Everything started harmlessly enough. Beth, Jude and me; a girls night in, baggy T-shirts and tracksuit bottoms. A chick-flick film, chips with cheese and a girly chat. An early night, even.

No early night in the end. We stayed up till 2AM making a disgusting but strangely attractive (at the time) radioactive oatmeal cake and eating it on the stairs. Sitting on the cold kitchen floor, heatedly debating the everything under the sun. Almost tripping over health-hazard creme eggs. Crazy sexy dancing to music turned right up, shouting lyrics at each other with exaggerated pouts and wriggles of the hips, until one of us remembered the baby next door.

We contemplated finding slugs in the garden to test the put-them-in-beer-and-they-scream theory, but didn't get much further than the intention. We watched Sex In The City, and were involuntarily drawn towards something ridiculous about a South Park Christmas Poo. We lay on the floor laughing till we couldn't breathe about things none of us could remember when we woke up this morning.

"I'm a wine merchant!" Beth shouted inexplicably and randomly on her way to the kitchen.

The cherry on the icing on the cake was being woken up after not many hours of sleep by a squeaky chipmunk song blaring from Beth's phone.