Salad Days and purple things

The defining feature of the last couple of days has been the weather. It has been the kind of weather to realistically stage Macbeth in. Every time I’ve ventured outside, I’ve been variously drenched and knifed by winds and blown into a smudged rain-soaked heap pressed against shop windows. And there has been a lot of venturing outside.

I left home at about a quarter to four yesterday afternoon and was rather early, so I read The Science of Discworld on the wet and windy station platform. I met Becca at Blundellsands, and we sat on the nice warm train and compared notes on the morning, particularly the flimsiness of the AQA certificates. They have holograms, though, and Becca said that was something. I agreed to a certain extent, and mused over the fact that I have qualifications. Pathetic and worth-nothing they may be, but I’ve got them.

By the time we reached Liverpool, it was getting dark. I gravitated towards Waterstones like a moth to a flame, trailing Becca in my wake, and Enid met us there. I bought... well, something, and took another look at the Book of Bunny Suicides. Best book ever, so much so it had been placed on the counter, next to a new Mr Men book, Mr Christmas, which Becca plans to get for Peter. I flicked through it, and it’s written in the first person. Am I wrong in thinking this is unique?

We had to go to Grin – of course – and as Quiggins was closing around that time, we were the only people around. I found that disconcerting but rather nice. In any case, we went to Grin and went to the rack at the back, looking for the knitted purple hoodie with the tepee-style hood. It wasn’t there. Cue wailing. Becca and I had been planning for weeks – I never mentioned it here for fear of Hannah reading – to get it for Hannah’s birthday, which is tomorrow. We drifted towards the jukebox to think about it, and tried to see if we could make it work. We could. We managed to make it play Gay Bar (Electric Six, who else) which Enid really likes, for some reason. I find Electric Six bizarre in the extreme, but bizarre in such a compelling way that I just have to stop and listen whenever their songs come on. Anyway, while we were standing there, we came to a decision to buy the other purple knitted hoodie, the one with the ordinary hood. Becca paid for it, and off we went. We went upstairs, and there’s a new shop opposite Bad Ass Boutique. It sells Pucca stuff and it was giving away sweets, so we went in for a couple of minutes. Following that, we had to go into the Boutique itself, and I took a moment to look at a Punky Fish top. It’s so cool and it’s red and has the sleeves I like and I have no money so never mind. Enid, meanwhile, had found the perfect present for Hannah. A Custard purse, purple (of course) with a cow on it. This idea seemed familiar to me, although at the time I didn’t do anything about it.

When we re-emerged into the city centre, it was properly dark. The lights are up but not lit yet – they’re being switched on officially tomorrow – but we looked up at them anyway. They’ve got the ones I like that say “1207 – 2003.” What I like particularly is the sense of history that implies, although the conversation did turn at that point to how Liverpool is still the most deprived city in Europe. That kind of statistic can’t even fully be erased from people’s minds, seems to me.

While we were out there, the purple cow reference returned to my mind. I rang home and got Pedar to look in a book of mine – “The Nation’s Favourite Comic Poems” – to find a poem by Gelett Burgess, entitled “The Purple Cow.” I wanted to write it in Hannah’s birthday card. We got the cards from WHSmith, although Enid bought three cards for no other reason than she thought they were cute. I found myself sighing deeply.

We were getting wet. Very wet. So off we went to Central, and successfully caught a Wirral line train. Emily’s mum had said she would pick us up from Conway Park, so that’s where we got off, sheltering in a bus shelter from the horrific wind and rain. It was so dark and so wet that car headlights shone dazzlingly bright and made us jump up and down at false alarms. While we were sitting there in our bus shelter, we wrote the cards. Enid wrote:

“I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one.
But I can tell you anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one.*”

*as recited by Iona, so blame her for any mistakes.

Thanks to much prodding from Becca, I wrote the other card:

“If I had a Hannah….
Oh, wait, I do.”

At least, I started writing it. Enid said, “Start writing it and she’ll come,” with ‘she’ meaning Emily’s mum, and she (Enid) was absolutely right. I finished writing the card in the car, even though I did complain that it was dark, we were moving, and my hands were freezing cold. The card was written nevertheless.

We reached the school in time to meet Em, Clare, and their spotlight. We could only talk for a few minutes before the play started. It was called Salad Days, and I asked beforehand what it was about, and was told, “A spaceship and a magic piano.” I had mixed expectations. But it was good. It was very very good. It’s a musical, with a hero and heroine named Jane and Timothy who get married very shortly after the play begins. They are asked to take care of a piano for a month. The piano makes anyone who hears it get up and dance. That’s all anyone needs to know. The songs were good, and the dancing was good, and the two leads were very good, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. On my right, Enid was singing along to all the songs, and there was one song in particular that everyone likes:

“We’re looking for a piano!”
“A piano?”
“Yes, a piano!”
“Just any old piano?”
“No, the one that makes you gay!”

Talking of that, Hannah had several bit parts, but the most significant one was as Ambrose, camp owner of a dress-shop, Gusset Creations. She was very good. She really was, swishing from side to side in tailcoat and white bow-tie. But I liked her best in cap and gown, being a harassed schoolteacher with two lines of children in candy-striped dresses following her across the stage.

The female lead was Laura O’Sullivan, which my parents were interested to hear, as we used to know Laura’s family quite well. I had no idea what a good singer she was, but she really was. A good singer, that is. She made it so easy, so effortless. I never got to talk to her properly afterwards, which I was rather sorry about.

Hannah originally planned to go home after the play, but she was blackmailed into coming back to Emily’s with the rest of us – “If you don’t you’re not getting your birthday presents!” She already had some birthday presents as it was, as her friends seemed to have unanimously decided to give them to her yesterday, and they were all purple. All of them. She had a purple bucket hat, fluffy purple hairslides and a pink and purple glittery feather boa. Enid tried them on and according to Becca, resembled “a prettier Boy George.” She swished in thoroughly camp fashion. I wish I’d thought to take a picture.

Hannah was persuaded. She came back with us all – inconsequentially, Enid remarked that the Wirral looks like the Lake District – to Em’s, where we all followed the explicitly phrased instructions, “Don’t touch anything!” They’ve got painters and builders round and brushing against the wall is a risky business. We managed to reach Emily’s room eventually, and gave Hannah her birthday presents.

She loved them. She was so pleased with them all – the hoodie, the purse, the fluffy purple bag from Emily – that she put them all on at once. You don’t have to take my word for it, of course:

This is her wearing everything at once, as if it needed captioning.







And this is a girl with a purple fluffy bag on her head.

At which point we ate dinner. It was eleven o’clock at night, which didn’t affect anyone’s appetite. While we ate, there was a lot of interesting conversation. Topics touched upon included choice of career, imaginary numbers, opera as entertainment for the masses, Curio and Valentine from Twelfth Night, aeronautical engineering, hand-eye coordination as related to salad, and finally, much quoting of Shakespeare. That annoyed the mathematicians no end. It was my kind of evening. And the evening was all we had, because we were all so tired that we didn’t stay up talking as we generally do. Clare the insomniac stayed up reading Night Watch – everyone else slept through until morning.

Said morning was lazy. I had one of Enid’s Irn-Bru bars for (healthy) breakfast and took some time before I actually did the getting-dressed thing. So did everyone else. Finally, come eleven, Em had to go to a driving lesson and the rest of us departed homewards. We had to walk across Heswall, and I always find that it’s too much the same to cope with, if that makes sense. It’s like I never left. We got the bus from the bus station and went to Birkenhead, and everything is familiar, even the place names, strange as they are – Thingwall, Arrowe Park, Prenton – and I think I just gazed dazedly out of the window until we had to get off the bus and do some more walking. This time, across Birkenhead to Conway Park, stopping for Enid to buy gingerbread men, and we bid goodbye to Hannah, who wanted to take pictures of us. I’ll be interested to see how the pictures come out. We were all half-asleep.

Going down into the station, Enid, Becca and I somehow managed to go to the wrong platform, just as our train was coming in on the right platform. We ran, but we didn’t make it. We had to wait for the next one. Sod’s law. Enid and Becca got off at Moorfields, but I didn’t. My mother had mentioned coming into Liverpool, so I went back to Central and rang her only to find she wasn’t coming after all. I was pissed off. Ergo, I went to buy a sandwich. On my way, I met Jane coming the other way, who wasn’t surprised in the slightest when I said where I was going. It is, after all, my philosophy. When in doubt, buy a sandwich. Michael thinks I ought to run for political office. “For a healthier happier Britain.”

Depressingly, Jane’s going back to Warwick this afternoon. Michael dragged her off to Quiggins (literally) leaving me amused but still sandwich-less. I was annoyed enough to buy two sandwiches and a Milkybar (I don’t even like white chocolate!) before going back to the station, where I missed another train. I read more of The Science of Discworld, then walked home from Freshfield. For the first time in days, it was not raining. I arrived home dry.

This has been a ruthlessly long update. My apologies.