Before that though there was the fashion show I was on about on Friday which was....different. It was a collaboration between Indian and UK colleges (namely Delhi and Bradford) showcasing a weird mix of feathery things and leathery stuff. Personally, I can't stand fashion shows, they bore me to tears, the idea of somebody designing something to reflect a cultures heritage or an emotion in the form of a blouse or a skirt, usually making the model look like a turkey, isn't something worthwhile or exciting in my view. Fashion designers and models are, most of the time, very pretentious and stuck up characters with terrible attitudes and shallow personalities, easily offended and universally irritating. Any right thinking man or woman wouldn't dare go out in public in 99% of the things that are modelled so why bother. Unless your Lady Gaga obviously.
To top it all off, the bar was closed during the show, meaning you couldn't drink your way through the pain of people taking everything too seriously. Some woman was talking to me about the connections between the younger generation of designers compared to the classics, a conversation I couldn't have been more disinterested about. After shaking her off using the old 'nod and smile routine' and finally getting through the 2 hour event, the bar re-opened and the night got better. But overall, I wouldn't want to attend a fashion show like that ever again. Unless there was more beer and more eye candy on show. Then i'd think about it.
We ended the night by recruiting some of the Bradford designer girls (and the tall gay lad who wore fake nails) to come to Blues Bar with us, not only that but the hostess of the event came along too, who happened to be Miss Mauritius, not a bad addition!
The day after the fashion disaster, we attended a "networking dinner" at the Head of the British Councils house, which was basically the same story as the Embassy, free bar, free booze but this time the music was in the form of karaoke. I never do karaoke, mainly because I couldn't wrestle a microphone off the northerners without losing an arm but also due to the fact I never drink enough to stumble over and have the guts to give it a go. Saturday night however, I apparently did. Never done it before and don't really remember it but apparently my rendition of Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer went down rather well, so much so I had the British Ambassadors bodyguard duetting with me. How I managed that, I'll never know.
We did the same old networking malarkey, speaking to random people about what you do and where your from. Or if it's the Indian contingent, same old questions like "What does your father do?" and "How many girlfriends do you have?" or "Do you have a wife" and "Are you from London or Manchester?" the same old story. For me those vary from person to person. Sometimes i'm a polygamist from Birmingham who's dad works for NASA or I'm the Prince of Greater Hertfordshire with a hareem of wenches who tend to my every beck and call. Funny thing is they all believe it. After a few hours of speaking to the Glasgow 2014 reps, Leeds Metropolitan students and some other random self-important people, we managed to drink the bar dry (quite literally) and stumbled back to the coach.
On a 70/30 ratio, It fills me with both a sense of pride and slight sense of embarrassment that we always end up getting collectively smashed, ultimately taking over these events and lowering the social tone to a point where it becomes a civilised visit from University students turns into an invasion of Brits on tour, although, sadly we have no more of these posh shindigs planned. Looking on the bright side, I've been hearing through the grapevine, word of a staff party planned after the closing ceremony, every cloud has a silver lining!
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