A Sticky Situation, A Victory and a Discovery

Madre was going to park the car somewhere that wasn't the drive. I had not been out of the house today, so I decided "Hey, I'm going to go on a minimal road trip!" Only problem? I'd just got out the bath, and was wandering about in my bath robe, slightly soggy.

So, I looked out of the gate - the coast was clear and so I pegged it to the car. It soon transpired that, for whatever reason, Milton Malsor is THE PLACE TO PARK tonight, and there were no good places on our road. So we drove around the block which was all well and good until we found a place just around the corner from the house.

Sod's Law is a bastard indeed. At some point between my getting into the car and us parking, a congregated MASS of Trick or Treaters and their parentfolk had gathered outside my house and were talking to the people across the road. So, naturally I hid behind the wall and hissed at my madre to remain equally out of sight. What does she do? Does she take up the opportunity of some impromptu espionage? Never fear! She marches out, brazen as anything and says hello to them, leaving me no choice but to make swiftly for the house. As decoys go, it was nothing less than disastrous.

I think I managed to pull off the bright-red-bath-robe ghost look quite well, all things considered.

Thank Moses for Halloween - the only night you can safely be a prat without facing life-long harassment from the neighbours.

***

In other news, my padre won the Mensa Scrabble Championships for the first time today! He has entered the tournament for the past few years and always came second, so I'm really proud, even if he did do it by playing words without knowing their definitions...

Well done, Daddio!

***

Also watched Walk The Line today and loved it a little too much - it seems that Joaquin is meant to be pronounced wah-keen, though that makes kein sense whatsoever - and it has caused me to download a fairly absurd amount of Johnny Cash music. :)

Who you gonna call?!

Last night was The Compass' annual Ghost Hunt and it was spectacular. Apart from serving 'Venom' and 'B-positive' (green and red beer respectively) at the bar, there were masses of decoration, including a witch's grotto in the outhouse and much dressing-up revelry! And despite being one of the last teams to register, and therefore having to wait an hour and a half before leaving, we all had a bloody good time, pun intended.

The prize for dressing up goes to Georgie, who dressed up as a devil-blood-and-talcum-vampire creature (see the dashing and utterly terrifying photograph below)...

We played a quite fail game of Uno, followed by a few very fun rounds of Articulate, with some very bizarre and hilarious answers and explanations emerging. (eg. "You eat it and it grows on trees..." "LEAVES!" "NUTS!" "BERRIES!" "CABBAGE!") After which, we returned to The Compass to begin the Ghost Hunting proper.

If you want an accurate image of the scene, think of a bunch of disastrously unsubtle, torch-wielding, fox-barking and slightly overenthusiastic female types wandering about down dark alleys and being jumped out at by randomers in ghostly garb. Apart from answering questions (which I think we managed quite well, considering) we also had to find various items on our travels, including a walnut, a bottle top, sweet wrappers etc. Excellent, as Anna and I had already compared the detritus in the bottom of our bags - pegs, lip gloss, pen lids - as essential ghost hunting equipment.

Afterwards we wandered back for drinks at the pub and to wait for the results. While we did not win - I think we won in terms of catching the ghosts before they caught us, and also a gold star for enthusiasm. :D It was at this point that my good chum Sunshine bought her first ROUND of adulthood which, as we know, is like being christened, just with more Southern Comfort and Cider than holy water.

Hurrah! :D

Y'reight there, duck?

It is amazing how you can drive a few miles up the road from your home and feel almost as though you are in a different country. Yesterday I went on a work outing with my padre to Stoke which, though not very far away, seemed almost to be the heart of the North.

One attribute of the North, as I know it, is the openness of the people - by this, I mean strangers - in talking to people they don't know. As I wandered about through Hanley town centre, pulling together a few birthday gifts for chums, I was accosted by an absurd number of people about various aspects of their lives. Trapped in a lift, a woman began talking to me about retirement, and her ex-husband, another woman entered herself into a chat with me about the sun, and various others made comments so vaguely that I couldn't be sure of whether they were talking to me, or simply keeping themselves company.

While I was taking on the Great Northern Populus, Vati was sitting in a deep, underground cavern of a room, bidding in an auction and buying most of the place. I came back to a delighted, sun-faced father grinning about how cheap he was getting things for, and having entirely forgotten the size of the car we had to fit everything into. I thought I had overspent in town, but he took the entire cake drawer by spending over two grand! However, he assured me he could sell everything for more money.

A very nice lady outbid us on a lot which included (among rather more valuable things) a wade china tea caddy and which, after a short discussion of my tea obsession, she decided to gift to me. :D

Needless to say, getting things into the car was like playing tetris with rather valuable and fragile boxes of china, but we managed, eventually.

After all this, we were on the verge of driving back when:

Dee: Hey, I thought we could go back through Buxton, and see the peaks!

Me: Hey, that's a great idea padre! Let's do it!

Dee: It's a bit dark, we probably won't see anything...

Me: Yeah, let's go! We can imagine the scenery!

Dee: We could do that at home, though.

Me: We wouldn't have the same altitude ambiance!

And so we took a many-hour detour through the winding hills of the Peak District, to Buxton which was on a whole new page of the map, with great music playing and hills occurring in the sunset. It was bloody marvellous!

When we came to Buxton, there was chaos on the roads and police people everywhere, which made it doubly exciting and adventurous, and we decided to pootle on down through Ashbourne, where we stopped at a pie shop. This shop was beautiful and tucked away down some steps in a little alcove of the town, and played host to a very cheerful Eastern European chap, who made a joke about charging us £27 for a double order of our nation's famous dish!

There was also a rather rotund chap who came in after us, all Northern-like, and ordered a double order of fish with a large chips and peas which I couldn't help but suspect were just for him. I could have fit inside him, easily, three times over - and I am not a stick-figure of a woman myself!

On the way home we discussed everything from how brilliant our Desert Island Disks combos were, to religion, politics and the state of the universe ("very large", we concluded). :D

Needless to say, us phoning from Ashbourne in the dead of night to say "Hey, we took an extremely scenic route, madre!" wasn't taken very well, but all in all a smashing day!

Hair is some advice...

This is a fable - that means you should learn from it - told from my experiences of this week. This is what occurred:

On Friday night, after a long and pretty dashed busy week, I was naturally very tired. I was also rather grimey. So, what did I decide to do? Naturally, I didn't want to soil my bed by taking to it before I was clean, so I dived in the bath. It was the perfect excuse to mess about with the cranberry bath bombs from the Quiz victory.

Now, it was all fine and dandy - they worked a treat, and I came out about 3/4 of an hour later practically sparkling (Twishite style) with cleanliness.

THIS, is where things went wrong. Dried myself in a rather hasty and half-asleep fashion, then fell into pajamas and bed. What I didn't take into account, however, was the state of my hair.

My hair is of the consistency that, if left to dry naturally without being thrown about on a pillow through restless sleep as it dries comes out in ringletty curly things, which is all fine and dandy. Indeed, quite recently it had been behaving itself very well indeed. Until now.

Having gone to bed with damp hair, I woke up looking very much like this:

I even had that expression the moment I caught sight of myself in the mirror.

Well, I know what you must be thinking - It's OKAY! You can slather it with serum and brush it into submission. You are gravely mistaken. The addition of a hairbrush turned it into more of an 80s big hair disaster.

I think we can all agree that this is only remotely dashing IN the 80s and not in the 201's when frizz is practically the devil.

No amount of serum, nor mousse, nor hairspray can tame my hiroshima-fuzz hair when it goes this way. Not even washing it again. I am a walking stick of candyfloss.

And this is why, kids, you should never let sleep take you while your hair is still on-the-dry. Avoid it at all costs!

"Cocker was involved in an incident in which he had to fight a bear."

I have had an increasing urge over the past few hours to share with you my love for this man, right here! This (as though anyone couldn't know!) is Jarvis Cocker, who is a long-term love of mine. Why, you ask? Well, to begin with, he has a voice which could melt polar icecaps - it is deep and resonant and lovely. He was also in a fabulous band called Pulp, which I love very much. You're most likely to know their song Common People, which is played tout le temps, tout les places!

Additionally, he appeared (and made worth enduring) the Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire film as Kirley Duke of the Weird Sisters, and is who I am listening to right now on his radio programme The Sunday Service on Radio 6. I would also like to point out that he is very lovely, and makes me laugh at his silly humour, and is also quite humble, compared to many radio presenting folk. Though he did do a little raunchy introduction to a song when my mother was in the room which, while I am not complaining, was slightly awkward considering.

Also, if I remember rightly, he is a master of crazy dance moves. :D Also, he wears very nineties glasses, and has done since long before David Perham decided to bastardise them.

My only critique is that he now has a beard, which he definitely needs to get rid of. Definitely, definitely.

Have some more pictures of Him:

Here he is back in the nineties with Pulp. :)

And here he decided to dye his eyebrows and beard blue. As y'do...

Finally, when he was touring *in the nineties* he walked into a bear. I'll let him tell you the story...

"I turned a corner and there he was, just staring at me. I knew right then what was going to happen, that it was just me and him, mano y bearo. So I grabbed a gazebo pole from the ground and managed to halt his beary advances by swiping at his face. When he took a few steps back I ran to the bus."

And there you have it. Jarvis is a bear-defeating, pop-singing, sexy-talking, rather amusing chap, who is (as they all seem to be) old enough to be my padre...

In which I say boo to a goose...

Last night I slept a ridiculous amount - 7:30 right through the night - and, as I could have expected, I woke up with a splitting headache. I also woke up early, which meant I managed to blitz most of my recorded telly and some tidying before ten, at which point I began to get a little bored.

So I proposed to mein vati that we all go on a little jaunt down to Delapre Abbey, as I recently sent off an application to volunteer in their delightful little tea room.

The place itself is lovely; sweeping fields, gorgeous wizened old trees and a lake which, unlike that near Six Fields, is as clear as molten glass.

We wandered around the grounds and gardens for the best part of the afternoon, wading through the autumn mud, and being boggled at the burnt-up fishing tent we found by the lakeside before heading over to check out the tea room (where I saw a sneaky Robert Harris book which I covetted but which was not a BookCrossing book, so I could not has). It was small, but cheerful, though they spelled fruit 'friut' on the sign, which we had a little giggle at.

After this, and deciding that our stomachs were much too empty to be sated by potatoes or soup, we meandered over to the Toby Carvery on the way home and had some rather scrummy roasts and cherry bakewells with custard.

Interestingly, got asked for ID on ordering some cider. Now, I was, and have been since I started ordering alcohol with meals in pubs, under the impression that, at 16, you are allowed a glass of cider or wine if under supervision and with a meal. This seems to have changed recently as people have been asking for ID here, there and everywhere when they hadn't been before. Ironic, really, as I am older now than I ever have been, and yet am being ID'd more and more. Boo! Roll on adulthood, I say, roll it on!

We are the stars' tennis balls...

Thursday saw the trip to see the Duchess of Malfi at the Royal with schulefolk. This involved a combination of new experiences, several of which I shall elaborate on, here:

The first of these was being driven by Jess. Jess being the sort of person who, now she has the ability to drive, wants to drive all the time, almost as though simply to prove she can, has been offering lifts left, right and centre over the past few months, but this was the first time I had taken her up on the offer. Luckily she was also picking Ellie up, so the hurdle of her finding her way to my house was easily jumped. Getting to the theatre itself, however, was another kettle of fish.

Now, not being a qualified driver myself, it is probably not my place to say, but I don't think I've ever been driven by someone so inclined to shouting while driving. Some drivers shout abuse from their windows, others tell their passengers to pipe down, some even shout at the radio as they drive, but Jess, Jess shouted at her car, or herself, or both. Though her driving itself was impeccable (this coming from a girl who thought she had broken the thing after stalling twice in as many minutes) the scenario itself was pretty amusing.

The second new occurrence, which made me feel (rightly) like one on the cusp of adulthood, was the opportunity of sidling up to the bar and asking, suave as you like, whether I could please order some drinks to be delivered at the interval. Sure, I didn't request champagne on ice, or a half-crate of cordon blanc, but it felt dashed professional getting a reciept and later coming out of a packed theatre to find my coke, ice and lemon-slice awaiting me. :D

The play itself was pretty darned good. Very religious, very symbolic and quite dramatic to boot! There were bits of Caravaggio painting here and there, and a little group of singers chucking madrigals left right and centre - my favourite of which was the counter-tenor (i.e. practically castrati man) who could sing higher than I've ever seen a man sing in my life. The chaps playing Bosola and Ferdinand were fairly dashing, and ridiculously tall, and the acting was superb, even if they did fluff the occasional like (*cough*Duchess*cough*)

Overall, though, beautiful - I have had Morro Lasso in my head ever since, and now have the really amusing image of Georgie dressed as the pope, as per her plan for my birthday shindig.