Friday, December 15, 2006

Running Late This Morning - Party Last Night

Sorry for the brevity of today's post. I am already behind schedule and it is only 05:45!

Last night the Client Services team here at the office went for their Christmas dinner. I was out later than I should have been on a "School Night!" It was a good time. We went to The Greek Vine in Claygate. What a riot!

The restaurant is run by some Greek expatriates and the food and atmosphere are wonderful! They really plat-up the Greek-ness of the place! They have pretty good music (though it does get a bit loud and raucous) and the wait staff are prone to suddenly grab the patrons and start dancing with them suddenly.

There is plenty plate smashing and gregarious Greek greetings as you walk into the place. I guess my first comment on the place is the most appropriate: What a hoot!

There was this one woman at a table in the next room that pulled my focus a number of times over the evening. For reasons I cannot fathom, every time I happened to glance in her direction she was staring at me. It was pretty creepy. The other thing about her is that she seemed totally out of place in the surroundings.

Have you ever seen Cabaret? She would have made a perfect extra for any of the scenes at the Kit Kat Klub! She had that look of the '30s flapper: the pasted down hair, the clingy tube-like dress, the feather in her hair. (Okay, I am making-up the part about the feather, but she was definitely an anachronism! Her dress and hairstyle would have been far more apt in the '30 than they are today.)

Anyway, I guess it could have all be a matter of perception. Today she is probably telling her friends that this weird guy in a leather waistcoat had stared at her all evening. (Though she really was intent on her staring every time I happened to glance over. And you know how it is! If you think someone is staring at you it is hard not to look over and see if it is true. You can almost feel her eyes boring holes into you.)

The times I was looking at her she was not eating, not drinking, not interacting with the people at her table. She was sometimes smoking, sometimes not. She was just staring. I know, you are thinking that I am making this up and that it was all in my head. I had only one drink last night so I wasn't drunk enough to have completely conjured this up. She was definitely staring. Her eyes and head followed me as I walked out to get a breath of fresh air around ten and she was staring at the door when I opened it a few minutes later.

It was a bit creepy. I mentioned it to the person next to me. They couldn't figure-out who I was talking about. But then, I was at the end of the table and I had an unobstructed view of the next room. Perhaps she just couldn't see the staring lady.

Anyway, I had meant to just say that I had a lovely time at the party last night but stayed later than I had intended to do and so got up later than I wanted to today. As it is, it is now past time for me to get posting this and get to the office.

I hope that wherever you are today you'll have a wonderful day!

Don Bergquist - 15 December 2006 - Thames Ditton, Surrey, UK

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