Events

D&AD Student Awards ‘09 - Brought to you by Gazz Wood -

This is the last D&AD based event I promise. I know, it's a lot, but when you work in the creative industry [no matter how fleetingly and how tenuously] there are a great many functions to attend. Those days are over now, at least until this time next year presuming we all return to our posts at the company, then the whole round begins again fresh.


Exciting!


Tonight was the Student portion of the ceremony season, held in this big ass shiny glass gallery building the name of which escapes me but I'm sure James will fill in for me when he reads this and inevitably edits the living shit out of it (King’s Place in King’s Cross). I went as an honoured [...sh'yeah!] guest of the awards so shirt and such all the way. I fucking ironed a shirt. That's how formal this shindig was billed. It was hotter than all Christ and I had to rock the tube to the aforementioned [sort of] venue. It was a killer. Actually the first leg of my trip wasn't half bad because I got stood by the window at one end of the carriage, so I could enjoy all the blustering cold air... till some bitch made me move cuz I was "blocking all the breeze!".


The fucking NERVE of London people.


As soon as I got off the tube and hit the sweltering recycled fake station air I might as well have been running up a dune away from Mad Max riding a sandworm. It was hot I tell you!


Sweating my balls by the time I got there but it was deliciously air conditioned within the gallery and that soon sorted me out. Someone put a glass of wine in my hand and then someone else walked past me carrying a mahogoney shelf with eenie burgers on it! I was beside myself! All the nibbles and freebies and wine... hog heaven. I've been living on pity pints for so long it was nice to think everyone was drinking and eating for free. Guiltless, was the feeling. It was kind of nice.


All the old Studos* where there, apart from Kate who had mysteriously disappeared even though she said she was coming, John who was probably still tired from the exhibition week and Monica, who could well have been there the whole time and we just didn't notice. I was rocking a shirt and jeans like I say, and the girls had turned out in lovely dresses and going out stuff for the occasion. Matt... well... he's a vegetarian so... I think he was maybe so weak from surviving on lentils and grass that his mind has started to function wrong, but he came in the same vest and flip flops you might wear to the beach or a protest rally about something. It's not formal, I tell you that much.


I'm not gonna go into the particulars of the actual ceremony because you won't care. Students won things etc...

The after party is the key, and some of it was held at the venue [with yet more free wine and these little bowls of food and spogged out curly cutlery] but the majority went on at The Big Chill House down the road in King’s Cross. They'd rented the whole upstairs including terrace [which we may or may not have been allowed on depending on who you spoke to and at what point during the night]. As it goes the party wasn't much to talk about. Couple more free beers on D&ADs dime, but all the Studos dicked off well early leaving just me and James to hold up the end. And hold it up we did... some of us.


I was chatting up some foreign types, a Swiss girl, an American and a Polish lass who looked kind of like a chubbier Claire from Heroes... or so I was trying to decide pretty much all night. Because if she DID look like a chubbier Claire from Heroes then I would be working my meagre charms all over her, get her back to mine, but if she didn't look like a chubbier Claire from Heroes then she was just a fat girl from Poland and that was less good, however with all the guilt-free booze I was bubbling over with she would still have been viable if not for the journey home.


When I found James he was folded up from the neck down on a sofa in the bar, all askew and such. Trying to get him to move his ass when the bouncers approached to lead us away was a job. More of a fucking CHORE was coaching the drunk bastard out the bar and to the bus stop, where he managed to strike up a conversation with a shirtless and equally drunk hobo... in the rain.


All the while I'm trying to keep these two girls on the go, Claire for me and her Swiss Miss mate for Sailor Jerry over here. I got them in a cab even while dragging this fucker like a zombie on a lead. He reckons he doesn't remember a word of this. I had to show him the pictures later on in the morning [because at this point we're talking 3am at the earliest] to prove how we got home.


We lost Swiss Miss at Old Street when we got on the bus, but Claire lost me when we got off it. James is the only one who knows what stop we get off at. I've never been on that bus before so when he woke up three stops away and told us to get off we were in for a walk. Obviously he was too drunk to guide us but then he threw up in a hedge, trying to disguise it by pretending to be leaning on it... for ages... arching his back really hard every couple of seconds and heaving.


That sobered him up a touch.


Took us twenty minutes and another bus to get back to our flat and by then I'd used up all my chat time with Claire. Had I got her straight back to mine it would have been OK. With a one night stand you can only tolerate about 2 or so hours of chat once it's decided that you're gonna be doing the nude boogie. You need that time for the morning when you're trying to get shot of her and walking to the tube, but I'd squandered all of it on the protracted epic saga to get home so by the time we actually did I was sick of her... and with the drink rapidly wearing off it was becoming more and more apparent that she looked NOTHING like Claire from Heroes and was in fact just a Polish girl with blonde hair.


Face pushed her into a taxi [not really, she just got in, but it sounds more 007 if you face push] and then dickhead decides he's hungry so it's off to Tesco at 4:30am to buy Pot Noodles with the drug addled and murderer crowd. He's got work in the morning if you can believe that, so I'm left staying awake till 7am to wake him up! I made it though! Seinfeld saw me through and come seven I was prepared. Shake him awake at seven like I promised and then again half hour later when he didn't make a move. Second time he actually gets up and walks out of the living room so I figure I'm off the hook and it's safe for me to pass out now. Turns out later that instead of getting up and showering to go to work, he got up and made a beeline directly for his bed. Went back to sleep.


Hour and a half or so late for work, but then it's a work party so some leeway gets afforded. I don't get to sleep till 8am and even then I wake up at 10am because I have to go out and meet a friend. I passed out on the sofa four nights running this weekend, culminating in my having to walk back from Straford [30 fucking minutes!] on Sunday night.


Anyway, I'm glad I didn't sleep with that girl is my point.



  1. *People who worked in the Student Awards Team.