I woke up too early. I wanted a lie in. Didn't get one. Anyway, I stuck on some good music (all the stuff I was listening to c.15th birthday, because Nanowrimo has fixed the memories of that month as very "birthday-ish"), read some Oscar Wilde and spent about 45 minutes on my appearance, which is probably more than the whole previous month combined.
Having opened my cards as they had arrived, I already knew about my shopping trips to Camden, sponsored by both sets of grandparents. It's taken all my restraint, plus the knowledge I'd have no occasion to wear it, to prevent me dashing straight off to pick up the Audrey Hepburn dress I saw there last week...
Team Rodgers also sent a book of Oscar Wilde sayings, capped off by a 
great Stephen Fry essay about his life, works and his approach to playing him in the biopic. The famille Huke sent a terrific scarf - red, pink and black, and in that great long'n'thin style that contributes nothing against the cold, and thus is exactly my sort of thing - apparently, and this is something I've never understood, they use scarves to keep warm on your planet? You'll probably be able to see it in some of the pictures. While in the blue corner, the famille Boyd sent an Emily Strange bag - a brand I've always adored, but been too lazy to actually hunt down - which conveniently arrives just as the bag I've been using all term disintigrates (also, winning the prize for the most adorable card, with sunflowers). My godparents sent me book tokens, which I understand are probably meant to go on Caeser and Plutarch; but might just end up on Cornell and Parkin instead...and Friend 1 had got me racing snails, with which I instantly celebrated my age by playing "Doctor Who and the Invasion of the Giant Snails" with my mini figures...and a Duckter Who rubber duck, complete with S18 scarf. As there's no bath here, and it's neither hygenic nor safe to go near the sinks, I can't wait to get it home at Christmas - it lights up in water too!
great Stephen Fry essay about his life, works and his approach to playing him in the biopic. The famille Huke sent a terrific scarf - red, pink and black, and in that great long'n'thin style that contributes nothing against the cold, and thus is exactly my sort of thing - apparently, and this is something I've never understood, they use scarves to keep warm on your planet? You'll probably be able to see it in some of the pictures. While in the blue corner, the famille Boyd sent an Emily Strange bag - a brand I've always adored, but been too lazy to actually hunt down - which conveniently arrives just as the bag I've been using all term disintigrates (also, winning the prize for the most adorable card, with sunflowers). My godparents sent me book tokens, which I understand are probably meant to go on Caeser and Plutarch; but might just end up on Cornell and Parkin instead...and Friend 1 had got me racing snails, with which I instantly celebrated my age by playing "Doctor Who and the Invasion of the Giant Snails" with my mini figures...and a Duckter Who rubber duck, complete with S18 scarf. As there's no bath here, and it's neither hygenic nor safe to go near the sinks, I can't wait to get it home at Christmas - it lights up in water too!There's probably one I've forgotten...damnation...
After that I decorated the kitchen - cheap fire hazards strung across the fridges and tinsel in the windows, recieved phone calls and generally wasted time till I could start cooking.
I did try to follow a Delia smith recipie for great roast potatoes - boiling them first to make them fluffy, then scratching with stolen salt before roasting in stolen oil, in a stolen baking tray - but it didn't really work in practice. Sustenus showed up exactly when I needed an extra hand to fry the veggie sausages (Iacomus and Spirita are vegitarian), and wake Vapila up, who I then put in charge of the grilling turkey. It all tumbled onto the table at about the same time, and we ate while playing with crackers - I traded a hopping frog for a tiny plastic car, and someone else got the tiniest and most pointless magnifying glass ever. So the only people who arrived on time were the Dudin Brown crowd - though it was fair enough. Nocturna was stranded in Golders Green, Spirita in Brixton, Iacomus oop north and Calypso in Sainsburies - and Transport for London thought it would be funny to shut the Jubilee, Metropolitan, District and Bakerloo lines, i.e. anything which would help one get to Hampstead.
In retrospect, I could probably have cooked in waves if I'd known - but as it was, we smegged some foil and kept it as warm as possible until Calypso and Nocturna arrived. Calypso tucked into the xmas pudding, for which I was very glad, knowing I've another whole thing in the cupboard to finish off - I'm going to be eating the leftovers for the rest of the week! She also brought along some very welcome sherry, as I'd had a craving for something sweet and alcoholic since waking up (I had considered walking down to Sainsburies purely to pick up some my favourite brand Sicilian Lemonade, but decided that was lame...)
Anyway, we had dinner, which was damn fantastic. The potatoes and carrots worked especially well; I made way way too much stuffing; I thought the turkey was far too tough and dry, but nobody else seemed to mind. After that, I opened Vapila's gift -which, due to some unsubtle hinting at the start of term, I already had a good idea of what it was. But I was still very happy to see my replica TARDIS key. According to the websnobs, the dimensions are slightly wrong; but what do fans know? She'd also found a load of cool esoteric info about my birthdate - I was born in the Egyptian month of Menchir, my birth stone is citrine, the moon was waxing crescent and my Native American Zodiac sign is the Owl - which might explain why I've had owls on the brain recently. Also, there was no decent music at the top of the charts that year.
Anyway, we had dinner, which was damn fantastic. The potatoes and carrots worked especially well; I made way way too much stuffing; I thought the turkey was far too tough and dry, but nobody else seemed to mind. After that, I opened Vapila's gift -which, due to some unsubtle hinting at the start of term, I already had a good idea of what it was. But I was still very happy to see my replica TARDIS key. According to the websnobs, the dimensions are slightly wrong; but what do fans know? She'd also found a load of cool esoteric info about my birthdate - I was born in the Egyptian month of Menchir, my birth stone is citrine, the moon was waxing crescent and my Native American Zodiac sign is the Owl - which might explain why I've had owls on the brain recently. Also, there was no decent music at the top of the charts that year.
Nocturna polished off the remnants of the now rather chilly food, but also came bearing some very excellent carrot cake. There was, shall we say, something of a theme for the day - someone single mindedly obsessed isn't all that hard to buy presents for, and I was crazily happy to recieve a Doctor Who UNO set (love that game!) and a Dalek folder (because my Latin teacher keeps asking me about the organisation of my sheets. Stop me if this sounds familiar...). Here I am, now playing Duckter Who and the Daleks with Friend 1's gift. She also got me a Christmas Card...The final guests turned up, only two and three hours late respectively, but I w
as very glad to see them, and there were still plenty of mince pies left. So we overate, and argued about Christmas music (why am I the only one who likes "Stop the Cavalry"?!), and about politics, and because it's got to the point at which our separate senses of humour are starting to bleed together, told a lot of off colour jokes, my favourite being something to do with Hitler's gas bill...the picture to the right suggests how much fun we were having.Angelicus sneaked off at this point to wrap my presents, having run out of time the evening before. He's a music student, I'm a film student, so we talk film music quite often, and he doesn't quite get my respect for Hans Zimmer, nor me his for John Williams. But apart from that, we're solid, and I was happy to unwrap Danny Elfman's "Music for a Darkened Theatre vol. 1", which I actually had considered getting when it first came out. It's music from the first half of his career, very little of which I'd heard. Further to me commenting that not having seen Citizen Kane would be my dying regret, he also got me a copy. So now I have no excuse...and I got calligraphy in my card!
The arrival of Iacomus, media personality, living legend, and "social spastic" (according to the hate mail he had recieved that morning), and Spirita (who can't stand having her photo taken, so I am overjoyed to have any photos to add to my blog) finished off the party. They had jointly teamed up with Calypso to present me with two copies of Photoplay from the 70s (really
exciting, and quite surreal too - one had a Godfather special; the other had Redford'n'Newman pin ups), a pair of white opera gloves, and a fluffy red evening shawl. We'd spotted it on special offer while queuing to meet Tom Baker and fallen in love (now there's a sentence which wouldn't sound so ambiguous in Latin, with proper declining pronouns...). I decided to be good, and decided I didn't really need it - though I obviously did, and had only last week considered going back to pick it up...you can see it in the picture, it's wonderful. Finally, two Doctor Who badges, one with the First Doctor's logo, and the other with the Sixth Doctor's title sequence "because it was the most colourful". Apparently, Spirita had phoned three seperate toy shops, including one in Croydon, and then risked life and limb on the most dangerous street on London to get badge refills...all in a massive bag of sweeties and bottles of Baileys. Picture proof suggests I was impressed.We played UNO until Nocturna had to go; then attempted the Doctor Who board game. It fell to pieces within two rounds, due to the large number of people
playing, but everyone did enjoy it. Calypso had to go then, to get ready for the Cosplay ball, which I ultimately decided I was too tired to attend. It was at this point we had conquered both tables, two out of three ovens and a whole sideboard. Angelicus dropped back in again briefly with his sax, and played the second coolest rendition of happy birthday I've been played all week (sorry, but NO ONE beats Fyfe'n'Magrao with an accordian). I got phone calls from Friend 1, who was preparing to cook her mock Christmas meal for midnight that evening to celebrate the start of December; and later, from Friend 4, who was halfway through helping cook her building's mock Christmas. Vapila, Iacomos, Spirita and I kept playing with the cracker toys, eating and getting paranoid. Iacomos had recieved the most terrific piece of hate mail ever, and with a bit of amateur detective work, had worked out the sender intended to stab him. Probably responsible for the unpleasant dream I had that evening, where a Jokery-clown was stalking me through the Maughan Library with a knife.
Finally they had to go, on the basis it was a two hour journey back to their homes. The rest of the kitchen - who had been politely refusing mince pies all day, even though I was desperate to get rid of the two spare boxes of the damn things - teamed up to get me a birthday card, which rather rounded off the day OK.So that was that. I'd already done the other bit of Christmas, the bit where you slump in front of the TV, on Saturday, by having a quadruple bill of Unearthly Child, Naked Gun, Mallrats and Enlightenment.
This is me. I'm old. And I had a great day.
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