Monthly Archives: April 2011

Last weekend was flippin awesome, was it not? Nothing like a scorching bank holiday to make you forget about the troubles of work and the general shitty state of the West End as we approach the dreaded month of May.

The highlight of the weekend, for me, had to be the moment on Saturday afternoon, when I sat on a conveniently placed log on Clapham Common, leafing through Vogue in a sundress and fabulous flipflops, waiting for Blondie to join after her matinee, and the heavens opened spectacularly. As one, the whole of Clapham Common stood up, stuffed half eaten pots of hummous into varying qualities of shoulder bags, and LEGGED IT.

Thank goodness we live in a world with a Starbucks on every corner.

The next day, after half a box of Lindt Lindor for breakfast, my presence was required at a birthday brunch for the Aussie, one of my favouritest people from the world of work. Cue a bottle and a half of champagne before midday, and hilarity on a terrace filled with hot Australians and a delightful variety of London’s finest media peeps. By the time the gang stumbled in a bubbly haze to the local pub, however, it was time for me to head further into the treacherous world of South West London to Bridget’s birthday Barbeque (Jesus, who? Cruci-what now?) so I picked up another bottle of fizz along with some high quality veggie contributions (quorn burgers – I think not, thank you very much) and hopped in a cab to BBQ land.

Thankfully, I was not the only one who’d been ever so slightly hammered since 11am. Blondie, by the time we’d eaten and successfully kicked ass in a garden party pub quiz, was so smashed that she seemed to lose the ability to access her memory. Particularly the part about The Knob, who – you may recall – treated her to a nice little bout of fucking and chucking a couple of weeks back.

“I want to play with the knob” she tweets (she does that now) “@RitziCortez says I shouldn’t but CRIKEY I want to!”

Luckily, I was able to use my powers of persuasion, and convinced her that going there again would be a BAD idea. Despite the fact that he was looking mighty fine that balmy bank holiday evening. She will claim that she had no intention of going there but I think the world will agree that in this case, twitter doesn’t lie.

Which brings me on to the startling revelation that – quite terrifyingly – I appear to have recently been living vicariously through Blondie and co. Good lord – I have officially not gotten laid since the Little Drummer Boy! I do declare, the blame lies entirely with this bastard thing called a JOB that seems to be kicking my ass all over theatre land at the moment. I keep reusing the same completely crap phrases to myself; ‘After the show opens… after the reviews come in… when my week has less than 60 working hours in it again…’ and wondering if that time will ever actually come, since 2011 is turning into the year of the theatre flop. The age of austerity has finally hit us, and it’s making life depressingly difficult.

I lamented this the next day to Nora, while full on sunbathing on the grass beside her boat in idyllic West London with Pina Coladas in hand. Nora has a refreshing way of making you feel better about such things; she shuns real life London and lives on a boat (which finally – after about 5 years – has running water, gas and electricty at the same time), writes songs all day and plays gigs with her band in the evening, and still finds time to flit off to New York every now and then to contribute to the mental world of Off-Broadway, while also keeping an adorable skinny-jean clad teddybear of a boyfriend interested. The woman is an inspiration.

“Life’s too short,” she says, knowledgably as she sips on non-alcoholic pinapple-coconut mush. “You’re super busy at the moment, but then you won’t be and when you’re not you’ll be able to think of something else. And then, in July, we’re going down to Cornwall anyway so you can get together with some hot salty surfer boy.”

This, I consider, is a very good point. Holiday romances with surfer boys are always fun.

But good lord I need to get laid before then.

RitziCx

Because we’re so flippin fabulous, Twinkle’s and my presence was recently requested at the launch party of a POLAR EXPEDITION. You know what that means?

Oh yes, manly explorer types + free champagne.

So we did ourselves up to the elevens (nines just don’t quite cut it) and toddled off to Chelsea to see how the other half lived.

Turns out – only two polar explorers. One of whom was wrapped around a teeny blonde. The other of whom was bagsied by Breakfast At Tiffany’s as she took the first opportune moment of the evening while her partner’s back was turned to announce that they had broken up the previous weekend and he was only there to keep up appearances, so she had set her sites on the single explorer.

AWKWARD!

Quite hideously, Twinkle and I ended up stuck in a corner with BAT’s secret ex, making very limited conversation because really, how can two women who live, eat, sleep and breathe theatre really be expected to make spontaneous conversation with a hotel guru. Honestly.

Like most civilised affairs, the party was done by midnight (how very Cinderella) so Twinkle and I headed down the Kings Road and stumbled into the first cocktail bar we found.

Margarita in hand, I scanned the room for potential as per usual, and before I could properly assess the situation I was manhandled by an American into a corner where he and his friend were watching Basketball and asked my opinion on the two teams playing.

I can honestly tell you, I have zero memory of what these two teams were.

More importantly: cute Yank.

He gave me his card (which I hate because it reminds me of that scene in He’s Just Not That Into You when she can’t figure if he’s going to call her or if she’s supposed to call him) because I didn’t have any, and so a couple of days later when back in the office of evil madness, I sucked up the courage to initiate first contact.

“So, who won? Rx” I ask, in a totally casual and breezy way.

A couple of hours later I receive the reply;

“Butler. Great game!”

Hmm. No kiss? No xoxo? No continuous flirtation?

Well, bugger you then Yankface. I genuinely looked ridiculously hot that evening also, so there’s no excuse.

And so, we move on (again) to bigger and better things.

RitziCx

Apparently, all it takes to get the shy and retiring Ritzi Cortez to reveal her true identity is four cocktails, half a bottle of champagne, a bottle and a half of red wine and a shot of sambuca. This is how it came about that I was berated by Blondie at 3am for not blogging for a million years.

Apologies lady. I shall write lots. Lots of nice things about you of course. Which is all I’ve ever done… (don’t read the archives) Haha – just kidding… (seriously, don’t go near those archives)

Anyhoo. I may be leant against the trunk of one of the common’s finest tree trunks, tanning intermittently and waiting for Twinkle to show up with cider, but last night was a very different story.

It’s the bank holiday weekend (at last! Whoop!) and recently life has been filled with 14 hour days, TV shoots til 4 in the morning, working on a SATURDAY and essentially, a heck of a lot of stress. As a result, the office posse decided to head out for some drinks at Piccadilly Institute, joined shortly after by Blondie and Irish.

Our civilized, tranquil evening of free champagne and cocktails was thrown into disarray when we discovered that the person who designed the Fruitbox bar in Piccadilly Institute is a total TOOL and doesn’t feel the need to highlight such things as enormous steps. Ergo; Ritzi trips down siad step on account of fabulous shoes, showering herself and those around her in mulitcoloured sticky cocktail and spraining the shit out of her ankle.

Never has the phrase ‘EPIC FAIL’ been so apt.

After rinsing the Mai Tai out of my hair as much as I could and creating, quite frankly, a rather stylish topknot out of a bad situation, the girls and I continued on our quest for inebriation, which I find is made decidedly easier with the introduction of sambuca.

Irish is buggering off to Spain tomorrow to embark on a week of bikini clad relaxation (and hopefully some sizzlingly sordid affairs, seeing as she’s been forced to put up with meaningless sex with only the Donkey and the Missing Link as of late, neither of whom have received a high rating).

Blondie is also deserting me in my time of high stress, and sunning herself in the south of France, while casually ignoring the recent heartache of a man who shall be known simply as the KNOB. Because he is one. The Knob – quite hot actually, it has to be said – flirted, and texted, and cast meaningful glances… and then fucked and chucked and ripped out Blondie’s heart.

Figures.

As for me, well, under the influence of alcohol I revealed my tryst with Movie Man to pretty much the entire office (well done there Ritz) and spend the night with purely platonic Eton Boy, staggering back to his ridiculously huge house after gorging on a Balans at 2am and drinking Paramount’s wine supply dry, and basically coming to the conclusion that I would like to live in a ridiculously big house too please.

So there you have it, sober to stressed to tipsy to hammered to drenched to sticky to sprained to hungry to full to night bus to sleep and to sun, in 24 hours.

Good day sir.

RitziCx

PS: I freakin miss the crap out of Maxie G. Where are you woman??!?!?!