Tonight, filled with dread, I went to a ‘local businesses networking event’.

I know, not my sort of thing at all.  It suggested being sensible, grown up and…talking in

My poorly elbow. It feels more dramatic than it looks...

coherent sentences.  The fact that I still have quite a hobble and an attractive yellowing elbow that doesn’t bend well didn’t really help with the professional image I knew I should be trying to portray.

Happily, there was free alcohol and canapés (I’ve not seen fizzy wine served with a sliced grape before – I thought it was champagne and strawberries.  Maybe that’s one effect of the recession).  I positioned myself next to the table of both so I could surreptitiously help myself and ended up involved in a conversation with a lady wearing red sequinned horns.  I say I was involved.  I mainly got to listen.  Not about her business.  No.  About the pet rats her children had owned 10 years ago.  Realising there was a possibility I was the sane one here I felt my confidence grow.  And I had a GREAT evening.

An amazing gentleman called Christopher Lloyd gave a presentation on his newest wall book ‘What on Earth? Wall book of Natural History’.  I think it was 40 million years he covered in about 20 minutes with the aid of a bottle of water, a cork, silk flower and some coal.  He is a genius.  I learned more about evolution tonight that I did the whole way through school.

Then we got to network.  I swapped cards with a photographers, a baby sleep expert, a yoga teacher, couriers, insurance bods, a  restaurant owner, a baker and a very lovely nutritionalist.  I didn’t tell her about my magical mystical shorts.  I wonder if she’d be more effective that they are…(I think I know the answer to that.  Please don’t send answers on a postcard).

So there you have it.  I was going to say I was a sensible thing for an entire evening.  But I wasn’t – I was a little bit sensible for an hour or so.  It did make me realise though that there are other people out there who are trying to follow their pipe dream, but are having fun too.  You don’t always have to be sensible.  And that is something that makes me smile (and rather grateful too!)