Tojours des fammes! Summertime, wine and women’s business.

Date: 16 November.

Location: couch, wanting food but too slothlike to hunt or gather it for myself.

It’s like I spent this week actively trying to cancel out all the good I did in Sober September.

Monday: Hit snooze and doze through my 6.15 yoga class. Would have made the evening class but had dinner plans with Papa Bear, his girlfriend and all the kids. It’s nice that we all get on so well. Really, we’ve all met, what? Like five or six times? But there’s inter-family sibling-esque sniping and relaxed conversation about the day’s issues. Admittedly, Royston steaks and and glasses of 2012 McLaren Vale Shiraz Cab don’t hurt.

Tuesday: Hit snooze and doze guiltily through my 6.15 yoga class. Would have made the evening class but had planned on bringing a visiting British friend of a friend to trivia and wouldn’t have had time to squeeze in the detour. He gets stuck at work and can’t make it but I’ve already missed class and go straight to trivia. Our previous weeks’ winning streak ensure that drinks are on The George. I scoff almost an entire Parma and wash it down with cold beer. The Planeteer, friendly monthly hormones turning her into a chip monster, makes me feel better by dispatching with an entire bowl of fries in the time it takes me to type a Viber message. We realise that our nights at The George Tuesday trivia are numbered and, again, I question whether leaving all this cozy ease for the unknown quantity London is the right idea. I think it is. The Planeteer and I loiter outside the pub long after it closes, caught up in one of those meaningful conversations about life, friends and boys that makes you oblivious to time and place. I get home very late so…

Wednesday: Hit snooze and doze right through my 6.15 yoga class. Work late (you can take the girl out of the law firm?) and then collapse on the couch gratefully clutching a glass of (medicinal) Syrah.

Thursday: Hit snooze and doze through my 6.15 yoga class. It’s a hot day and still 35 degrees at 6pm. It’s the perfect night for drinking champagne in the Gardens. A brilliant colleague suggests that best thing to accompany summertime park drinking is French cheese and so we troupe over to visit the little Frenchman in the cellar of Spring St Grocer who helps us match our Moët & Chandon with cheese from the Chamapagne region. Of course he does. Laden with a creamy basil Brie and gooey, pungent blue we make our way to the Treasury Gardens, kick off our heels, flip into our tummies and bask in the late afternoon sun. We chat: les garçons, les cancans, la vie.

Friday: I don’t even set my alarm for yoga. Come evening I catch up with an ‘ex colleague’. No, not a lawyer. From before my respectable professional days. Back when I was shorter on brain cells as I had less call for them. Back when I was a shiny-haired, super on-trend, over accessorised (3 with every outfit!), maxi dress and pleather and feather-wearing Sportsgirl. Amongst the bimbos and the bitches who were my fellow Sportsgirls, I did meet a few wonderful human beings, including this one. By virtue of her incredible mermaid hair, I’ve decided to label her Ariel for our purposes here. Neither Ariel nor I have an indoor voice. We drink Happy Hour wines at my local bar, The Tippler, until close and probably scare off other, more demure patrons. Dinner schminner.

Saturday: In summary, it’s bad behaviour all around by our team. However, before I get to that, please make note that I made it to my 9am Pilates class. That’s right, round of applause for me.

Later in the day Bunky and I cower from the rain and share a bottle of wine at my place before cabbing to birthday drinks at The Terminus. The Terminus is, like, an uber cool place to be right now, meaning that it’s packed body to body, there’s a line to get upstairs, the music is so loud that it makes your body vibrate and the only viable activity is drinking. We attend to that. Around — I want to say midnight? — someone has the brilliant idea that we get out of there and drink elsewhere. I want to deny that that person was me, but I’m not sure I can do that in good conscience. Regardless of who that genius was, a few of us cram into a car and go back to mine where I make everyone ‘cocktails’ that I now suspect were mostly lukewarm Crystal Skull vodka and raspberries. There’s Jim, Bunky, Powerjam and his tagalong friend, Clark Kent and me. (Huh. I’m just doing the maths now, I and I’m pretty sure all of those people should not have fit into the one car.)

Jim falls asleep in my shoulder. Clark Kent (still acting as duplicitous as ever) finds a Sharpie and we decorate Jim’s face with a mixture of messages to his girlfriend and explicit images. Bunky sits on the floor and plays DJ with my embarrassingly extensive iTunes library. Powerjam, his tagalong friend and I discuss music, travel, relationships. We probably swear a lot. Bunky punctuates with cries of delight and horror, as she scores the conversations with with 5ive, Haim, The Rolling Stones, Bay City Rollers, The Lion King soundtrack.

Around 3 in the morning we all seem to simultaneously come to our senses. I shoo everyone out, though Powerjam not-so-subtlety attempts to leave his tagalong friend behind. Said friend is a little but sweet on me, but I’m only sweet on bed.

Love

Alex