Panic blip - 23:42:59

Woke up to snow - not surprising as it was BITTERLY cold last night as I waited for the 41.

Quick sortie up the street to replace the Advent candle (the first one is sitting at '23' - stupidly careless person that I am), order the turkey, chipolatas and streaky and buy wine for to-night. Another secret supper club, so wine to match gravadlax and duck. Unfortunately I bought 2 bottles - more of this later!

Then it was back to the sorting out for the rest of the day, till it was time to shower and change for yet another night out, this time a 4th secret supper club TableforTen.

Things achieved:

Got kitchen more or less sorted
Emptied and disposed of another box (only 7 more to go!)
Spray painted the mirror surround gold - hope it stays on
Did the washing
Changed the table top in the 'office' - with a bit of regret that I didn't stick with the 120, may have to move the printer
Brought the hyacinths out of their forced hidey hole
Found a home for the extra wardrobe bits and the rest of my shoes (I have 5 pairs of thongs!)

Things not achieved:

Sparkie didn't show, so light switch not changed
Shifting the veg drawer and pull out drawer. Don't have the tools
Turning the spare room back into a bedroom

I'm panicking about how I will fit everything in. I have done no Christmas shopping and I resorted to ordering the domestic cards on-line from Traidcraft last night so have no idea when they'll come. Next week I am only in Tuesday night and I'm even out for lunch next Saturday. Can we have an 8th day please, Lord?

By 6 I was exhausted and really did not want to go out, but I did trudging across the slushy Links to Merchiston (on the way composing my Santa list - electric screwdriver, hammer drill, set square).

And I am so glad I did go! I knew that I would know the hostess who's an 'award winning' radio journalist. We WERE at school together, the 'creme de la creme' (although I didn't know her then as she's 2 years younger than me and was in my sister's class) but we met working together when she was at Northsound and I was based in Inverurie, over 20 years ago. But I didn't know I'd know other people. There was L, an old schoolfriend of the hostess who has a secret supper club that I went to in August. We have a similar life story and houses 30 minutes apart from each other in Midi Pyrenees, so we've lunched and shared experiences.

But I walked in and there was B, or W as I must now call him. I haven't seen him for 17 years since we worked together in the same education team in Summerhill. Apart from the fact that he is grey where before he was black before (and doesn't have Jon to hide it) he hasn't changed. Of course he's gone on to be really high powered while I am still a lowly flower. He's now in charge of quality and improvement for all our education services, apart from universities. He always was hyper intelligent, but lovely with it. I don't think I'd met M his wife before, but I knew of the work she used to do running the art galleries in ARI. Now she's with Creative Scotland. Networking, networking.

Turns out they used to be the hostess's neighbours in Ferryhill and now live down the road in Morningside. So there we were blethering about Inverurie and Aberdeen and our hostess is making expansive, public statements about how I was the best Comm Ed worker she'd ever worked with, how I always got things done and was so organised. Don't you just love it! But all this blethering and those 2 bottles of wine meant time was marching on, inexorably to the witching hour. I deliberately hadn't taken the G12 so was dependent on the Galaxy. Now there is a thing my Galaxy does that I don't understand and have to really fiddle to fix - the camera locks. A little padlock icon appears and it won't blip. Normally I fix it quite quickly but last night (those 2 bottles of wine again, although by this time others are sharing them) I really struggled and all the time the clock was ticking. We're talking, I'm fiddling, it's nearly midnight and I'm panicking that I'm about to miss a blip. Finally I managed to unlock it and this is the best of the 3, increasingly blurred, photos I took. You can just see W/B behind the lights. Phew!

It was such a lovely evening, and I felt like I'd been at a friend's dinner party rather than a secret supper club, that I nearly forgot to leave the rest of the money!

So another back blip as it was well after midnight before I left (last) and floated across the now snowless Links. What a great evening, I'm so glad I went. With all the things that have happened this week and to-night I'm beginning to think this is meant. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

But now it's Sunday morning and me (and my hangover) must go to choir practice, late. Will the Lord approve?