(no subject)
Evidently I have survived the weekend's trip down memory lane. It was very bizarre but also kind of fantastic. I'm really glad I went. The strangest thing was that literally all of the old friends I met up with - who are all my age (23) or younger - are now either pregnant or have children. As, I gather, are quite a lot of the ones I *didn't* meet up with. I knew this in advance really, and thought it would be scary and weird to see them as mothers but actually they all seemed so happy and content that it was just quite lovely and eye-opening.
It was sometimes hard to reconcile the childhood/teenage version of these people that I knew so well nine years ago, with the adult/mother version that I met for the first time this weekend. I think I probably spent far too much time staring intently at their faces trying to merge the two versions in my head, work out how well I still knew them and how much of them I didn't know at all. The conclusions I came to varied wildly for different people - inevitably, some seemed exactly the same and almost essentially unchanged, for others it was as if I was speaking to the same person but from an alternate universe or something. That was OK though. It was unsettling of course, but also intriguing and fascinating.
The town itself inevitably felt smaller, but it was more beautiful than I remembered...the amazing-ness of the views from so many of my old haunts that I'd never even noticed properly before, the smell of the sea in the air, the lovely harbour and cliffs and marshy parks and the feeling of space and cleanness everywhere...it was just lovely and so much more idyllic than I had remembered it being. I've already made plans to go back for another visit in September once the friend I was staying with has had her baby, and I definitely want to keep in touch with her properly and not just sporadically. My parents are talking about moving back there when they retire, which I think would be great. The place still felt like home, or *a* home, to me, in many unexpected ways.
So that was that. I didn't get to see X-Men 3 on Monday because time didn't allow, but I did see the first installment of Celebrity X Factor (X Factor is basically Simon Cowell's rehashed version of American Idol in the UK.) It was not of the good. Firstly it was just odd seeing Simon suddenly judging alongisde Sharon Osbourne and Louis Walsh in a little UK studio, instead of alongside Paula and Randy in a huge American one. Even weirder though was that Sharon was so vicious and rude to some of the contestants (mainly the duo of Rebecca Loos who is famous for having an affair with David Beckham, and James Hewitt who is famous for having an affair with Princess Diana) that Simon ended up in the role of being the nice one, trying to get her to ease up. None of the "celelbrities" were better than mediocre singers, most were out-and-out bad, and I found it rather embarassing to watch. Obviously there was a certain amount of irony involved which made it slightly less awful, but I still won't be bothering with the rest of it.
Finally, I really like the new Veronica Mars promo vid on the CW's website. "Did you just call me lady?" tazer tazer. Hee.
It was sometimes hard to reconcile the childhood/teenage version of these people that I knew so well nine years ago, with the adult/mother version that I met for the first time this weekend. I think I probably spent far too much time staring intently at their faces trying to merge the two versions in my head, work out how well I still knew them and how much of them I didn't know at all. The conclusions I came to varied wildly for different people - inevitably, some seemed exactly the same and almost essentially unchanged, for others it was as if I was speaking to the same person but from an alternate universe or something. That was OK though. It was unsettling of course, but also intriguing and fascinating.
The town itself inevitably felt smaller, but it was more beautiful than I remembered...the amazing-ness of the views from so many of my old haunts that I'd never even noticed properly before, the smell of the sea in the air, the lovely harbour and cliffs and marshy parks and the feeling of space and cleanness everywhere...it was just lovely and so much more idyllic than I had remembered it being. I've already made plans to go back for another visit in September once the friend I was staying with has had her baby, and I definitely want to keep in touch with her properly and not just sporadically. My parents are talking about moving back there when they retire, which I think would be great. The place still felt like home, or *a* home, to me, in many unexpected ways.
So that was that. I didn't get to see X-Men 3 on Monday because time didn't allow, but I did see the first installment of Celebrity X Factor (X Factor is basically Simon Cowell's rehashed version of American Idol in the UK.) It was not of the good. Firstly it was just odd seeing Simon suddenly judging alongisde Sharon Osbourne and Louis Walsh in a little UK studio, instead of alongside Paula and Randy in a huge American one. Even weirder though was that Sharon was so vicious and rude to some of the contestants (mainly the duo of Rebecca Loos who is famous for having an affair with David Beckham, and James Hewitt who is famous for having an affair with Princess Diana) that Simon ended up in the role of being the nice one, trying to get her to ease up. None of the "celelbrities" were better than mediocre singers, most were out-and-out bad, and I found it rather embarassing to watch. Obviously there was a certain amount of irony involved which made it slightly less awful, but I still won't be bothering with the rest of it.
Finally, I really like the new Veronica Mars promo vid on the CW's website. "Did you just call me lady?" tazer tazer. Hee.