I've kind of been away from the computer recently but thought I'd take a brief moment (while the others tart themselves up for tonight) to do a quick update.

I'm currently in Dublin with most of the lads from the Prague anti-stag for New Years Eve (we fly back New Years Day - I will be a shell of a human being by then) and a short holiday. In true wild-child style I'm hurrying them up so we don't miss our reservation at the best Japanese restaurant here *rolls eyes*

But I'm jumping ahead now - since Christmas and a very quiet boxing day it's been non-stop. On the 27th I headed to London to go to the PDC (that's the Professional Darts Corporation, obviously) World Championship at Alexandra Palace. I got up hideously early to reach Hemel Hempstead by 10am and we got to the venue by midday. I personally have little affinity with darts, beyond lobbing a few within a couple of yards at the pub a few years ago (when K and his now wife L lodged at mine 3-4 years ago we had a dart board in the hallway mounted on a huge sheet of hardboard to protect my nice unblemished walls. This worked fine until one of his friends managed to land a dart at such an angle that it went in the gap between lightswitch and the thing it's mounted in (no idea what you call it, the lightswitch mount maybe?), cut the wires in the switch itself and shorted out power to the flat). Ali, however, loves the darts and bought a bunch of tickets for everyone. I was the only one to actually go as it looked like a chavtastic day of drinking!

After a swift beer we took our seats in the auditorium with a few extra pints as backup. The darts started, and would've been fascinating if we'd not been about 50 yards away and having to watch what was going on on large TV's above our heads. I could've done this at home! 15mins in and Ali started to feel unwell and disappeared. I wasn't interested in the darts so surveyed the crowd. Dear Lord. London must have ground to a halt that day as I think every single cabbie was in the hall, at least a couple of wannabe East-End gangsters, the contents of 2 call-centres and a side-order of football hooligans.

It was hilarious.

After 45 minutes, with Steve 'Mr. Magic' Maish 3 sets to nil up on Tony 'The Viper' Eccles (like, snigger. Chortle. Guffaw) Ali called to say he had to leave as he was very unwell indeed. So we left (and missed The Viper come back to win 4-3 in a nail-biting match apparently) and got him home before he spent the next few hours being riotously ill - he consequently has the holiday nickname of 'Two-ends'.

With Ali sidelined the big poker tournament scheduled that night was down to 7 people. It ran from 8pm until 3am, we drank all the alcohol in the flat, then the fruit juice, then all the tea and ended with yours truly pulling off a debut and highly unexpected victory against some top players to claim £165 as first prize and the inaugural Big Gay Al's Poker Invitational trophy:

*deep breath after that sentence*

I didn't surface until 3pm, drove back to Bristol, fed ze puddy-tat, watered the plants and then slept instantly. Getting up at 6am was deeply unpleasant but I made my flight (from back in London ffs) on time and spent the next day guiding the others around the city centre. Dublin's not big at all and having been here twice in the last year (for nice Irish girl and for mad stalker girl) I know the centre quite well.

I like Dublin but there's only so much you can see in a weekend, which is great because we're here to get very drunk and have a giggle-fest (doing a-ok on both fronts so far) and not to see museums :)

Spurs won 6-4 yesterday having been 2-1, 3-2 and 4-3 down during the match. Typical of me to be abroad during the game of our season so far *rolls eyes*

Anyway, personally my pre-christmas was really good as my night out with a female friend went better than I could've expected and even though I drew a line at going far enough to endanger our friendship, we still managed to enjoy ourselves immensely :)

Fast forward 5 days and while a small part of my mind was thinking 'wow! I've met someone I really like, who's everything I look for in a partner (intelligent, independent, funny, beautiful but normal-shaped etc.) and if we didn't live 400 miles away from each other then this could be interesting' the rest of me was basking in just being happy and content with life.

Then on boxing day I got a 'Dear John' email about not wanting to be in a relationship, not you it's me, wants to stay friends etc.

I wouldn't mind if I'd seriously considered a relationship but I hadn't. I was thinking friends with benefits ;-)

So pity poor Red Squirrel - he can even get dumped before he's in a relationship!