Brrrrr

As well as (I hope) an agreeably scented armful, and a nicer dance than you'd expect from my experience, I learned tonight that I am also, sometimes, a cold nose.

It's always intriguing to see yourself from someone else's point of view, and my favourites are the trivial details of the same kind that make a novelist's description live.

There's a moment in HMS Surprise where Patrick O'Brian writes something like - "she was wearing a hard blue dress, tediously embroidered with pearls". He was a magnificent writer and I love that line, about a very beautiful woman in a difficult situation and a bad temper. You see her standing there, in the lap of luxury, having made a poorer-than-usual choice of outfit that afternoon.

I was delighted with my cold nose news - apparently rather nice in a hot room - and giggled for the rest of the tanda.

And he was my second dance of the night, so presumably my nose was also cold for the first one - but I don't think we did whatever it was that caused the end of my nose to make contact.

It's a long and slightly scary walk from the station to tonight's venue, but it seems much shorter on the way back when you're nice and warm.

And I'm sure my eyelashes sometimes tickle.