A good time was had by all, especially when the zombies arrived

I'm going to let you in on a little secret about me; I judge people based on how prepared they are for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. It isn't quite as crazy as it sounds. OK, it is as crazy as it sounds. But we all have our quirks. And anyway, have you thought about your escape plan? Do you have a scheme for gathering food or for finding protection? No? Then don't come crying to me when you find yourself at the mercy of the undead hoards. I will not stand here and be insulted when there is so much at stake.

I bring this up because on Thursday night we had a zombie scare, and I was woefully, shamefully, underprepared. 

Our friend, the always lovely and vivacious Miss Sutherland Shire, had been nagging us for weeks to go out with the young folks. We’ve tried to explain that we’re old and tired, and that in our distant youth we had been known to dance on bars (true) and rarely feel the urge these days to stay out all night drinking. Or we feel the urge, then realise that a night of pasta, wine and movies is much more appealing. But eventually we agreed to go to out, first to a bar where a jazz band was playing, and then to one of those dark rooms where they sell expensive drinks and try to deafen you with Lady Gaga. 

So we went, and we had a very nice time. We drank too much (mainly because of the insistence in Spain of serving gin and tonics made to the following recipe; take one bucket. Add a bottle of gin. Garnish with tonic and a slice of lemon), and I even had a little dance, much to the horror of our younger, ineffably cooler friends, as I tend to dance like someone whose only awareness of the concept of dancing is from having at some point read a badly translated pamphlet on the subject. 

Oh, and as I subtly hinted above, we saw some zombies.

There were three guys in costume, and they shuffled into the bar in approved zombie fashion,and wandered around in a sinister sort of way. The effect was spoiled slightly by the fact that the jazz band was playing something particularly tinkly and elevator-musicy at the time. And also that we were all slightly too pissed to take them seriously anyway. I tried to get one of them to dance with me, much to his chagrin, though I don’t know if he was annoyed at me for ruining the effect he was trying to create, or if it was simply due to the fact that I was dancing, for which I do not blame him. Either way he was somewhat deflated. It’s hard to loom convincingly when the person you’re attempting to menace is trying to jolly you into doing the mashed potato like some kind of demented children’s TV presenter. Then the girls decided to find out what the zombies looked like under the masks, and started pulling them off the guys’ heads. One in particular was pronounced cute by Miss Sutherland Shire, and he was quick enough on the uptake to realise that there was a lot more mileage in going maskless, which his fellow zombies were also annoyed about.

We moved on to another bar, zombies in tow (it turns out they were all classical musicians, and very nice chaps too), where I was thrilled to learn that one of the other exchange students also has a plan for dealing with the zombie apocalypse. I was with him right up until he said that part of his plan entailed getting everyone on a bus, and I was like ‘Amateur. Haven’t you seen the end of Dawn of the Dead? Good luck with that.’ Honestly, young people today have no idea. 

We played some beer pong, less successfully than the photographic record of the evening suggests;

As with any drinking game, the problem is that once you start to lose it is pretty much impossible to make up the lost ground. I later found out that the Spanish rules for beer pong don’t require you to scull your beers, you are only meant to take a sip of your beer each time you lose a point. But that’s not how Australians play it, and we showed these effete Europeans a thing or two about binge drinking. In the end we only lost by one cup, so we did quite well all things considered. It was about this stage that Miss Southerland Shire admitted that she had thought that we’d be ‘soft’, and that she hadn’t expected us to stay out so long. The subtext was that she hadn’t thought we’d be any fun, but given the fact that we tend to act as if we’re in our dotage already, I suppose I can’t be offended by this assumption. 

 In short, we had a lovely time, though I was sick as a dog the next day and it wasn’t until about five in the afternoon that I could manage solid foods again, though luckily it was just a hangover, and not the onset of advanced zombiism.