Well, you know what they say about Brits abroad.

Hic. Stevie & I were invited to a do at the British Embassy by a friend of ours who works there. Scratch that, by the parents of Orla's best friend whose dad works there - we just live vicariously off of the back of her social life, and occasionally benefit from it. The event was arranged by the Embassy as they wish to engage more with the British community living in Berlin. So I asked some friends to come along, and just as well I did, because not only did Stevie get ill and thus decide to stay home, but I needed their steadying arms to lean on to get home. 

It was a casual enough affair. No ballgowns or cocktail dresses, no black tie. The dress code on our lovely white card invites stated "Business suit". Given that I haven't worked in business since I had the kids that proved more of a headache than I had thought it might. In fact, it was almost harder to sort an outfit for that than it was to dress Orla as a rainbow from her favourite book for International Book Day that morning. (It's the shoes mostly, I don't have the shoes any more for these things. Actually, I have yellow shoes or red shoes or turquoise or pink shoes that I could have worn if I had gone as a rainbow, but black business heels are slightly lacking.)

As it started at 6pm I decided not to eat beforehand. And then once I was there I didn't really fancy eating. Possibly because I'd already started drinking. The big disappointment of the night was that while there were silver service waiters complete with big silver platters, they were sadly not piled high with pyramids of Ferrero Rocher, but with tiny sandwiches, dates wrapped in bacon, mini skewers of cherry tomato, basil, and buffalo mozzarella. Oh, and free drink. Endless free drink. They gave up with the trays of glasses after a while and just followed me around with a bottle. I don't know how much I drank on an empty stomach, but I do know I very only a vague idea of what the message they were trying to get across through last night was.

I remember the prize draw, and all of us singing happy birthday to Orla's friend's dad, and I remember them wanting us to watch a film about, well it was either about the Olympics or about the 'Great' Britain campaign, but what I remember about it was that they had used M People as the soundtrack. You know, "What have you done today, to make you feel proud?..." - yup, that one. That seems to have been used for every promotional 'upbeat/patriotic/blah, blah' British event for the past 10 years. Seriously, has there been nothing else to replace that yet?

I took my camera with me because I thought the building would be architecturally wonderful to photograph. And it probably was, but at the beginning of the night I felt a bit self-conscious, and by the time I had lost that self-consciousness, the architecture had gone a little bit blurry. It was a great night though, I met a few people I knew from Rolls-Royce, and a few people I knew from the school, and a few more people like myself who were having more than a little trouble getting their sentences to come out straight.

We stayed beyond the official end of the event. In fact we stayed until the wine ran out and the waiters took the glasses from our hands. Though my good friend at the top did put up a particularly good fight for hers with a waiter with enormous muscles. He might have been strong, but he wasn't strong enough to come between a girl and her last dribble of wine.

So perhaps I am meant to be full of the joys of patriotism this morning, and blogging about how exciting it will be for M People to be back in the charts this summer, but it's all a bit of a blur. Oh, there was a bit about a gate as well, though I am not sure what that was really about. And there was a bit where I mistook someone from Rolls-Royce for one of Frau Dietz's friends from Uni, and nearly asked "How is it you seem about 6 inches taller since the last time I saw you?". But judging from the shocking deterioration of my photos over the course of 2.5 hours, I'd say it was a roaring success!

P.S. Completely coincidentally, I read this article in the Guardian this morning about national stereotypes which is quite funny.