Weird Weekend

Louis Theroux? He's got nothing on me.

Unless you think it's normal rather than completely ODD for two fully grown adults to refuse a dinner invitation because they have just bought puppies?

Surely when you finally clear out your various teens, step-children, boyfriends, girlfriends, sofa-surfers, mates and hangers-on you then spend your whole time having weekends in Morocco, lolling in bed till lunchtime on Sundays reading the papers and eating insanely spicy or exotic food that is totally not child-friendly? Surely you would not immediately paint yourself back into the just-had-a-baby-can't-go-anywhere corner by getting dogs? Unbelievably expensive dogs at that, and needing all manner of specialist equipment, sheds, subdividing of vast gardens, the list goes on. Probably cheaper in the long run to have a baby, I reckon.

Anyway, long story short. We invite this couple over for dinner as they bought us a case of rather splendid wine last year, and the plan was to cook them a meal and crack open a couple of bottles. However, they couldn't come due to aforementioned canine ankle gnashers, so we went to theirs instead (and took the wine).

Not necessarily a bad idea, as she is a fantastic cook, they have a totally cool house, and (dog-purchase aside) they are great company. However, when we arrived, there was unexpectedly another couple there. People we didn't know. Don't you just hate that? Sudden enforced social niceties when I was expecting to kick back with the Chateau Margaux in their fearsomely stylish black and acid-green kitchen and chill out.

Sour old bitch, aren't I? Who's to say they wouldn't be great company? Many a great friendship has of course been struck in such a situation. This did not look promising as I did not like her make up, and her whole bone-structure was visible, even her arm-bones. He was showing off his knowledge of the correct way to decant wine. However men often show off when they're nervous, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

She was soon telling me about how she was training up for her seventh London Marathon. Not that she really has to train as such now, she's proud to be in permanently good shape. "You don't look like you're a runner", she said, smiling.

"I'm more of an intellectual, I guess" I smiled back. "You don't look like you're a mum, with a lovely flat stomach like that". Don't think I can't hit below the belt. Literally. "No.... no children...... I work in hospital administration".

I made an effort. He made an effort. And trust me, it was an effort. Then, nightmare, they turned out to be dog-people too, and asked for the puppies to be brought in. One of them immediately jumped up, laddered my tights, snagged my new black cardigan and did a bit of wee on my leg. Dog-cuddling and dog-talk ensued. I read a Homes and Gardens magazine while the dog-stuff went on.

Finally they put the pups down. Only for the night, sorry to say, not permanently. The Awful Couple talked a bit about Eastenders. I said I hadn't watched it for ten years, but they were confident we'd still be fascinated. There's been a murder, apparently. And a rape, and incest, and a nobody-knows-the-father pregnancy, oh and a wedding. Whoever would have thought it.

"Hey let's watch it right now on Sky Plus!" Oh god. Hey, let's not. But we did anyway, right in the middle of dessert. Lots of scrubbers shouted at each other and someone called Bradley fell off a roof. The really odd thing was that having not watched it for ten years, I felt like I could still follow the story and recognise half the characters. Maybe real life is like that too? Things change less than you think.

We were all drinking pretty steadily and the disagreements mounted. When Skeleton-Woman explained that the NHS was "wasting" money on cancer treatment for people who had terminal conditions "just so they can spend a few more months with their families or whatever" it turned a bit nasty (my brother-in-law being a cancer surgeon and all). If people ran marathons all the time, and picked over their food and made their hosts cook something entirely different just for them and their weird diets, no one would get cancer, apparently. You losers, it's all self inflicted.

I wondered how much money the NHS "wasted" on fruitless repeat cycles of fertility treatment.

She went to the bathroom for a long, long time, and when she came back she wouldn't talk to me. We shared a taxi home in stony silence. - they didn't chip in for the fare.

And still it was only Friday. Went to friend's 50th birthday party on Saturday. It didn't seem like 5 minutes since her 40th. My nothing-changes-in-ten-years theory was further supported by a conversation I had with a couple I met at NCT and hadn't seen for ten years. They had the same jobs, lived in the same house, went to the same places on holiday as they had done before. So did we.

I thought about the possibility that I was as boring as them, and that if someone met me ten years from now, I still wouldn't have anything new or interesting to report. She also looked horribly a lot older and had gone completely grey (why?!) which made me realised I probably looked horribly a lot older too.

On Sunday I walked round and round and round the park for four hours with the girls on their new bikes. My life feels like that sometimes, the same loop over and over and over again, just getting colder and older and more and more tired with each circuit.