Catching Up on 2011 #8: What's My Age Again?
Another year, another birthday. I've given up trying to do proper parties because all the people I really want to invite are scattered across the four corners of the UK (and Poland and America a little bit) and just don't have the money or time to come. And the few who always seem to be free usually end up over-eating, over-drinking and then vomiting the over-eat onto my livingroom floor. No thank you.
I did three days chilling out back at the homestead in Cambridge. Checked out a NaNoWriMo meeting at CB2 and sat drawing on the computer because the epic 'Harry Potter meets Shameless' urban fantasy I want to write is wedged in some part of my brain that can't convert image into word. Spent an afternoon with Spider and his delightfully eccentric family - Spider's dad's birthday is a few days before mine, they'd booked a massive table to accommodate a party of fifteen at their local carvery and were very happy for me to fill the uneven number space. It got a little awkward here and there because most of his family are determined that I'm Spider's girlfriend every time they see me and think after fifteen years it's about time he proposed but we've both given up trying to correct them. I haven't been to Spider's parent's house since I was in my mid-teens so this was my first viewing of "the Epic Man-Cave Extension". Spider's dad was in a nasty industrial accident a few years ago that involved his arms going through a big steel mangle, but he's used the compensation money to build a whole extra wing onto their bungalow that's been done up in stunning 50's style tack, right down to the zebra-skin rug. There was a rat-pack bar and a pool table, his treasured vinyl collection that puts my comic stacks to shame and more retro music memorabilia than you could shake a pimp cane at. Most impressive was the 'virtual jukebox' he and Spider made out of an old Dell computer and a wooden chest. They'd turned the chest on it's end, cut a hole for the monitor screen in the front and a hole for a CD drive in the side, stuck on various lights, buttons and fake coin slots and loaded up some ancient app that browsed week's worth of music on there like the little flippy papers in real jukeboxes then hooked up a wooden keyboard and mouse to finish it off. I felt like asking them to come and pimp out my house!
The last night I met up with Ali & Daze, my two longest serving friends. I've known Ali since we were four. I have actual friends younger than my friendship with her! She's still the urban hippy to my rural biker, works at a dog shelter as an animal psychologist (she's got a proper degree in it and everything), while studying illustration part time on top now. She gave me an awesome present - a handmade black and white lino print of twelve cockroaches sitting on a spiral. Only Ali would know I'd like that, although maybe not specifically because it reminds me of the cockroach from Heroes. Daze was taking a welcome break from what sounded like continual HR harassment at the solicitors office where she works and from her "squirmy pink squid" daughter who was pushed out into the world about three years ago and seems to have been voicing dissatisfaction about the whole experience ever since.
We wandered around all the old haunts, reminiscing about days spent dodging sport or religion at school and using fake ID to buy cigarettes; nights spent tricking Pedos into buying us vodka and talking drunken shit about people on park benches. It's nice fourteen years on when you can laugh about the good stuff and let the traumas fade into vague recollection. We discovered the 'Thrashers' off-license is now a Budgens Express, the geek temple of Choices Video had turned into a WH Smith and with the exception of a few quality pubs everything else seemed to have turned into a fucking coffee house. We sat by the river side until sunset, played proper old fashioned Billiards, drank every colour of the rainbow and conversed with an equally drunk chip-eating skater boi on the way home. Daze's squidling is now yet another child Aunty Siani has promised to make fairy wings for. A week off for Halloween is not enough.
Going home involved a slightly Supernatural-esque road trip with Mum back to Durham (complete with lunch-stop at the OK Diner for a plate of deep-fried Americana). The fact that she was happy to drive all the way up with me and then all the way back down by herself just because she wasn't due back at work for another week is testament to how awesome she is. We had a weird moment over cheesy fries though. She decided to drop another random dark little nugget of family backstory on me. She's been doing this off and on for about seven years now. My stomach does a little Pavlovian lurch every time she starts a sentence with the phrase "Don't say anything, but..." Previous examples would be "Oh yeah, I was engaged once. But then a drunk driver ploughed our car into a tree and I watched my fiance die in the car seat next to me. That's why I always got so upset with Nan for drink-driving." or "I nearly died of TB once and they pumped me full of everything going. It was my own fault for living in a scummy flat... maybe I wanted to die. But then I had you. And that's probably why you've got natural immunity!" This time it was "Don't tell your cousins but their uncle didn't die of a heart attack. He killed himself. The one you never met, he got abused when he was evacuated during the war and just never was quite right again. I think he drank bleach or something." o_O And then, god love her, she carried on eating her cheesy fries - because that's life (and death) I suppose.
In the evening me and Elmo caught up with Kam and Hawkes at Chiquitos, because they have a. A lucky Gecko that is actually lucky, b. Hellboy-sized plates of Nachos and c. Caipirinhas! It's bizarre having to 'catch up' with Hawkes after months of non-contact because HE FUCKING LIVES WITH US. Or at least he does on paper. His parent's spare bed clearly has some greater appeal than the foam double bed, flatscreen plasma TV and en-suit shower he's got in his palatial carpeted basement room here that he's still paying me and Elmo £284 a month for to not live in. I sense it has a little to do with Elmo's crazy relatives (even though he's a mature student of psychology and Elmo's family would make excellent dissertation fodder) and a lot to do with Bear (his younger brother who did live with us for a few months but then fell out with Elmo in spectacular fashion & went back to the parentals). Hawkes & Bear's relationship is the closest thing I've seen to real live Wincest. Seriously. Plus at their parents' house there's free unlimited, cooked-to-order food and a house rule that no one with a penis does laundry. That said, it's nice to have a house with none of the 'boy smell' of my three previous houses and a spare bed we can lend out when the need arises. The bed maybe smells a bit boyish still... I should change the bedsheets, they've been on there about 6 months minimum I reckon. *face/palm*
I don't care what age my passport says, clearly I still have the mental inner-workings of a twelve year old boy!
I did three days chilling out back at the homestead in Cambridge. Checked out a NaNoWriMo meeting at CB2 and sat drawing on the computer because the epic 'Harry Potter meets Shameless' urban fantasy I want to write is wedged in some part of my brain that can't convert image into word. Spent an afternoon with Spider and his delightfully eccentric family - Spider's dad's birthday is a few days before mine, they'd booked a massive table to accommodate a party of fifteen at their local carvery and were very happy for me to fill the uneven number space. It got a little awkward here and there because most of his family are determined that I'm Spider's girlfriend every time they see me and think after fifteen years it's about time he proposed but we've both given up trying to correct them. I haven't been to Spider's parent's house since I was in my mid-teens so this was my first viewing of "the Epic Man-Cave Extension". Spider's dad was in a nasty industrial accident a few years ago that involved his arms going through a big steel mangle, but he's used the compensation money to build a whole extra wing onto their bungalow that's been done up in stunning 50's style tack, right down to the zebra-skin rug. There was a rat-pack bar and a pool table, his treasured vinyl collection that puts my comic stacks to shame and more retro music memorabilia than you could shake a pimp cane at. Most impressive was the 'virtual jukebox' he and Spider made out of an old Dell computer and a wooden chest. They'd turned the chest on it's end, cut a hole for the monitor screen in the front and a hole for a CD drive in the side, stuck on various lights, buttons and fake coin slots and loaded up some ancient app that browsed week's worth of music on there like the little flippy papers in real jukeboxes then hooked up a wooden keyboard and mouse to finish it off. I felt like asking them to come and pimp out my house!
The last night I met up with Ali & Daze, my two longest serving friends. I've known Ali since we were four. I have actual friends younger than my friendship with her! She's still the urban hippy to my rural biker, works at a dog shelter as an animal psychologist (she's got a proper degree in it and everything), while studying illustration part time on top now. She gave me an awesome present - a handmade black and white lino print of twelve cockroaches sitting on a spiral. Only Ali would know I'd like that, although maybe not specifically because it reminds me of the cockroach from Heroes. Daze was taking a welcome break from what sounded like continual HR harassment at the solicitors office where she works and from her "squirmy pink squid" daughter who was pushed out into the world about three years ago and seems to have been voicing dissatisfaction about the whole experience ever since.
We wandered around all the old haunts, reminiscing about days spent dodging sport or religion at school and using fake ID to buy cigarettes; nights spent tricking Pedos into buying us vodka and talking drunken shit about people on park benches. It's nice fourteen years on when you can laugh about the good stuff and let the traumas fade into vague recollection. We discovered the 'Thrashers' off-license is now a Budgens Express, the geek temple of Choices Video had turned into a WH Smith and with the exception of a few quality pubs everything else seemed to have turned into a fucking coffee house. We sat by the river side until sunset, played proper old fashioned Billiards, drank every colour of the rainbow and conversed with an equally drunk chip-eating skater boi on the way home. Daze's squidling is now yet another child Aunty Siani has promised to make fairy wings for. A week off for Halloween is not enough.
Going home involved a slightly Supernatural-esque road trip with Mum back to Durham (complete with lunch-stop at the OK Diner for a plate of deep-fried Americana). The fact that she was happy to drive all the way up with me and then all the way back down by herself just because she wasn't due back at work for another week is testament to how awesome she is. We had a weird moment over cheesy fries though. She decided to drop another random dark little nugget of family backstory on me. She's been doing this off and on for about seven years now. My stomach does a little Pavlovian lurch every time she starts a sentence with the phrase "Don't say anything, but..." Previous examples would be "Oh yeah, I was engaged once. But then a drunk driver ploughed our car into a tree and I watched my fiance die in the car seat next to me. That's why I always got so upset with Nan for drink-driving." or "I nearly died of TB once and they pumped me full of everything going. It was my own fault for living in a scummy flat... maybe I wanted to die. But then I had you. And that's probably why you've got natural immunity!" This time it was "Don't tell your cousins but their uncle didn't die of a heart attack. He killed himself. The one you never met, he got abused when he was evacuated during the war and just never was quite right again. I think he drank bleach or something." o_O And then, god love her, she carried on eating her cheesy fries - because that's life (and death) I suppose.
In the evening me and Elmo caught up with Kam and Hawkes at Chiquitos, because they have a. A lucky Gecko that is actually lucky, b. Hellboy-sized plates of Nachos and c. Caipirinhas! It's bizarre having to 'catch up' with Hawkes after months of non-contact because HE FUCKING LIVES WITH US. Or at least he does on paper. His parent's spare bed clearly has some greater appeal than the foam double bed, flatscreen plasma TV and en-suit shower he's got in his palatial carpeted basement room here that he's still paying me and Elmo £284 a month for to not live in. I sense it has a little to do with Elmo's crazy relatives (even though he's a mature student of psychology and Elmo's family would make excellent dissertation fodder) and a lot to do with Bear (his younger brother who did live with us for a few months but then fell out with Elmo in spectacular fashion & went back to the parentals). Hawkes & Bear's relationship is the closest thing I've seen to real live Wincest. Seriously. Plus at their parents' house there's free unlimited, cooked-to-order food and a house rule that no one with a penis does laundry. That said, it's nice to have a house with none of the 'boy smell' of my three previous houses and a spare bed we can lend out when the need arises. The bed maybe smells a bit boyish still... I should change the bedsheets, they've been on there about 6 months minimum I reckon. *face/palm*
I don't care what age my passport says, clearly I still have the mental inner-workings of a twelve year old boy!