Night on the tiles.

It had been a good day at work - one of those days that made you feel you were doing exactly what you were meant to be doing, with the right people.

Early on VW showed up with a box tied with gold ribbon, which turned out to contain huge strawberries dipped in dark chocolate. And it wasn't even ten o'clock yet!

The old in-box was virus free for the first time in a month, and contained welcome, chatty mail from Tokyo, Namibia and Dubai, plus an unreleased MP3 sent from the ex-guitarist of a favourite band, and some well reasoned arguments against the Burn Baby Burn blog of a few days ago accusing me of talking socialist bollocks. Well sound. Never been called a commie before!

I got a nice chatty e-mail from my sis telling me all about the tube strike in London, and some mail from my old buddies from the Big Company telling me how life was in the mushroom farm, (kept in the dark and... you know) news of new bairns, and a couple of daft forwarded jokes about George Dubya and his Iraqnophobia.

The computer didn't crash once, no matter how many mad bits of software I fired up, and a meeting with a customer which I thought was going to be dull and boring turned into a healthy discussion on the relative merits of Charles Rennie Macintosh, Frank Lloyd Wright and Antonio Gaudi. Then finally one of the gang rings up and says he's just been given pit passes to a hot shit motor racing event at the weekend. Am I in? I'll need a passport to get there. Somebody stop me!!

A really great day. Sort of day that makes you glad you got up in the morning.

So the word is that everyone at work is meeting up at some lounge bar in town. New, velvet rope kind of place, everyone's going. You're coming? Yup I'm coming, just got some stuff to get done. Where is it? (skribble skribble) O ye I know the place. Cool.

So about an hour later I'm downtown grooving on being out early evening and all the hustle and bustle of city life. It's a warmish evening and the vibe is good. I'm not in too much of a hurry but I find the place very quickly. Dudes on the door are welcoming and the music is spilling out onto the pavement. Owdo lads! Busy tonight??

The place is jumping - and it's not the forced bonhomie you sometimes get. Dancefloor is well busy and the decor is the coolest shit you've seen outside Ibiza and Miami. This Wednesday night crowd would fit in anywhere. Suit-free too, which makes me wonder if there's not some sort of dance music vid being made and nobody told me. I do the room, and grab a Vino Tinto from the ice-cool uber-blonde working the bar. A party girl tries to get me to dance and flashes the smile. "Gwaan.." I smile back and point at my full glass. Later...

Fast forward a few tunes and I'm now sure that the gang's elsewhere. And me without my cellie, which I then remember is back at the lab still sucking electric. I rely so much on that speed dial I have no recall of ANY phone number except my own (and after a few glasses of Chianti Classico I can barely remember that one either...)

So it's the Party Animal Test. Here I am, glass in hand, in one the coolest of establishments with top class multicultural totty walking around half cut and in need of conversation. The music is less than perfect (it's the sort of place that still thinks a Kylie remix is the height of sophistication) but the vibe is better than good, and I'm looking smarter and hipper than usual.

So why am I feeling like a bad Morrissey lyric. Why am I in there with the beautiful people and feeling like a weed in the flowerbed?

It wasn't that the gang had bogged off to some other juke joint and left me to bob around the barrel on my own. I was totally fine with that. But when you're in some supercool situation and all you can hear is Alice Deejay's lyric for "Better off Alone" instead of grooving on the bassline, chilling out and chatting up you know that sommat's not connecting.

I just wanted some real people around me, that's all. I got to thinking about the people I really cared about and why I was standing watching strangers I couldn't give a bugger about. I stood there, the invisible man, nodding to the backbeat and thinking "My gal will be arriving home, putting the kettle on and firing up her laptop right about now".

So smiled, emptied the glass and headed for fresh air.

Maybe the gang had just got an extra round in someplace and the Champions League match was on, or they were up the back of the chill-out zone wondering where the fuck I'd got to. But I just wanted to be with my gal last night, to tell her what a terrific time I'm having, what a special thing we've got going, and how much I'm looking forward to getting on with a life together.

I spose the picture perfect scene in the club brought it home. There are times when you want to be the cock of the walk, dancing with beautiful African chicks and drinking cocktails with flowers floating in 'em, laughing too loudly and having your ears yelled at and your face smiled at.

All that last night did for me is make me want to run home and tell my gal what a fabulous girl she is, how privileged I am to have met her and how happy she makes me feel every moment I'm alive.

And that's exactly what I did. Blogga.