I have learned an important lesson this weekend… mojitos are the devil…

Anyway, before we get anywhere near the mojitos… we have to start in Cofton Hackett. Lucy had invited us to come up north for a dinner party so Saoirse, Em and I set off on Friday afternoon for Birmingham Moor Street on Chiltern rail. I don’t think we were particularly popular on the train after wedging a poor unsuspecting man into a corner, stuck listening to all our giggling and subsequently being told off for talking too loudly in the quiet carriage by what I thought was the train guard but just turned out to be a grumpy random.

We were lucky enough to have “Dominic’s shuttle service” to collect us in Birmingham and get us on the right bus to Lucy’s in Cofton Hackett. It was here that I discovered just how much louder Londoners are than our Brummie cousins, since we were getting dirtier looks than the guys at the back of the bus smoking a joint and listening to hip hop out of their phones.

At the house Lucy was cooking up a storm and her friends Lou, Katy and Andy were warming up in the wine drinking stakes. We were treated to Lucy’s delicious lentil lasagne and Andy’s BEAUTIFUL raspberry pavlova… and that’s where the civilsation ended I think. Two rounds of ring of fire later and everyone was dancing to Abba and singing at a volume that can only be described as terrifying. I woke up with a pretty impressive headache.

Dom and I have photo autism

They were the dancing queens?

Unfortunately there was little time to hang around in Cofton Hackett because I needed to be back in London for Fi and Werner’s engagement party. It was only when we left the mansion to head to Mambo Latino in Greenwich that Hilton had agreed to have a Top Gear style race with Tino and Ant who were driving. Cue mayhem. We all managed to arrive in Greenwich at exactly the same time but no one knew exactly where the restaurant was so we were all running around the streets of Greenwich like crazy people… Barb, Kelly, B and I in heels. We lost… but only by a hair’s breadth. I think a rematch is on!

And then we had mojitos… in fact we drank mojitos like they were water. We were so merry that I remember doing the Macarena and attempting to salsa dance with Ant… badly. When the celebrations started to draw to a close, I once again became experienced a bout of drunken kleptomania and decided I should keep the white Cuban “pimp” hat I had been wearing most of the night. Picture me sprinting through the restaurant with my hand on top of the hat trying to get past the staff before anyone spotted me. I was successful…

A very blurry photo I found on my BlackBerry of me in the stolen hat

We briefly stopped off at Barb’s friend, Andrea’s house party, but by this point the mojito’s had caught up to us and it wasn’t long after that Tino, Ant, Kelly and I called it a night.

I will not give details on how I felt this morning, but if it helps you to get a mental picture, I only got out of bed at 2pm!