Louisa Simmonds

Chocolate Fondant Cake/Lava cake (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yay, it’s finally the weekend!

If there’s one certainty in life about the weekend, it’s that the vast quantities of food and wine I consume over the next 48 hours will be substantially greater than the meagre volume I allow to pass through my lips on the other five days of the week.

The weekend brings a different mindset to party people.

Fuck the diet! Fuck the weekly alcohol allowance dictated by some pretentious medical association who stupidly believes that 13 units is enough to keep us women sane and happy.

This is the first weekend in a very long time that I haven’t had to brown-nose to clients on a Saturday, and so the potential for liver damage is close to suffocating me with excitement.

All concerns for my health fly out the window at the weekend and my approach to eating and drinking becomes distinctly libertarian, turning from caution to decadence. I can already taste the melting chocolate from my Chocolate Fondant dessert coursing down my throat.

OF COURSE I can party all night long with NC and her friends, silly! Hangovers are for losers.

Anyway, there’s always sodding Sunday to worry about that shit.

On the menu tonight is a very late birthday celebration with some girlfriends in the city, followed by a session of Karaoke. NC and some friends are also coming along to help keep us middle-aged party animals awake beyond 9pm.

‘Why Karoake?’ I hear you ask.

Because I’ve never done it, and because I still can. Because during some mad/sad moment when I was feeling that life was slipping me by, I forgot that I wasn’t eighteen and it suddenly seemed appealing and something I HAD to do – of course, I could blame Pinterest for allowing me to believe all those crappy inspirational pins about ‘only being as old as you feel’ and embracing life while you still can.

Nevertheless, I’ve been practicing all week. My defining Karaoke moment will be ‘I will survive’ by Gloria Gaynor, and don’t worry, I am sure that it will be video-ed.

This is all complete bravado bollocks, obviously. All of us middle-aged women are secretly petrified. 

Nights on the town are a little different these days and if truth be told, the fall-out to this evening was embarrassingly disastrous – only the ‘real’ women are still ‘in’.

I’m not sure when exactly we women lose our ‘party’ balls? When did we start drinking equal measures of water to wine, cutting out carbs and sharing desserts?

Oh, the shame of it!

When did we start worrying about how many Tannins are in the wine or if the cream on our Tarte Tatin will make us bloated? What happened to those nights when we weren’t afraid of enjoying ourselves, or making fools of ourselves  and were proud of bad hangovers?

When did I start worrying about how I will feel on Monday on Friday night?

Half my girlfriends are driving tonight. WTF!

When did we become so fucking sensible? Did the ‘Sensible Fairy’ visit one day, sprinkle us with ‘sensible’ dust and cut off our balls in the process?

At what point in my life did I start getting anxious about getting rat-arsed on a girls night?

I need someone to blame. Is it the kids fault, or that old devil called responsibility? Is it my deteriorating body or fear of premature death? I think the fear truly started from that first torturous 24 hour hangover (post kids) after a night drinking beer and chasers with my younger brother?

NO, tonight’s going to be different. I’m going to throw caution to the wind, let my hair down, party like it’s 1984 and show those teenagers how to really have some fun.

If I book the cab for 10.30pm, I should be in bed by 11, shouldn’t I?

#girlsnight #hangover #weekend #Women #Health #middleaged #party #Humor #alcohol