katelyn's Friends
(Latest entries) (Calendar) (Latest friends) (User info)
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Boxing Day was as much of a cause of celebration as Christmas was, which was also strange. I found myself going to see a mummers' play somewhere outside Oxford, which wasn't what I'd expected. You see, I was expecting to sit down in a theatre or at least a tent, and watch a play in the usual fashion, y'know, as one is wont to do when watching a play. Not so. We stood in a large crowd outside a pub, shivering in the cold, watching something in the territory between a pageant and a variety performance. Morris dancing, melodrama, wassails, squeezeboxes. As one of the cast said, it may be rubbish, but it's British rubbish. After this, there was another enormous meal, followed by a walk in a stately home's garden, owned by the Marquis of Somethingoranother. We got lost, tired, and thirsty - all signs of a good walk.
I finally returned home on the 27th - quite late, but not too late to plug my Wii back in and have a bash on New Super Mario Bros. Wii. The titles may be getting longer and more ridiculous, but the games are doing so accordingly, so that's OK. This is a great game; very addictive, innovative use of the Wiimote and a love letter to Nintendo's past. I'm having to ration myself to a few levels at a go. The rationing isn't working very well so far. But I have the willpower!
A few days followed of nothing much happening, and then Helen turned up again and we got prepared for the Campbells' New Year party. I haven't attended a local NYE party for two years (last year I was with Helen out in London and then went back to Oxford for midnight, and the year before that I was with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) utternutter, I think - although maybe that was the year before last...?), and this was my first Campbell party without James, which was sad. In truth, we didn't do much other than eat, kiss, joke and wave sparklers, but then again, that's what the Campbells' parties are all about.
We then had three days to prepare for my Dad's 60th birthday party. Helen brought a cocktail shaker and a book, and together we devised a group of cocktails (and three mocktails to appease me), all of which were named after characters Dad has played: Mr. Utterson, Macbeth, Old Sorcerer, Villager Tom, Leonid Gaev (which contained cherries), Irish Caretaker, Narrator and Pirate Smee. We overhauled the entire kitchen, and Helen and I joyfully opened "The Bideford Bar", quickly mixing our cocktails with style and also re-mixing some of the more popular ones! There was also a murder mystery, but the cocktails were the highlight.
And that brings us up to about here. I'm back on placement now, but I'll complain write about that when I've done a couple more days. Instead, I'll leave you with two things for your delectation.
The first is my dad's new website. It's not finished yet, but I'm getting there, sort of. Try to view it in Firefox as it doesn't look too good in IE (well, it looks okay but nobody really uses IE much any more).
The second is a pilot trailer for Aegis Quest. I'm in it, briefly. It's only 40 seconds, so why not give it a watch? mayva is in it, and the voiceover is by kieran24_7.
That's all for now. Cheerio!
Current mood:  working Current music: Amateur Transplants - In Theatre
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Okay, so, Christmas started a while before Christmas and hasn't quite ended yet. Or it didn't happen. You know, your choice.
I had an entertaining weekend just before Christmas which started with Helen's birthday on December the 18th. I went along to her place to have dinner with Helen's family on that Friday night and had a fitful night of "sleep" before the following morning, upon which I struggled to Oxford station and made my way speedily back to Enfield to take part in the annual Feast of St Cinemus. I watched:
G-Force [4/5]
Planet 51 [3/5]
A Christmas Carol [4/5]
At which point I needed to abandon the Feast. I later learned that the Feasters had to abandon their plan and watch a mere six films, one less than the last three years, in order to guarantee a showing of Avatar.
I made my way back to Oxford to go to Helen's second birthday gathering, this time with her friends. This was both odd (because I've never seen them all in the same place before) and strange (because Haz was missing; she's in Japan, or something). This was followed by another night in Helen's house, only this time Angela (a QMUL friend) and her boyfriend Peter were occupying Ed's room, Emma and Helen were sharing her room, and I was left to sleep on a futon on Bob's floor with a fan heater next to me turned up to high. Surprisingly, I didn't get much sleep.
I returned on Monday to find that in a couple of days all the parts for the Sing Back Knightmare song had arrived in my inbox. I had "fun" piecing them all together. Allegedly.
I went with Alan and his girlfriend Claire to Broadcasting House in order to see The Now Show. I had a great time, saw Mitch Benn for the second time, and Steve Punt read out my response to the audience question. I didn't hear the final recording, sadly, and my mother tells me that my response was cut from it. But at least he read it out and I finally went to see The Now Show, so it was a good choice. Afterwards, Alan, Claire and I went to a really weird restaurant called Abracadabra, where the entire evening was taken over by a fraças concerning pre-teens taking drugs and suchandsuch. It was past midnight when I got home and I was still slightly confused.
Not much happened for a few days until my family took me to the annual Millfield pantomime, which I don't recall agreeing to go to. I also don't recall Helen agreeing to go, but we went along anyway. Since the last time I went to the Millfield was for the gig we played there, I haven't seen the place for ages, much less been into the theatre, so we saw a new bar area had been constructed. This was strange. I ordered two hot chcoolates, which were both unpalatable. Typical Millfield fare. The pantomime was okay, though, which is perhaps the first time I've said that (the one I saw at the age of fifteen with the beautiful fairy notwithstanding). I'm not entirely going to forgive a white Aladdin with a black mother though. I don't think that's physically possible - he should have at least been mixed-race.
The day after that we struggled back to Oxford hauling a huge trunk and there ensued the strangest Christmas I've ever had - also the smallest, with a mere seven people - which is large for them, with their five members, but tiny for me because mine have reached up to sixteen. For comparison:
A Typical Pooka Christmas
Tom, Harriet, Emily, Katie, Rosie, Pooka, Jane, Howard, Julia, Bob, Bev, Al, Ivy, Arthur, Maggie, Bert.
A Typical Helen Christmas
Bob, Helen, Ed, Joy, Mike.
Add me and Sarah (Ed's girlfriend) to the mix and we have seven. There are a lot of girlfriends cropping up in this post for some reason.
We went to a Church of England service at Christchurch Cathedral at midnight, followed by an Anglican service at Binsey Church in the morning. Since I'm URC I didn't really take either of these as close to my heart as I probably should have done, but Christchurch is an amazingly picturesque cathedral, so I got to see it from the inside for the first time and it's a mighty place. I didn't appreciate the sombre attitude of both churches, though; we hardly sang that many carols and the vicar's speech at Binsey derided A Christmas Carol, which displeased us all. We didn't sing O Come All Ye Faithful either, although we did sing it in the car on the way back.
Sarah got the Michael McIntryre DVD for Christmas and we'd finished watching it before lunch actually happened. Helen's father chose to enter the room right at the point wherein McIntyre started talking about blowjobs. Laughter had to be done behind hands, which were quickly put into use eating lunch. (Nice segue there, Pooka!) Which was delicious. We then played a music game, watched James May do something with trains, played Villiad The Imploder, and ate dinner, which was delicious.
We also watched Doctor Who at some point. I spent a long time explaining stuff to Helen, most of which was explaining that I had no idea either.
Christmas sort of petered out after that. Unlike my family Christmases, there wasn't a definitive end point, where everyone leaves Nanna's house. It was comforting, in a way, but also slightly disconcerting for someone who's been used to the same thing since birth. A comfortable Christmas. Cosy. Warm. Small. Quiet. It's not what I'm used to. But I enjoyed it. I'm sad to say that I did, at one point, cry. But it's not the first time I've cried at Christmas.
Current mood:  recumbent Current music: Alphaville - Forever Young
|
|
