SATURDAY NIGHT? I'M MORE OF A WEDNESDAY GAL...

Just call me a big old party pooper. Or just old. Saturday night and I cannot bring myself to wrap up warm and trek to a Bethnal Green pub "where Vincent Vincent and the Villains used to play" which is I expect what most pubs in that area that host live music would like to have you believe - that or "Pete Doherty was here a couple of weeks ago - he fell over and Kate sang."

I feel bad though, one of the guys that's playing is a friend, practically family but my winter agoraphobia has set in and I'm so, so tempted to stay in and watch Parky snuggled under a blanket on the sofa. Last week Kate Winslet cried, Jude Law looked shifty and sounded a bit pretentious, and Parky got Justin Timberlake visibly shocked and embarassed by asking him what kind of music he had sex to. I mean how can you beat that for a Saturday night?

The thing about going out, especially on a Saturday night (I sound like such a grouchbag but I feel quite happy to have come to this conclusion) is that I always end up thinking "Is that it then?" The whole getting ready and going somewhere to stand around and er, do what exactly? Maybe it's because I don't drink as much as I used to but I always feel a bit disappointed and detached, the old alone in a crowd syndrome. Obviously if I join in the drinking these thoughts (or any) don't come into it. But I don't know how some of my friends can still want to go out every Friday and Saturday night and get wasted without fail or question in the same way they have for fifteen or twenty odd years. And they think I'm weird for not wanting to.

Oh my God, is this why people have babies, for something else to do? Not a good enough reason people! Well since my biological clock seems to have no battery and every time I'm handed someone's baby to hold I have to fake the whole joy thing, all the while thinking "How long do I have to keep this up until I can hand it back?" (With one exception, that means you my little mate Boo) It seems I am as usual the odd one out. I feel OK about this but it's really hard to explain to other people.

Actually I love going out for dinner (but nobody in my circle goes out for dinner before the drinking) and I love seeing a good film but um, I prefer to do that in the week when it's less busy. It's not like I'm looking down my nose at my friends who are stuck in the weekend social pattern because I'm going to the opera or anything, though I admit to feeling a tad annoyed - ok smug as well, when they can't get up until 4pm on a Saturday or Sunday.

Tonight the sky is full of fireworks as we celebrate *Guy Fawkes night (which is officially tomorrow). Ten minutes from here is one of the biggest firework displays in the country at Blackheath. I reeaaally don't like it. Actually it's not the fireworks themselves that scare me, it's the people. I've been to this display a number of times, bought a duff sparkler, oohed and aahhed like I'm supposed to, fought my way through the crowds to a pub I don't like afterwards, after major logistical planning with no mobile phone signal managed to get a round of drinks in and stand on the heath in the cold saying things like "yeah it was quite good, not as good as last year though." Fireworks are going off all around as I write - of the even scarier back garden amateur dad variety. It sounds like a war zone out there. Little Loly is most perturbed.

* I leave it to these people to explain the origins of Guy Fawkes night to those possibly not familiar with it - hi Kazakhi reader!

I was once asked with a knowing smirk, by my Italian teacher, to explain this tradition to my united nations of a class. In Italian. I blabbed and burbled about gunpowder and the intricacies of being hung, drawn and quartered as my teacher continued to quiz me like a prosecuting lawyer. "And then you make effigies of this man and set fire to him on a large bonfire don't you? And you all dance round it."