Tuesday, September 27
Jess’s party on the 2nd was pretty cool, even if we were a million million hours late. The food was delish and the champagne flowed – that was a serious amount! The most memorable times were to be had, as usual, with Freddie; whether sitting on the trampoline (“There’s an umBRELLA here!?!”) or in the annexe he was never not slapping people. Also amusing was watching him, Cat and O-J exhaust their entire repertoire of accents, ranging from Indian to Irish. Oh, and Freddie falling over. All in all, a very cool party.
Equally fantabulous was the twins’ send-off. This was memorable for perhaps less pleasant reasons. I am talking of course about the whipped cream incident(s). I think there is still some in my left ear, and I’m looking at you. Yes you. Other highlights included trampoline-twister, Kieran’s spaz-dance from Bring It On, James’s entire hilarious monologue on Shania Twain in the morning (so funny! “What nationality am I?”, “Mr Majug” :p) the fight for the duvets on the trampoline (why do so many of the best times happen on trampolines?!). On that note, it took me back almost exactly a year, where once again we spent a considerable time on a trampoline, into the early hours, just totally relaxed, gently falling asleep. I thought it was quite a fitting way to end this year just as we started it. I hope you guys all have an absolutely amazing time up in Edinburgh – wish I were there!
Now for the rest of the month! I finally received a letter from my college father, Matthew, who’s a PHYSICAL (as opposed to biological) natural scientist transferring to Chemical Engineering next year(…?!). My mother is Rebecca, an Arch & Anth student. That’s about it really, except for him to tell me to bring up lots of warm clothes because Cambridge “can get quite cold”. Hello, it’s not like I’m coming here from Bali or, like, the Sun. I also got my accommodation letter at bloomin’ long last – if you go HERE you can see a virtual tour (panoramic rotating view) of Chapel Court where I’ll be staying!
I went to Reading with the Juice sometime last week for, as he said, our biennial shopping trip. That was a very cool day. The first shop we walked past was playing Goodnight And Go which was very cool of them, and we must have amassed Coldplay’s entire works throughout the day.
In the evening, we saw Me And You And Everyone We Know at the Phoenix. It was the best film I’ve seen in a long time; it was just so…offbeat, I think is one word to describe it! Maybe I’ll review it sometime… When we returned home, we watched Rules of Attraction which was also very good; it was weird having seen American Psycho fairly recently, so I was actually able to notice the similarities between, respectively, Sean and Patrick Bateman in the two films. Very classy.
A ‘happy birthday’ is due to Liv, whose birthday dinner took place in Ask last Friday, moving on to Anuba afterwards. Even though you were successfully late for your own party (as usual :p) we had a really nice time. Something worthy of mention is the contract we drew up – if Tom turns out to be wrong he has agreed to eat my beard. Mmm-mm.
On Saturday I put on my best bib ‘n’ tuc—I mean DJ, and travelled down to London to go to……..a party on a boat cruising down the Thames. How. Cool. Am I. (Tom, I think this counts as effectively being that party on a plane over London we talked about so often!) The occasion was the wedding reception of my cousin, Kirsty, to Jonathan (£400,000 salary :O). There was a tab of £2000 behind the bar. Initially. It was then topped up to last the rest of the night, so no-one had to buy a single drink! And as for the food...it was a delicious barbecue for supposedly 150 but there was easily enough for 300! It was an absolutely amazing evening: the boat had three decks, each with a bar, one with a disco, and it was quite exciting to be surrounded by millionaires, all against the backdrop of Tower Bridge, Big Ben or the London Eye! (Oh, and Freds, my sister was sick on the way home!)
Tuesday, September 20
During the 7-hour train journey there was much speculation as to our fellow passengers: are they going out, or brother and sister? Is she older than she says she is (12) or has she had surgery? Is he writing love letters to the girl right opposite him? And so on.
At the house we then spent rather a long while trying to get the hot water working – a practice involving trying to light the pilot light, shouting from one end of the house to another to turn the water on and off, shouting back that no, it still isn’t bloody working, and repeat as unnecessary. Yeah, we went without hot water for the first day.
After the escapades of the first night we settled in quickly (except that even with ‘hot water’ the shower went from 4 degrees to 120 and back every 30 seconds). Most of our days were generally spent chilling, drinking and iPod-listening by/in/on the pool (we had both a lilo and a huge pink inflatable chair for the last purpose, not to mention a floating tray) where Sam would juggle clubs while Tom and I, as Sam would put it, frolicked around. The nights were spent cooking, eating, drinking, gambling, Sega-Saturning, contemplating, bow-firing, pool/snooker-playing, Trivial Pursuit-winning (in my case – muahahaha), hornet-burning and finding out just Why You Don’t Need Meat.
On the first morning we cycled to one of the nearby towns, Valence d’Agen, to go to the market. It’s quite depressing how nice it is for such a small place – Bicester doesn’t have one fountain, let alone two, and certainly no cinema! Yes, Valence may have been nice, but it was also to become the source of all our troubles over the next 10 days, along with our 3 bikes. It started here when, on the way back, Tom tried to open his bottle of Lucozade and managed to fall off his bike as an added bonus. That screwed up his knee somewhat. The second mishap was when Sam acquired a puncture from nothing in particular, so I cycled back home to bring him the pump and some teaspoons (kinky or what). When I returned, they bought an inner tube and began to change the tyre, only to realise they couldn’t without removing the wheel, so they settled for just pumping it up, and it was miraculously puncture-free. Very strange.
One day we decided to amble up the stream that separated our side of the valley we were in from the other – apparently Tom used to do this with Phoebe all the time (...5+ years ago). What we'd failed to bank on was a) the abundance of brambles and b) Iris, the neighbour's dog, following us. After the brambles it became easier-going. Then we became separated and had to get through the densest load of crap I have ever seen. Yet it made it all the sweeter when we finally came out at the top of the valley, able to see more than 5 cm in front of us. After a brief return into the woods in order to get back to the house (where Tom jumped down quite a distance and managed to land on his injured knee) we resolved to return, one day, properly armed… Several days later, out came the machetes. We sure showed those brambles.
Other activities included exploring the house – Tom opened one door to reveal an entire pig’s leg swinging around in the darkness. The ‘ground floor’ (it was a bungalow) was itself quite big enough, but then there was a huge attic which I was able to go all the way through, and several basement rooms, some of which were kinda scary – in one there was an old broken chair in which I could just imagine people being bound and tortured. One night we went for a very nice dinner in Auvillar, another nearby town/village where there was quite a nice ‘Point de vue’ looking out over the Garonne and all the surrounding area – though we were quite weirded out by all the regular forests everywhere.
On Sunday morning we cycled to Valence to catch a train to Toulouse (go me and my French for getting us the tickets!). An hour later we had arrived, and so we wandered up into the heart of the city to see us some tourist attractions. As it turned out, there weren’t all that many, but we still saw the remains of Thomas Aquinas, the Place Capitole (where some guy sold us a political comic he’d made) and the parks which spread all over the bloomin’ place, putting Uni Parks to shame. Oh, and they were doing the Lindy Hop in it!
That evening we met my mum’s sisters, Julie and Chris, outside a café that didn’t exist and drove back to Julie’s farmhouse near Maurens (about 45 mins drive) to have dinner with them and their husbands (Pete and Martin). Sam got completely besotted with their 3 Irish Wolfhounds, but particularly Ted, the newest one who looks more like a polar bear and who, before they had him, apparently used to hunt wild boar, and so may well have killed one of their cats. At one point we sampled the local nightlife, which consisted of a bizarre French band in the village hall with all of 4 people dancing along (tho Chris kept trying to get us all to join them, but then she did stagger the wrong way back to the car afterwards). We then returned to the house to sample their drinks cabinet, give an impromptu concert on their piano, find out their musical tastes overlap quite considerably with ours and discuss the possibilities of implanting Tom’s gran with a chip so that we could remotely control her Zimmer frame, should she have one, down the street. The next day Sam rode their two horses, Chitano and Domingo, while Tom and I had lilo races in their pool. After lunch we decided we should go, and so we did. However. Back in Valence, our bikes were no longer tethered to the rails outside the station. Actually I tell a lie. Strictly they were. They just happened to be missing all 6 wheels.
That was a long walk home.
On the final night we lay in the garden and wondered at the clarity of the stars – obviously there was little to no light pollution anywhere around us so we could see the whole sky perfectly. Tom and I got bored of trying to work out which constellations were which and so decided to make up our own (what were they again??). It was then too hot to even think about trying to sleep, so Tom and I went for a midnight dip, and it was the warmest it’d ever been.
Since being back, and especially since getting my photos back, I’ve really missed it. It was such a relaxing time, such a change from being here that I can’t wait to go back, should that happen! I’d also like to apologise to you guys for being a bit of a minger for several days. I had an awesome time, so thanks so much, and here's to next year!
Saturday, September 10
Well, it’s been a busy old month, and four more people have left us for greater things. As Lizzy said, it’s a bit sad that it takes that to spur us on to do something. Anyway, I think I’ll split up all that’s happened into three posts so that anyone reading doesn’t die of, I don’t know, meningitis or something.
So. Several Tuesdays ago now, I went over to Tom’s to do some manual labour (braaw!) in order to pay for my train ticket. This involved emptying and kicking down a shed that used to be the girls’ toilets when the house was a school. I thought it was quite cool to be paid to tear down a building :). We then went into town and I was just saying to Tom how I wanted to see someone, anyone from school when we bumped into Alex H, Jamie and Rhys on Cornmarket, which was cool as Alex was leaving the next day for his American College (Vanderbilt). Oh, and Uppy was busking. Back at the ranch, we set upon the arduous task of chopping and stacking an indescribably huge pile of logs. God that was tiring. Though I feel we should go back and actually finish it sometime…
After staying overnight, on Wednesday we went into town to meet Kitty, Liv and the twins to see The Island, but in fact the twins departed to see Crash instead. I really enjoyed the Island; it’s pretty much exactly as Zeebee described it in her email. After that, everyone left very abruptly, but I met up with Guy and had a cool chat (I always seem to find myself having cool chats with Guy!) before parting ways to go and have a pizza with my dad, and to finally see the yearbooks ‘in the flesh’. Apparently the woman at the printers told my dad it was “absolutely lovely” when he went to collect them. Which is nice. We then meandered to Wadham College Chapel to see Jack Gibbons in concert as Gershwin.
Thursday. Results day. The first thing I had to do at school was have an 8.30 meeting with the Bursar about what to do about those young scoundrels who hadn’t paid for the yearbooks on their bills. Before and after said meeting, I was trying to get a word in edgeways with O-J – i.e. when he wasn’t being harangued by radio, newspaper and TV journalists for a gazillion interviews. When he was completely engulfed, I carried the yearbooks (soo heavy) over to the Computer Rooms to get my results, but they wouldn’t let me in. So I set up shop outside to peddle my wares to unsuspecting results-getters. I had a good amount of positive feedback from them, and was glad they liked it!
Several hours later I finally packed up, had another meeting with the Bursar, then went to the Parks with most of the guys to meet Cat, Zeebee and Madie. Lizzy arrived soon after, and after a couple of phone calls to Tom, who was going punting at St Aldates with a random assortment of people, we decided to go from Cherwell Boathouse, via Sainsbury’s. Once we’d loaded up on strawberries, chocolate and Pimm’s we set off and much fun was had by all. Our punt got stuck on a tree stump at one point. Er, I mean we disembarked to go to a party with Rod Stewart and his blonde, green-eyed wife. Probably on a plane over London. Other highlights included Madie boarding our punt, and us all then singing a repertoire including Spice Girls, Titanic (Fred and Lizzy!) and Billy Joel. One of the funniest moments for me was, on the way back, happening to look back to the other punt and Cat sitting on the front saying, completely deadpan, “Well, at least this should be interesting!” as her punt sailed into a tree.
The girls went home to change/freshen up/have pillowfights or whatever it is they do while the hardcore guys returned to the parks to meet Dez, Lunney and co, Tom attaining an impressive collection of grazes, cuts and scars from his tree-climbing antics. I filmed some stuff here on O-J’s camera ranging from the weeeeird (Dez completing a Rubik’s cube in 50 seconds and doing strange things with an acrylic ball) to the crap (Lunney trying to rap. Oh my god) to the scarily amusing (Tom going, “Oh, Freddie. Oh. Oh! Oh! Your back! Oh!”). It was cool to see people running across the Parks clutching their copy of the Class of 2005! When evening came, we went to the Goose to meet Jess and PJ (and the entire MCS 6th form by the look of it) before I had my first foray into Mood. A couple of us then moved on to the Turl to meet others, but I then joined the others at Park End. All in all, twas a thoroughly cool day.
On Friday I visited the McFall residence to deliver Hal’s yearbook, and had a long chat with his mum. She was really grateful for everything we did for Hal in his last week here, and said he was lucky to have so many great friends (aw, you guys! What’re you like?). I had to stop myself laughing out loud when she called O-J “The Juice” in her deep Southern accent at one point! But it was kind of strange; she obviously missed Hal so much, and she said to be kind to my mother when I leave for Uni, because it’ll be hard for her. I have to admit I hadn’t really thought of it from that angle before. I left that afternoon feeling rather pensive.
