You shall go to the ball!

You shall go to the ball!
(Thank you, yahoo image search)

I had been wanting to avoid this evening's university leaving party. This is not because I don't like the people that are going, but largely because I've already left the place twice, and a third time seemed excessive. Plus, after initially negotiating several months of successful abstention from anything collegey after graduation last summer, I was dismayed to find myself sucked back into university life (largely due to its desperate-for-a-pianist jazz band). Frequenting my old haunts, like going back to your school when you're 47, felt vaguely pederastic. And you don't want to hang around like a bad smell.

So, upon discovering that this year's leaving party was going to be a posh do on a boat, and that you will be paying thirty of your crisp sterling euros for the pleasure thank you mister, I elected to give it a miss, on the basis that: 1. I'm not particularly fussed about big social occasions, 2. I'll see anyone I want to see before they leave France anyhow, and 3. you know, I've been on boats before, they're not as great as all that.

Of course, Lady Franchester (making a second appearance in these pages) phones up at noon today and says she has struck a dodgy underhand deal with tonight's bouncer to let me in for a Drastically Reduced Price. I'll say nothing more than that the bouncer in question is a female of medium height with long dark hair and possibly of mediterranean origin. So, all-night open bar? Evening cruise down the Seine? Tipsyfied nubiletastic wenchorama?* I'll be on my way.

* I didn't say that. Did I say that? Oh.