Conference. Evening One. I mingle over dinner.

I arrive, and mingle, doing the edge in to the first group I see. They shift slightly and smile, which is nice. One of the guys is someone I spoke with at lunch. I then keep talking to them and end up at the same table when we are herded into the ballroom for dinner. Dinner is nice, good vego. Gluten free for the man sitting next to me. I am polite, I ask questions, I am on best behaviour, I barely crack jokes, I have no-one to be silly with. The woman I talk to replies with a thin smile any time I open up and offer opinions so I stop doing this and instead nod and make banal comments and prompting questions. I am meant to be mingling, justified the dinner extravagance to myself as a networking opportunity. I leave with one business card and think ‘I am an abject failure at networking, and I don’t even really care that much’. I leave, going past the bar in which there are countless football fans celebrating the just-ended match of Australia versus Argentina. A little flicker of thought says ‘stay, drink in the bar’. I have a quick flash of talking with tall dark and handsome strangers, which melts on second thought and is replaced by standing talking to sports mad Aussies in scarves, which all, either way, seems like too much hard work. I leave instead and weave back through the cold streets between imposing Victorian mansions and middle-aged dinner party street goodbyes, and find myself in just minutes back in the tiny airlock of my room. Shoes off. I write a postcard and wonder idly about whether I was ever the kind of girl to have wild solo bar adventures or whether I was always the type to come back to a cup of tea and my thoughts. After all it’s an early start in the morning and I have work emails to write. Maybe this is what they call responsibility. Maybe I’m rediscovering demure. Maybe it’s early menopause.