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New Year's, much too late.
Jan. 10th, 2007 08:47 pmTonight will be the first time in a week I've slept in the same place for two nights running. Honestly, I'm looking forward to it.
So, I'm back. I'm in my flat in Oxford, sitting in a low-lit room that's strewn all over with my stuff, my books, my posters, mine, and it's a very calming thought. I've been all over the place and it's good to be home.
Which is not to say, of course, that I didn't have a lovely time. I did. I think the last time I actually wrote anything of substance in here was January 1st, and I never actually wrote about what I did on New Year's. I was in Miami, with a whole bunch of relatives. (Actually, a brief digression on the relatives: I was with my parents, the Indiana Relatives, the Long-Lost Relatives, and two sets of family friends - the Ones Who Are Jewish and the Ones Who Are Not. They are the family friends of the Indiana lot; I know them well enough after all these years, though. In total, nineteen people, and quite the horde.)
During the day, we went to Key Largo, which was a lot of fun and featured, among other things, going canoeing. I was put in front, with an oar, because I was the only person who'd done anything like it before. In vain did I protest that punting on the Cherwell in three feet of water is very different. I resigned myself to my fate. We hit a lot of trees. And ate key lime pie. Does key lime pie have anything to do with the Florida Keys? No one knew.
So, New Year's Eve in Miami, and I wanted to go out, go dancing, see the fireworks, do what you do on the last day of the year - but it didn't work out like that. The old people - read, most of them - wanted to sit and eat takeaway food and watch TV. Groooooan. And then I suggested my cousins and I go out on our own, and I'm pretty sure Pedar would have just pressed some money in my hand and told me to have a good time, but I was forgetting that the Long-Lost Relatives are the most conservative people I've met in a long while.
I was kind of pissed off, because I had got my bunch of happy, drunken New Year's texts from my friends five hours earlier, and it seemed somewhat ironic that I was in Miami and they were all having a far better time than I was. Luckily, before I came over, I asked Muna, who is one of the LLR, and also the cousin of mine whom I visited in the summer in London, if she wanted anything. She wanted a bottle of Pimm's. I brought it. And sitting out by the pool in the heat of the night, I hid the bottle behind my foot and poured into cups of lemonade for her, her sister, me and Nupur (one of the Indiana relatives), all the while complaining that I felt like I was sixteen and drinking on a park bench or something.
Anyway, Pedar twigged what I was doing very quickly (he said he knows what Coca-Cola smells like, and that wasn't it), and merely demanded I make a drink for my mother. And five minutes after that, he took me quietly off to one of the Indiana Relatives, who whispered, "Can I have some?"
Ten minutes after that, the Jewish Family Friend came up and said, really quietly, "Someone said you had a bottle of..."
I poured it for him, feeling like I'd been plunged into a sitcom by accident, and by quarter to twelve, the only people I hadn't surreptitiously given a glass to were the LLR patriarch (big, uber-conservative, sexist old man) and Shivani, who is twelve. The bottle was hidden under a jacket, three-quarters empty.
I tell you all this to explain how, at five minutes to twelve, Muna said, "We should do something crazy when the ball drops." (We were outside, by palm trees and pool, but there was a sort of bamboo open-air bar with a television doing the countdown.)
I said, "What?"
She wouldn't say anything. ((At the time we were playing silly party games and I was, surprisingly enough, having a good time. It may be juvenile, but Chinese Whispers never stops being funny. I started off the chain with "We hold these truths to be self-evident", it went round the circle of (American) people and came out as "They wear these shoes in heaven".)
People started making lots of noise with one minute to go, and we all stood up and prepared to toast each other with, er, lemonade. Yes. And I turned round just in time to see Muna launch herself enthusiastically into the air, in 2006. She hit the water fully dressed and came up spluttering in 2007.
Or so she explained, just before stepping towards me, dripping wet and with a wicked look in her eye. I ran for it as three other people landed in the water.
Yes. A good evening. And I was going to write some more about the Cayman Islands, and Jamaica, but my jet-lag is hitting me quite hard at this point.
Anyway, before I disappear - I am back in Oxford, and thus free to see people and suchlike. My phone is working again, but probably not for long as its charger, and most of everything else I own, is still in Miami. Airline incompetence strikes again and all that.
Yes, sleepy now.
So, I'm back. I'm in my flat in Oxford, sitting in a low-lit room that's strewn all over with my stuff, my books, my posters, mine, and it's a very calming thought. I've been all over the place and it's good to be home.
Which is not to say, of course, that I didn't have a lovely time. I did. I think the last time I actually wrote anything of substance in here was January 1st, and I never actually wrote about what I did on New Year's. I was in Miami, with a whole bunch of relatives. (Actually, a brief digression on the relatives: I was with my parents, the Indiana Relatives, the Long-Lost Relatives, and two sets of family friends - the Ones Who Are Jewish and the Ones Who Are Not. They are the family friends of the Indiana lot; I know them well enough after all these years, though. In total, nineteen people, and quite the horde.)
During the day, we went to Key Largo, which was a lot of fun and featured, among other things, going canoeing. I was put in front, with an oar, because I was the only person who'd done anything like it before. In vain did I protest that punting on the Cherwell in three feet of water is very different. I resigned myself to my fate. We hit a lot of trees. And ate key lime pie. Does key lime pie have anything to do with the Florida Keys? No one knew.
So, New Year's Eve in Miami, and I wanted to go out, go dancing, see the fireworks, do what you do on the last day of the year - but it didn't work out like that. The old people - read, most of them - wanted to sit and eat takeaway food and watch TV. Groooooan. And then I suggested my cousins and I go out on our own, and I'm pretty sure Pedar would have just pressed some money in my hand and told me to have a good time, but I was forgetting that the Long-Lost Relatives are the most conservative people I've met in a long while.
I was kind of pissed off, because I had got my bunch of happy, drunken New Year's texts from my friends five hours earlier, and it seemed somewhat ironic that I was in Miami and they were all having a far better time than I was. Luckily, before I came over, I asked Muna, who is one of the LLR, and also the cousin of mine whom I visited in the summer in London, if she wanted anything. She wanted a bottle of Pimm's. I brought it. And sitting out by the pool in the heat of the night, I hid the bottle behind my foot and poured into cups of lemonade for her, her sister, me and Nupur (one of the Indiana relatives), all the while complaining that I felt like I was sixteen and drinking on a park bench or something.
Anyway, Pedar twigged what I was doing very quickly (he said he knows what Coca-Cola smells like, and that wasn't it), and merely demanded I make a drink for my mother. And five minutes after that, he took me quietly off to one of the Indiana Relatives, who whispered, "Can I have some?"
Ten minutes after that, the Jewish Family Friend came up and said, really quietly, "Someone said you had a bottle of..."
I poured it for him, feeling like I'd been plunged into a sitcom by accident, and by quarter to twelve, the only people I hadn't surreptitiously given a glass to were the LLR patriarch (big, uber-conservative, sexist old man) and Shivani, who is twelve. The bottle was hidden under a jacket, three-quarters empty.
I tell you all this to explain how, at five minutes to twelve, Muna said, "We should do something crazy when the ball drops." (We were outside, by palm trees and pool, but there was a sort of bamboo open-air bar with a television doing the countdown.)
I said, "What?"
She wouldn't say anything. ((At the time we were playing silly party games and I was, surprisingly enough, having a good time. It may be juvenile, but Chinese Whispers never stops being funny. I started off the chain with "We hold these truths to be self-evident", it went round the circle of (American) people and came out as "They wear these shoes in heaven".)
People started making lots of noise with one minute to go, and we all stood up and prepared to toast each other with, er, lemonade. Yes. And I turned round just in time to see Muna launch herself enthusiastically into the air, in 2006. She hit the water fully dressed and came up spluttering in 2007.
Or so she explained, just before stepping towards me, dripping wet and with a wicked look in her eye. I ran for it as three other people landed in the water.
Yes. A good evening. And I was going to write some more about the Cayman Islands, and Jamaica, but my jet-lag is hitting me quite hard at this point.
Anyway, before I disappear - I am back in Oxford, and thus free to see people and suchlike. My phone is working again, but probably not for long as its charger, and most of everything else I own, is still in Miami. Airline incompetence strikes again and all that.
Yes, sleepy now.