T' be sure, t' be sure, a wonderful St Paddy's night out

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Walked the 2 minutes from Jenny's house to St Hellier beach, and settled on the dark sand in the sunshine. Within 20minutes, a murky black cloud as dense as a slab of concrete had crawled across the sky and it started to rain. Ellie had nipped to the shop so I dashed in to the nearest coffee shop and had a skinny latte. El found me not long after and when the weather perked up, we went back to the beach for the rest of the afternoon.
Ellie was really excited for our night out with the girls tonight. Her friend Dot (another girl she worked with in South Africa) was getting the ferry over from Waiheke Island to join the four of us for a meal and drinks in the city.
Once we'd all got ready that afternoon (wearing items of Green clothing of course), Jenny collected Dot from the Harbour and we went to Mosoon Poon, a restaurant that Jenny frequently goes to that serves wonderful Thai, Indian, Vietnamese and Chinese food. The decoration inside was incredible. The kitchen was open with ceiling mirrors so you could watch the chefs serving up bowls of colourful curries, and the colour scheme was a vibrant mix of reds and oranges, with dark furniture and authentic Oriental ornaments and furnishings. The food really was as delicious as Jenny had said; and since the portions were so big, we shared 3 dishes with rice and naan, so it wasn’t expensive at all - even with our two bottles of wine added on.
The first Irish Bar we passed was heaving with a huge queue outside and you had to pay $10 to get in. We went to another busy Irish Bar near the harbour instead and spotted hundreds of people with green bowler hats, Irish flags, novelty ties, badges, green facepaint etc. The whole city was already rocking.
I got chatted up by a business man who seemed keen to drop it in to conversation three times that he and his colleagues had the penthouse on the top floor of the Hilton for the next few days. He asked if we’d like to join them there tomorrow evening then asked for my number. He did that dreadful thing when boys say “let me take your number and I’ll one bell you so you have mine”... urgh god - then there’s no way of you palming them off with a false “flirt divert” phone number. So yes, he ended up with my real number, but I cunningly saved him as “Don’t answer” without him seeing.
Next up we were joined by an intoxicated Irish man from Cork. He kept trying to take a swig from my drink! We humoured him for a while, but then, much to my alarm and embarrassment, he started kicking off with a group of old men on the next table who had offered to get us a round of drinks on their company credit card. See, there mustn’t be a recession here in New Zealand with all this “penthouse renting” and “buying drink” palava.
We got rid of Intoxicated Irish man and politely declined the round of drinks from the old men, then fled round the corner to find another bar. After a brief pit stop to buy a few chocolate Bounties, we went to another jam-packed Irish Bar and squeezed passed the dancefloor to get a drink. There were drunken men everywhere, staggering and slurring and sloshing their drinks all over the floor. What a bloody horrible reminder of what England is like!
Found a booth and got settled drinking Guinness and doing silly things with giant shamrock cut-outs. At 11pm it was time to take Dot to the Harbour to catch her ferry back to Waiheke Island. Fortunately we went with her because she directed us to the wrong pier and would have missed the last ferry is we hadn’t corrected her. Grabbed a chicken and salad pita from a Kebab stall where I chatted to a really fit guy. The girls wanted to know why I didn’t get his number! You must be kidding I said, hell no - if he didn’t ask me for mine then he isn't worth bothering with. We all legged it to Jenny’s car across the road and munched our food on the way home. Yummy, and what a brilliant night out!

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