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ravenSo, party! Yay!
Good party. Very good. As it happened, my entire family had a social life last night – on their way to a small dinner party of their own, they dropped me off at Freshfield so I could undertake the scarily long journey to Conway Park, which turned out to be not as scarily long as I’d thought. I was about half an hour early, and whilst lurking in deserted train stations at the dead of night is not generally conducive to your mental health, I didn’t exactly have a choice.
So, I sat in a corner and read Men At Arms whilst discreetly observing the only other people around, a group of scallies, all girls, who were making enough noise to wake the dead. They were all wearing more or less the same things – strips of material in lieu of, y’know, clothes – and shrieking. And some of them were about twelve. I kid you not. Quite, quite terrifying.
Thankfully Colleen arrived not long after, with Emily’s birthday present neatly wrapped and in a bag. She’d even got a frame for it, which I was very impressed by. And talking of being impressed, it was round about then that an old banger, dull maroon, went past like a circus performer out of a gun.
“It’s Ron!” Colleen shrieked. And off we went, round the corner to meet Ron, and indeed Clare. Ron, as we may remember, has a show name of Dick Turpin but is generally known as Foul Ole Ron or Ron for short. Clare had been convinced of the untimely death of her beloved car, but apparently he underwent a spot of resurrection yesterday and as long as she pours water into the radiator as fast as it leaks out, Ron will in fact take us places.
And when Hannah and Enid arrived, that was exactly what happened. I was busy trying to determine the collective noun for a group of scallies (Colleen said a scab – scab o’ scalls”) whilst also grappling with the problem of what to wear. Colleen and I had independently decided to bring stuff with us, neither having been able to guess the formality of the occasion. Hannah was the deciding factor – when she appeared, we were quietly laying bets on what she’d be wearing. In the end, she had a pretty top and red skirt (well, I would approve of a red skirt) and tipped the scales in favour of more formal.
So we all piled into Ron and giggled most of our way to Emily’s. I had never been in a car with Clare driving before, and she drives like a maniac. Shouts at the people in front and everything. It’s brilliant. We arrived in a cloud of dust and screeching tyres, and I retreated momentarily to get changed. I ended up entirely vampish, black from top to toe, and went downstairs demurely to meet the normal people.
Who are Sarah, Michelle, Laura, Phillipa and Sara. Phillipa I know slightly, having been at primary school with her, and Sara is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pr1ncess_sara, the scary individual who has been causing badly-spelled havoc all over LJ, but the others weren’t people I’d met before and I don’t think I know them now. They were quiet, and everyone else wasn’t.
Because it was tipping down with rain, we got lifts down to the restaurant, which is called Gem, and it’s very nice. Reminds me of Warehouse (which was actually the restaurant my parents were at) because it’s small and hidden away from the main road. We had a room to ourselves, and about fifteen people sitting round a big round table. The seating arrangements sort of arranged themselves into resident lunatics on one side, normal people on the other, and Alice, Emily’s sister, in the middle.
Emily’s other friends were very quiet for most of the evening, which bothered me, because everyone else was talking. Actually, we were discussing everything under the sun, and I seem to remember having to change the subject every time it needed changing, and somehow got fixated on trees. “Trees! Let’s talk about trees!”
It also got cultural at one point – Sara laughing at my plebe Hindi – and maybe even musical, I can’t remember. There was no singing. We didn’t sing. Not then, anyway. I remember looking at my watch at one point not long before we got there, and it was about half seven, and the next time I glanced at it, it was eleven and I had no idea where the intervening time had gone.
Presumably some of it was spent eating. The food was good, with lots of vegetarian options, and I had a sort of sage and mushroom pasty-type thing, followed by a toffee and apple crumble type thing, and they were both very nice. Hannah and Clare were eating something that involved grass. Well, Hannah called it grass. Clare insists it was onions, which seems altogether more likely.
As I said, pleasure and action make the hours seem short, or times flies when you’re having fun. We went back to Emily’s later for presents. Hannah was sharing her gift with Sarah – they gave her a space pen, that writes upside down and underwater and in space and on grease and everywhere. In the meantime, Clare, Colleen, Enid and I had got her present from Collectormania. We got her Jennifer Garner’s autograph, no less, and Colleen got it framed at Homebase. Hannah insisted on getting a picture of her reaction. She has acquired a digital camera, an early birthday present, and insists on taking lots of pictures. I have no real objection to this. I took a picture of Clare and Colleen, because they both looked so grown-up. They were sharing a chair, casually draped over each other, each holding a champagne flute at arm’s length and looking entirely elegant and sophisticated. Neither of them believes me when I say this.
Hannah also gave Emily a mixed CD, beginning with Star Trekkin’ and progressing to Konstantine through K’s Choice and Bohemian Rhapsody, and this was on in the background while she tried to make me dance. We began doing a waltz, with her leading, and when the CD finished, it was just the two of us dancing to the music in our heads, through the room and out the door and up the stairs.
The campaign to set up me and Hannah continues unabated. My friends have no shame.
That said, we were a bit squashed last night. Emily got her bed. Everyone else was either squished up on the floor in sleeping bags or squished in the other bed. Me, Enid and Hannah were squished up in a space meant for one. It was an experience. Probably would have been more of an experience if I’d spent more time actually asleep. Unfortunately, Sara talks too much. She talked the whole night through, being one of those people with verbal diarrhoea, and continued in the morning.
The morning, yes. It began as normal, with the slow getting-up-getting
-breakfast-getting-dressed-getting-out, and we bid a sweet and sorrowful goodbye to Emily before leaving in Ron for Conway Park.
That was the plan. We were all in Ron, and Clare got the radio working, so we hooked up her CD player and played Once More With Feeling, and sang. I may have mentioned Clare drives like a maniac. It was great. In the middle of I’ll Never Tell, Colleen turned round and insisted, “Dance, crazy people, dance!”
We tried our best. And the CD had just got to Standing by the time we reached Conway Park, and we waited for it to finish before we started getting ourselves and our stuff out of the car. Only, someone said, “You could drive us to Liverpool.” And Clare may have said, “I could drive you to Ormskirk!”
And, well, she likes driving. And she likes her friends. And she had nothing better to do.
We piled back in, giggling, and launched straight into Under Your Spell/Standing. We went through Birkenhead, through the tunnel, out into Liverpool, and we finished the CD. When we were going under the river, I noticed a bus coming the other way, bearing the oft-sighted and always-horrific legend “Rail Replacement Service.”
Clare was vindicated. There was no way, she said later, that she’d abandon us to the tender mercies of a Rail Replacement Service on a Sunday. And when the CD finished, we put on Keane’s Hopes and Fears and Enid gave directions to Crosby. Well, I should also know the way from Liverpool to Crosby, but it’s not a journey for which I generally give directions.
We stopped in Crosby to see Enid’s room, because I’ve never seen it, believe it or not. It’s messy, unsurprisingly, but really rather cool, and her current t-shirt project is beyond amazing. She says she’s making us t-shirts for Christmas. It sounds like a lot of fun. I think we would have stayed longer, but heading for Ormskirk before midnight seemed a good idea, and off we went again. This time it had to be me giving directions, and we got lost.
Lost in Crosby. Apparently such a thing is possible. I have to say, I go from Formby to Crosby and back every single school day, but I don’t know the way! At least, I don’t know it consciously. My feet know the way when I’m walking, and that’s all.
On the way, despite the entertaining diversion of getting lost, Colleen was discussing the possibility of doing this again. Like I said, we always did want to do a roadtrip. Admittedly, England’s Northwest did not come to mind when we were thinking about it. I was rather peeved that we only went through two counties today, not three, although Clare said I should have mentioned it and we could have gone on a two-minute detour into Cheshire so we could say we went there as well as Merseyside and Lancashire. Anyway, Colleen wants us to go on a trip to Wales. Either a small place called Hell’s Mouth, just so we can say we’ve been there, or to Betws-y-coed, because she’s never been. How this is possible, I have no idea.
Formby, however, is still Merseyside, not Wales or anywhere else, and once we got there, Clare asked if she could park inside the gate. I remembered I didn’t have a gate control on me, which made life difficult, but as we were approaching, the gate was open anyway. It was my mother, returning from going food shopping, and her expression was a sight to behold as a strange car turned in and parked itself behind her.
“Hi,” I said, for lack of anything more intelligent to say.
But once I’d explained, sort of, my mother being my mother gave us all lunch. Sandwiches with cashew nuts, no less. Clare said, “I’m having such a strange day.”
She’s right. She had breakfast at Emily’s, a mid-morning wander around Enid’s, lunch here, and presumably food was consumed in Lancashire. We should of course bear in mind that Clare lives two minutes away from Emily, only she had to go home via Ormskirk. Also, Hannah lives in Wallasey, and went on a sixty-mile loop round England before she got home. It’s like those examples given on the Virgin Trains website – “London to Birmingham via Glasgow” – and suchlike. I did say, though, that Colleen didn’t have to have lived in Ormskirk. She could have lived in Guam or Kuala Lumpur or somewhere. Compared to that, Lancashire is positively tame.
But Freshfield is my stop. Once lunch had been consumed, I retrieved my stuff and said goodbye, watching as the two remaining passengers and driver waved madly and went round the corner in a screech of tyres. And then I sat down and laughed for a while, because it was needed.
Next week, Colleen wants to go on that trip to Wales. I asked why and received a glare.
In an even more frightening development, Clare has declared her desire for a Gran Torino.
It was a good party, especially the aftermath. And I believe there may be pictures later, which probably explain all this much better than I can.
Good party. Very good. As it happened, my entire family had a social life last night – on their way to a small dinner party of their own, they dropped me off at Freshfield so I could undertake the scarily long journey to Conway Park, which turned out to be not as scarily long as I’d thought. I was about half an hour early, and whilst lurking in deserted train stations at the dead of night is not generally conducive to your mental health, I didn’t exactly have a choice.
So, I sat in a corner and read Men At Arms whilst discreetly observing the only other people around, a group of scallies, all girls, who were making enough noise to wake the dead. They were all wearing more or less the same things – strips of material in lieu of, y’know, clothes – and shrieking. And some of them were about twelve. I kid you not. Quite, quite terrifying.
Thankfully Colleen arrived not long after, with Emily’s birthday present neatly wrapped and in a bag. She’d even got a frame for it, which I was very impressed by. And talking of being impressed, it was round about then that an old banger, dull maroon, went past like a circus performer out of a gun.
“It’s Ron!” Colleen shrieked. And off we went, round the corner to meet Ron, and indeed Clare. Ron, as we may remember, has a show name of Dick Turpin but is generally known as Foul Ole Ron or Ron for short. Clare had been convinced of the untimely death of her beloved car, but apparently he underwent a spot of resurrection yesterday and as long as she pours water into the radiator as fast as it leaks out, Ron will in fact take us places.
And when Hannah and Enid arrived, that was exactly what happened. I was busy trying to determine the collective noun for a group of scallies (Colleen said a scab – scab o’ scalls”) whilst also grappling with the problem of what to wear. Colleen and I had independently decided to bring stuff with us, neither having been able to guess the formality of the occasion. Hannah was the deciding factor – when she appeared, we were quietly laying bets on what she’d be wearing. In the end, she had a pretty top and red skirt (well, I would approve of a red skirt) and tipped the scales in favour of more formal.
So we all piled into Ron and giggled most of our way to Emily’s. I had never been in a car with Clare driving before, and she drives like a maniac. Shouts at the people in front and everything. It’s brilliant. We arrived in a cloud of dust and screeching tyres, and I retreated momentarily to get changed. I ended up entirely vampish, black from top to toe, and went downstairs demurely to meet the normal people.
Who are Sarah, Michelle, Laura, Phillipa and Sara. Phillipa I know slightly, having been at primary school with her, and Sara is
pr1ncess_sara, the scary individual who has been causing badly-spelled havoc all over LJ, but the others weren’t people I’d met before and I don’t think I know them now. They were quiet, and everyone else wasn’t.Because it was tipping down with rain, we got lifts down to the restaurant, which is called Gem, and it’s very nice. Reminds me of Warehouse (which was actually the restaurant my parents were at) because it’s small and hidden away from the main road. We had a room to ourselves, and about fifteen people sitting round a big round table. The seating arrangements sort of arranged themselves into resident lunatics on one side, normal people on the other, and Alice, Emily’s sister, in the middle.
Emily’s other friends were very quiet for most of the evening, which bothered me, because everyone else was talking. Actually, we were discussing everything under the sun, and I seem to remember having to change the subject every time it needed changing, and somehow got fixated on trees. “Trees! Let’s talk about trees!”
It also got cultural at one point – Sara laughing at my plebe Hindi – and maybe even musical, I can’t remember. There was no singing. We didn’t sing. Not then, anyway. I remember looking at my watch at one point not long before we got there, and it was about half seven, and the next time I glanced at it, it was eleven and I had no idea where the intervening time had gone.
Presumably some of it was spent eating. The food was good, with lots of vegetarian options, and I had a sort of sage and mushroom pasty-type thing, followed by a toffee and apple crumble type thing, and they were both very nice. Hannah and Clare were eating something that involved grass. Well, Hannah called it grass. Clare insists it was onions, which seems altogether more likely.
As I said, pleasure and action make the hours seem short, or times flies when you’re having fun. We went back to Emily’s later for presents. Hannah was sharing her gift with Sarah – they gave her a space pen, that writes upside down and underwater and in space and on grease and everywhere. In the meantime, Clare, Colleen, Enid and I had got her present from Collectormania. We got her Jennifer Garner’s autograph, no less, and Colleen got it framed at Homebase. Hannah insisted on getting a picture of her reaction. She has acquired a digital camera, an early birthday present, and insists on taking lots of pictures. I have no real objection to this. I took a picture of Clare and Colleen, because they both looked so grown-up. They were sharing a chair, casually draped over each other, each holding a champagne flute at arm’s length and looking entirely elegant and sophisticated. Neither of them believes me when I say this.
Hannah also gave Emily a mixed CD, beginning with Star Trekkin’ and progressing to Konstantine through K’s Choice and Bohemian Rhapsody, and this was on in the background while she tried to make me dance. We began doing a waltz, with her leading, and when the CD finished, it was just the two of us dancing to the music in our heads, through the room and out the door and up the stairs.
The campaign to set up me and Hannah continues unabated. My friends have no shame.
That said, we were a bit squashed last night. Emily got her bed. Everyone else was either squished up on the floor in sleeping bags or squished in the other bed. Me, Enid and Hannah were squished up in a space meant for one. It was an experience. Probably would have been more of an experience if I’d spent more time actually asleep. Unfortunately, Sara talks too much. She talked the whole night through, being one of those people with verbal diarrhoea, and continued in the morning.
The morning, yes. It began as normal, with the slow getting-up-getting
-breakfast-getting-dressed-getting-out, and we bid a sweet and sorrowful goodbye to Emily before leaving in Ron for Conway Park.
That was the plan. We were all in Ron, and Clare got the radio working, so we hooked up her CD player and played Once More With Feeling, and sang. I may have mentioned Clare drives like a maniac. It was great. In the middle of I’ll Never Tell, Colleen turned round and insisted, “Dance, crazy people, dance!”
We tried our best. And the CD had just got to Standing by the time we reached Conway Park, and we waited for it to finish before we started getting ourselves and our stuff out of the car. Only, someone said, “You could drive us to Liverpool.” And Clare may have said, “I could drive you to Ormskirk!”
And, well, she likes driving. And she likes her friends. And she had nothing better to do.
We piled back in, giggling, and launched straight into Under Your Spell/Standing. We went through Birkenhead, through the tunnel, out into Liverpool, and we finished the CD. When we were going under the river, I noticed a bus coming the other way, bearing the oft-sighted and always-horrific legend “Rail Replacement Service.”
Clare was vindicated. There was no way, she said later, that she’d abandon us to the tender mercies of a Rail Replacement Service on a Sunday. And when the CD finished, we put on Keane’s Hopes and Fears and Enid gave directions to Crosby. Well, I should also know the way from Liverpool to Crosby, but it’s not a journey for which I generally give directions.
We stopped in Crosby to see Enid’s room, because I’ve never seen it, believe it or not. It’s messy, unsurprisingly, but really rather cool, and her current t-shirt project is beyond amazing. She says she’s making us t-shirts for Christmas. It sounds like a lot of fun. I think we would have stayed longer, but heading for Ormskirk before midnight seemed a good idea, and off we went again. This time it had to be me giving directions, and we got lost.
Lost in Crosby. Apparently such a thing is possible. I have to say, I go from Formby to Crosby and back every single school day, but I don’t know the way! At least, I don’t know it consciously. My feet know the way when I’m walking, and that’s all.
On the way, despite the entertaining diversion of getting lost, Colleen was discussing the possibility of doing this again. Like I said, we always did want to do a roadtrip. Admittedly, England’s Northwest did not come to mind when we were thinking about it. I was rather peeved that we only went through two counties today, not three, although Clare said I should have mentioned it and we could have gone on a two-minute detour into Cheshire so we could say we went there as well as Merseyside and Lancashire. Anyway, Colleen wants us to go on a trip to Wales. Either a small place called Hell’s Mouth, just so we can say we’ve been there, or to Betws-y-coed, because she’s never been. How this is possible, I have no idea.
Formby, however, is still Merseyside, not Wales or anywhere else, and once we got there, Clare asked if she could park inside the gate. I remembered I didn’t have a gate control on me, which made life difficult, but as we were approaching, the gate was open anyway. It was my mother, returning from going food shopping, and her expression was a sight to behold as a strange car turned in and parked itself behind her.
“Hi,” I said, for lack of anything more intelligent to say.
But once I’d explained, sort of, my mother being my mother gave us all lunch. Sandwiches with cashew nuts, no less. Clare said, “I’m having such a strange day.”
She’s right. She had breakfast at Emily’s, a mid-morning wander around Enid’s, lunch here, and presumably food was consumed in Lancashire. We should of course bear in mind that Clare lives two minutes away from Emily, only she had to go home via Ormskirk. Also, Hannah lives in Wallasey, and went on a sixty-mile loop round England before she got home. It’s like those examples given on the Virgin Trains website – “London to Birmingham via Glasgow” – and suchlike. I did say, though, that Colleen didn’t have to have lived in Ormskirk. She could have lived in Guam or Kuala Lumpur or somewhere. Compared to that, Lancashire is positively tame.
But Freshfield is my stop. Once lunch had been consumed, I retrieved my stuff and said goodbye, watching as the two remaining passengers and driver waved madly and went round the corner in a screech of tyres. And then I sat down and laughed for a while, because it was needed.
Next week, Colleen wants to go on that trip to Wales. I asked why and received a glare.
In an even more frightening development, Clare has declared her desire for a Gran Torino.
It was a good party, especially the aftermath. And I believe there may be pictures later, which probably explain all this much better than I can.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2004-10-17 10:00 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-10-17 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-10-17 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-10-17 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-10-18 05:43 am (UTC)Collective noun
on 2004-10-17 02:34 pm (UTC)Re: Collective noun
on 2004-10-18 05:44 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-10-17 08:54 pm (UTC)Ron sounds like a twin to my poor dead Bonneville, which has NOT been resurrected. I've resorted to replacing pieces part by part until I get SOMETHING.
no subject
on 2004-10-18 05:48 am (UTC)My condolences for your poor car. Clare was in total despair, and probably can empathise better than I can. That said, I might start driving lessons this week. Little old ladies beware.
no subject
on 2004-10-18 01:22 am (UTC)You say it very slightly like you're not about to come with...
... look, you can lie and say you went to Wales in half term! You'll sound cool! Presuming Clare (and Ron) are still up for this, you are so coming.
no subject
on 2004-10-18 05:50 am (UTC)*sighs* I'll come. I'll bring the food.