No Nibbling Allowed

I went to a lovely "drinks and nibbles do" last night with a group of Irish booksellers, courtesy of Penguin Ireland. I was looking forward to it very much (a rare night out? yay!) and, to begin with, all went swimmingly.
There I was dolled up, nibbling on divine food and sipping champers (yes, really). It was just like a scene from Sex and the City, except I didn't have a designer handbag and I wasn't wearing couture.
The only fly in the ointment, if there was one, was the poor waiter. Every time he arrived with a new platter of food for us to enjoy, he looked like he was going to have a heart attack with the stress of trying to figure out where to put it. At one point I found myself volunteering to balance a platter on my knees just to calm him down. It didn't seem to occur to him to simply take some of the empty plates away to make some space.
Anyway, I excused myself to go to the loo (which was miles and miles away of course and meant a lot of wobbling on heels I hadn't worn in ages, but I tried not to mind because after all I was a gal about town for the night and the little things don't bother us).
When I eventually got there I did that quick check in the mirror, you know the one to make sure all the makeup hadn't slid off my face.
And that's when I noticed it. Something was winking back at me under the (frankly, very unbecoming) fluorescent lights. Something green.
In a flash, my Sex and the City fantasy came crashing down around my ears.
It was a gherkin. There was a large piece of gherkin lodged firmly between my two front teeth and there was no possible way people hadn't spotted it. I had been chatting to everyone with half a vegetable patch in my gnashers.
Bloggers, I almost locked myself in the cubicle with the utter mortification.
And so the moral of that story is - when you go to a drinks and nibbles reception do not, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, think you can actually eat anything.