A bottle of Chianti called Leonardo

So Annalisa. Shall I .... enterrrrrrtain you?! (yes.. because I get bored easily.. as you all know.. apparently that's the reason of my smoking.. by lifting my little finger.. the lady today predicted I gonna stop in 3 weeks.. more to follow)


Well it has been, shall we say, an interesting time since you left the
country. I am going to be brief about this because P and Molly have had to listen to me rant 7 nights out of the last 9 on the same themes and in two different countries so they are probably bored now.

But.

You remember the love of my life on the guardian soulmates website (let's
call her Nihil Obstat since that's what she calls herself on there) who I
agonised over for about 3 months? So I finally managed to do a profile and
email her and you told me well done.

So I go to Dublin that day and hugely excited about the prospect of
internet cafes and checking whether she has got back to me (although not as excited
as I was about going to the Guinnes factory, oh no). P, A and I
spend a drunken evening discussing where to go on our first date Tuscany,
my favourite plan, is too forward, apparently. A says he will have a
word with the Italian restaurant downstairs from their flat and the waiters will
treat me like a queen and all shall be well.

So far so good.

We get to our hotel in Galway (The G Spot), which, by the way, you would
love. My favourite thing about it is that it has wireless access so I can
plug in my computer (which I have brought just in case) and check my mail.
P and Molly stand by for moral support.

She did not email me back. No word from Nihil Obstat, not even one to tell
me that she doesn't like me.

I am devestated and even feel a bit like crying. I know this is ridiculous
but this is why I tend to avoid falling in love. Ask anyone who was in
Ireland with me. It is not pretty.

Anyway. We go and get food and drink quite a lot and I feel somewhat
cheered and by the time we have had champagne, red wine and then a couple of cheeky
whiskies ( like Virginia Wolfe would) for the road I am feeling strong and rather marvellous again.
Once everyone has gone to their rooms I decide that I'm not quite ready to go to
bed just yet but ooh, what is in the corner? The mini bar. Hooray! I decide
that 21 Euros is a perfectly reasonable amount to pay for a half bottle of
Chianti called Leonardo. I switch on the television (takes some time,
fiddly controls) and select a channel called 'Opera Babes.' I get into bed with my
computer and wine and get online.

My downfall. I knew that I wasn't allowed to email Nihil Obstat so instead
I decided to answer all the other girls who had contacted me but whom I had
ignored because she was my one true love. I may have been a bit more open
than I might have been without booze. I may have written things i didn't mean.
( she never does)
So. The next day people seemed to have liked my emails. Not necessarily the
people that I would have chosen. One of them was the mother of 5 and
because she had been nice to me (spit on Nihil Obstat!) and said she liked my photo
I appear to have been rather more saucy with her than I really should have
been and so now she REALLY likes me and because I carelessly said that no,
I wasn't shocked about the 5 children and in fact I wanted children of my own
so the more the merrier, ( this is why she straps them to herself in the library) she liked me even more and so we are going on a date tomorrow night. She is coming up from Oxford for it.

Mothers are the new rock & roll!

I mean, if a woman's been through childbirth she can do a relationship with
me, right?

(Ehm... why??)

I think this is called displacement. But there we go. Another displacement
occurred on Saturday night when I had the Brighton lezzers round for
dinner.
I had made my usual Saturday night agreement with P about no meat no
men, ( last time.. the vegetarian lady was cutting through a pork's leg with a wide knife.. and she run naked with a boy behind sheeps!)
and had thrown in not sleeping with *** as an additional rule. I did not
sleep with ***. Unfortunately, aided by the 8 bottles of wine between 4,
lager, a mini bottle of baileys and various other pharmaceutical products,
I proceeded to sleep with another friend who was not a good choice because
she was invited because she is sleeping with another one of my guests. BAD BAD BAD. I had to send her back into the other room because I felt guilty.

I can't go to Brighton because she is there and we would obviously bump
into each other.

So am going out with Mother Anna on Thursday, but only for dinner as I am
off the booze now in an effort to behave. About time, no? Want to come with
us?

And you? How were the 50 young girls in Sicily?! Ha! ( they were in the pictures below!!)