The Purrrrrrrrrfect Saturday!

Wow, I think I am still tired from Saturday's shenanigans...

My day started out with a 'body pump' class at the gym (a full body workout using barbells) which was probably setting me up for exhaustion before the day had even begun - and believe me, the all-encompassing aches and pains that resulted from this class were with me for the next couple of days!

So with the promise of an afternoon of picnics, I set out to (finally) meet up with a friend who recently moved to London from NYC. I'm glad that the amount of times we tried and failed to meet up in the past few weeks have finally come to an end! Unfortunately the two picnics we had planned on attending turned out to be less promising than we had originally thought, so after travelling to Green Park, then to Hyde Park, in the end we decided to give up on parklife and head to Camden for roof garden drinkies. Here, we soaked up the sun and most likely offended the people sitting near to us with our x-rated conversation topics, before heading over to bar Zensai for their weekly rockabilly happy hour.


Admittedly, a bar named 'zensai' is probably not one you would immediately think synonymous with a crackin' rockabilly club, but if you head down on a Saturday between 4-8pm (the crowd tends to arrive around 6-6.30pm) you get to listen to awesome music and drink delicious 2-for-1 cocktails (go for the Old Cuban - rum, mint, lime and champagne!) either inside, or out front, where the music is played through outdoor speakers.


Here we met with a friend of mine who was visiting from San Francisco (I do have English friends too, I promise...) and enjoyed the sunshine whilst sipping on aforementioned Old Cubans followed by some kind of watermelon cocktail.


Now although the music was spot on, the dancefloor was empty (most likely because everyone was too busy partaking in drinkie time out front - me included) so post Zensai, I was ready to slip into my dancing shoes (or, at least, I would have been, had I actually thought to bring my dance shoes with me when I left the house that morning - as it was, though, I had to settle for the granny Worishofer sandals I was wearing). Onwards and upwards the night led to The Cat's Meow near London Bridge for dancing and a performance by Pete G and The Magnitones.

Run by The London Swing Cats, this monthly night definitely satisfied my dance craving. It's a great little dancefloor, and Guy's Bar is actually one of the campus bars for the university I graduated from, King's College London.


This night gets a great mix of people of all ages, with djs playing a selection of swing, jump jive, boogie, rhythm & blues, as well as two performances by a band.

I had so many fun dances, and in fact it was probably the best night out dancing that I've had since I left San Francisco. That is until the 'blood on the dance floor' incident...*Shudder*....


Never, in the six years that I have been dancing have I ever scratched someone mid-dance, but this was the night that I managed to not just scratch this poor guy, but I actually scratched him on his face and made him bleed! I didn't realise that he was bleeding until after the dance (yes, he carried on dancing until the end of the song, like a trooper) at which point I felt SO guilty that I couldn't bring myself to dance for the next thirty minutes or so. The strange thing about it, is that my nails were not even particularly long (I tend to keep them pretty short at all times) and frankly, I just don't know how my hand got into such a position where it scratched across his face like that. In any case, he was very gracious and understanding about it, but despite the fact that it was an accident, I still felt awful about it.


After retracting my claws for the night (meoooow) and sitting out a number of tunes, it was the sound of Lonely Teardrops that finally made my feet happy again. I absolutely adore that song, and frankly, scratch or no scratch, it is impossible for me not to get up and dance when Jackie Wilson's heart is cryin' cryin'...

By 12.30am I was exhausted from a full day and night on the go. I felt like I could have fallen asleep right there and then, but thankfully didn't. Instead, looking like a drowned rat after a night of energetic dancing, I managed to get my feet moving, and took a moment to admire a classic Rover parked out front, before we headed to Brick Lane for a late night snack of salt beef bagels. So. Delicious. I love salt beef bagels at the best of times, but since I hadn't eaten since my lunch at 12.30pm, I was STARVING!!!




After throwing a nice strong cup of tea into the mix, I was satisfied and ready to go home and Skype with loverboy a little bit, before passing out. Which I did. Little did I know that 'body pump' would come back to haunt every muscle in my body when I awoke the next morning.....