Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

What amounts to a glorified office foyer, ranks drinking, watching football. In the crowd is Anyhoo, here at the behest of fellow ex-UCkLer, with others of that ilk and a disturbing number of his ex-colleagues, many of whom are clearly suffering familiarity dissonance.

While talking, and ignoring the sport (I figure if one just treats it like cricket, so basically sit on the grass at the boundary, or nearest equivalent, talking amongst ones-selves, clapping politely occasionally, being late to a sudden cheer and asking "What did I miss?" repeatedly, and happening to send the landlord's daughter back across the road every so often to top up the Pimm's jug. Basically sport is there to be ignored while chatting and imbibing. Unless it's rugby, but that's because of the thighs) the following occurred.

Having stayed in the flat of two friends while, er, between homes [never, ever move in somewhere where the contract finishes at Christmas], I left as a thank-you (ignoring the bit where I was told I could stay until date X, which suddenly became date about M, when friend A returned to the flat after Christmas while friend B was still away and within 24 hours invited three sets of people to stay, each sooner than the last, so basically giving me two days to get out, this while the country is literally snowed under, um, yeah, there might have been a permanent downgrading of her trustworthiness) two prints. Friend A was there last night. Friend A mentioned that one of her friends had been in the flat, and had really liked the prints. I asked if she had passed on my details, you know, in case he wanted a copy or something similarly outlandish, it kind of being a significant source of income for me now.

Reply came thus:
"No, why would I? Why would he want that? He's an architect, but he also has a camera; he's an artist."
Well, FYVM too.

Maybe I should have entered something into the RA Summer Exhibition just to have a rejoinder (spite is a wonderful motivator).

Or maybe I should just remember that I do tend to tolerate her presence because it means I get to see her flatmate (who wasn't there). And to judge by her actions the only positive she finds in me is that sometimes I'm quicker and more accessible than Google. Somehow I suspect that despite really not getting on well with the whole football thing (I was always the penultimate pick, always in defence, so basically could sit making daisy chains for most of the game, but wouldn't because that wouldn't be fitting*, and then occasionally get sworn at [ah, the joys of middle school] because I didn't stop a ball eight-foot above my head) I may be about to become an ardent support of Paraguay. Or Slovakia. Or even those crazy fools, New Zealand.

* Ok, so sometimes I did, weather and daisies permitting. It's not like anyone was going to notice. Anyway, the other defender was usually feeding the horses that leant over from the next field.

And yet Friend A later looked surprised that I wasn't joining her for dinner, despite her using half-time to check her text messages in preference to talking to me (I ended up talking to the smokers).

Sometimes (basically all instances I can remember) I don't get her. Sometimes (not all instances) I remember that this really, really doesn't matter. And then sometimes she decides she knows everything there is to know about me and dictates what I must do (oddly, what with the whole silent seething and loathing going on, I don't tend to, especially when her diatribe [between the two halves of her brain] makes it pretty damn apparently that she's lapsed into woefully misguided comedy).

As I say, the F of a whole load of Fs, so kinda hard to excise.

Still, I'm not wholly sure one of the high-ups at this do wasn't making slightly too much eye contact, so perhaps not a complete write-off (or maybe it is, outcome A being unlikely, outcome B being unlikely to be a good idea given the existence of the possibility of A).

I think I've lost where this was going.

Anyhoo,