available to move off as soon as someone else arrives or comes into the kitchen, to furnish them with refreshment.

Genius, eh?

So, I am talking to a lovely girl called Clare (or Claire - it was all verbal, and you can never really be sure from the way they say it, can you?) for some time. We chatted - as various thirsty and hungry dwarves milled gently about the kitchen trying to count to two - and we got on famously. She had a completely manic sense of humour (can't imagine why we got on, in hindsight), and is very tall, with incredibly long arms. She was telling me about the fact that she had been to the Doctor, and he had told her that most people's arm spans are the same or slightly less than their height. It would appear that Clare has longer arms than this little snippet would suggest is usual. She was highly amused by the fact that the Doc was talking about all this stuff, and expounding on the differences in her skeletal structure compared to average, when he just stopped and, completely unprompted, looked at her over his glasses and said:

"But you're not a freak, you know."

"Thanks" said Clare. "It really hadn't occurred to me that I was. But thanks for putting the thought in my mind."

Impressive bedside manner, eh?

Anyhoo, I was chatting to Clare, and being an arty type, this required a large amount of her waving her arms about and general gesticulation. Now at this point, we had been talking since she walked in the door (about an hour at this point) and were still in 'enthusiastic conversation mode' and it was really good fun. We were leaning against two of the kitchen sides, jammed into a corner so that we were facing across each other - ie at right angles, for the mathematical among you. Clare was windmilling furiously, and I was being as charming and witty as only I know how (yes, I kept my mouth shut. Thanks for that, you lot. Bastards.). During a particularly effusive moment, Clare's previously mentioned long arms meant that mid-gesticule (I may have made that word up) the back of her hand brushed against the front of my jeans. You know. In the 'groin' area.

She was obviously a bit thrown, and a little embarrassed and tried to rush on with the story with renewed vigour whilst turning slightly pink. She was probably trying to work out who would be the most embarrassed by her little faux pas.

If only she knew...

So, Clare is furiously trying to ignore the little altercation, and I waited about 2 minutes before I interrupted her mid sentence with a completely straight, matter of fact, face:

"That was my nob, you just touched, by the way. Just thought you would like to know, in case you thought it might have been the top of my leg."

"Errr, Was it?"- Clare turns a deep shade of crimson. "Errr...".

"Yes. I initially thought you were just being forward, but as you didn't keep going I figured it was a mistake. Ah well."

I waited as long as I could before I laughed. I'm such a bastard.

She did, for those of you who are wondering, start laughing at this point and did make some reference to having been "warned about you". Which I feigned objection to, naturally.

Still. All's well that ends well, we spent about an hour and a half toward the end of the evening curled up on the sofa yakking away and taking the piss out of our fellow guests as soon as they stopped listening to us. Great fun. For the young ones among you that call us 'old codgers' lightweights, this was half 5 in the morning just before I walked home across town (with a random Labrador dog, bizarrely enough, whom I christened 'Barry') to go to bed.

Still got it. Cue cheesy wink...

The chat, I mean. Not the ability to walk home with a strange canine.

posted by Brock @ Wednesday, December 08, 2004