Two events in a night - becoming the social butterfly...

Well, last night was the long awaited meeting of the Oratory 18-35s. Before that, however, I went down to the Poetry Cafe to catch the launch of a new poetry magazine, South Bank Review. Unfortunately the 7pm start was an aspiration and not a deadline; by the time I left at 7:35 to get to the Oratory at 8:00 it still wasn't underway, though would have been soon. (I actually had a different construction for that sentence, but stopped writing to put on a pot of tea and when I came back it sounded appallingly pretentious...I hope my other posts aren't the same!). This was a disadvantage, but I was still a socialising machine, going downstairs before it started and offering to set up chairs etc.
It was the same at the Oratory. It began amusingly enough. When I walked up to a group of people outside to ask if I was at the right place they got in first and asked if I needed directions somewhere. My jeans, t-shirt and leather jacket over my arm must have been unexpected...the majority of the guys were wearing suits, and even those unsuited were maintaining a collar!
Anyway the talk was good (Is baptism necessary to salvation?), given by a slightly nervous-seeming young priest whose teaching was nowhere near as hardline as he'd have you think. For the majority of the talk he went on about baptism by water being the only means to salvation introduced by Jesus, and so on; but then spent a good ten minutes on baptism by blood and by desire.
Afterwards there was sandwhiches and wine. Again I surprised myself by turning to the person directly next to me and introducing myself. I couldn't believe it was actually done. In past experience I'm more likely to spend the entire time thinking about doing it...
We had a good chat, he was here from Michigan doing an internship with Deutche Bank, but I was feeling a bit pretentious because he had a list of English authors he wanted to read (Waugh, Belloc, Chesterton) and kept asking me if I knew them. Luckily I could confess to having read only one book of Newman's, and he had read several sermons, so that made it better. And then it turned out that Robert E Lee is his hero so we got on like a house on fire. He asked for my phone number so the next time he and his friends were out he'd invite me - and didn't even flinch when I pulled out my pearl-pink model!
So all in all a successful evening I think. Now I just need some jobs to be offered...