The Night That Almost Didn't Happen

I have an awesome friend whom I love dearly but only get to see once in a while. She lives on the outskirts of London (actually she lives in Essex, but my friend is very quick to point out that as her home is on the Tube line then it can still be classed as London) so for her birthday she organised a little outing.

Get this: We were going in a limo. To London’s West End. To a private booth in some swanky club. Score!

So, one Saturday afternoon I hopped onto the train from my home and travelled the hour and a half through charming countryside down to smelly St Pancras Intl, and then negotiated my way through the network of mole tunnels that is the London Underground to her house. Every time I go to see her (ok, I’ll admit this is only the 2^nd time I’ve been to see her since she moved to this house) there is some kind of major repair work going on in the Underground system. So I usually spend a fair amount of time gawping at the brightly coloured squiggles on the walls trying to figure out how to get onto the red line whilst avoiding the yellow line, pink line, dark red line, blue line and black line. Then I realise that what I thought was the London Underground map is actually some kid’s graffiti mixed with cracks in the wall. When you are travelling on your own, and you realise you’ve just done something hopelessly stupid and embarrassing, there is really only one thing you can do: Adopt a nonchalant expression and look like you knew what you were doing all along.

So, after shuffling a few yards to the left so that I was facing an actual map of the Underground, I worked out how to zig-zag across London to get to the station I needed. After being herded onto various train carriages by being crammed up against what I can only assume to be a mix of axe-wielding maniacs, serial rapists, child-molesters and nuns, I made it to my friend’s house.

Ah! Sweet relief! A good chat, a lengthy gossip, some hearty giggles and a seriously in-depth discussion of the merits of fake-tanning one’s legs later, and I had forgotten all about how close my head had to be to that biker’s armpit for the train’s carriage doors to close. Of course, being of the fairer sex, we had to rush around in order to get ready for when the limo was due to arrive because we spent far too much time chin-wagging. However, all the rushing around was well worth it. The birthday girl looked absolutely stunning (as usual), our other friend looked fabulous in her classic little black dress, and I was feeling gorgeous in my favourite sparkly shoes. The boys brushed up well too.

We all clambered into the white stretch limo, and made “oooh, ahhh!” noises at the mirrors on the ceiling, the shaped leather seats and the two bottles of champagne that were to be at our disposal for the ride into London Town. Needless to say we had a jolly old time trying to sip champagne whilst the moody driver steered the limo around roundabouts and corners, but we all had an excellent time. When we reached the club the other two ladies and I did our best to exit the limo whilst not “doing a Britney Spears” and showing our undergarments. The boys assured us we were successful in our endeavours.

So we pranced our way along the pavement and into the club. After some of us were asked for I.D. at the door, we were all told where our booth was. We all slid into the comfy seats with big grins as we watched a fat ginger man trying desperately to dance with a gorgeous brunette that had legs up to her elbows. After a few minutes, we ladies decided to go the bar. We decided to share a bottle of wine between us, so I asked the baldy barman for a bottle of Pinot Grigio.

“Got any I.D.?” he said.

“No I haven’t,” I replied. “I didn’t think to bring it. We have a private booth booked.”

The Michael Stipe wannabe then threw his hands up in the air and declared that I would have to leave as he couldn’t serve me.

“Well I didn’t bring I.D. either,” said the birthday girl. “I booked a booth because it’s my birthday.”

After saying something about having to speak to the manager, the barman disappeared, leaving us to look at each other with a mixture of worry and disbelief. It turned out that everyone except me and the birthday girl had brought I.D. with them, which proved they were all 23 and over. The manager (who incidentally looked so young that I doubt he would be allowed on any big-kid rides at Alton Towers) came over and patronised us for a while, whilst talking about how he could face a life-time in some squalid Azkaban style prison if he dared to serve us alcohol on his precious premises. So, after the birthday girl assured the 12-year-old manager that he had ruined her 23^rd birthday celebrations, we trundled out into the cold evening air.

Where to go? What do to? The limo wasn’t booked to return until 2am, so we set off in search of another club that was not run by neo-Nazis. But, lo and behold! Some recent crackdown on underage drinking meant that absolutely no club in the West End were letting anyone in without checking for I.D. first at the door. I’m not exactly sure how long we walked around for, but it was long enough for me to lose feeling in my extremities.

Eventually one of us had the idea to go to TGI Fridays. So we made our way there with the help of a map on some iBlackBerryPalmTop gadget owned by one of the fellas, and were thankfully let in to the bar area of the restaurant with no questions asked. Of course, we made sure the boys went to the bar for us every time we ran dry!

Now, I’ll admit that wandering around in the cold wasn’t that much fun, but the company was lovely. I can’t think of a more fun group of people I would like to be with if I was ever shivering and in desperate need for a raspberry daiquiri. So what if my lips were turning blue? I got to hear anecdotes from one of the boys who “accidentally” wandered into a strip club in search of a sink to wash his hands in. You don’t get gems like that every day!

So once in TGI’s we had pretty much forgotten about the lack of private booth and were laughing and joking around. We had cocktails that looked more like desserts and shots that tasted like paint stripper – what more could you ask for? Oh yes, and I’m still trying to blank out the memory of me slipping over on their shiny floor and falling flat on my arse, but never mind. I’m sure nobody saw. Much.

The moral of the story? ALWAYS bring I.D. with you. And if you are going to be stuck in London with nowhere to go, then go with your best friends and some charming London lads.

The Trouble With Guidance

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t have much luck with guidance counsellors when I was at school.  Here’s why:

Counsellor - “Good morning, how are you today?”
Me -     “Good thanks, and yourself?”
    “Oh, um…yes…I’m fine, thank you…for asking.”  She looked quite flustered and taken aback by my interest in her well being and general state of mind.  There was an uncomfortable pause as she gathered her thoughts.  I decided things would progress more smoothly if I took the lead in this.
    “So, I’ve been thinking of going on to college.  I’d really like to become a teacher - either in History or English Literature.”  I offered.
    “Oh really?  Why’s that?”  She blinked.
    I should probably mention at this stage that she was the kind of woman that was unbelievably un-self aware with thick coke bottle glasses, wiry hair with a mind of it’s own and always seemed to have more lipstick on her teeth than on her lips.  The kind of woman whose house was filled with floral patterns from the 1930s.  The kind of woman that had several cats with names such as Cuddles, Twinkles, Mr Snuffles etc.
    “Well, I’m really interested in those subjects and I would love to stay in an educational environment.”
    “Oh right.  What kind of subjects will you need to take at college to do that then?”
    I considered this carefully.  “Um, well I suppose History and English would be key.”  I watched tentatively as she bobbed her head up and down in a slow nod.
    “Mmmm,” she agreed, “you’re probably right there.”  She took a moment to look vacantly at her lap, then suddenly snapped her head back to look at me with a severe and slightly panicked look on her face.
    “You do realise you’ll have to go to University to be a teacher?”  She seemed to have to work hard to produce the word ‘University’ from her mouth.
    “Yes,” I replied, “I’d quite like to go to University.”  I was starting to worry I’d wandered into the wrong office.
    “Well are your grades good enough for something like that?” She blinked rapidly.
    “I’m predicted A* to C grades for my G.C.S.E.’s.”
    With her mouth hanging slightly open, she stared at me as if I had just given birth to a fridge door through my left nostril.

    “Oh” She said.  And blinked.

    “Mmmm” I said.  And swallowed too loudly.

    As she gave a longing lingering look to the phone on her desk, I got the impression that she was desperate to escape from this situation.  I resolved to move this on as quickly as I could, so I said,
    “I ordered some information and application details from my two favourite colleges.  They each sent me a prospectus with details on their courses.  This one looks really good - the booklet says they have a well established Arts and Humanities faculty and that they run yearly trips to Rome for History and Art History students.  I sent off my application to them this morning, so hopefully I’ll get an interview in the next couple of weeks.”

She blinked.

    “They have a prospectus?”

I sighed.

I escaped from her office as quickly as I could.

Mums go to Iceland

My country of birth is the beautiful land of fire and ice that hugs the Arctic circle: Iceland.  I often tell Icelandic stories to my friends, and in particular their children.  Kids love hearing about all the Elf folklore and legends of Trolls that come from Iceland.

I was telling my friend's youngest child about Iceland, and about visiting my family when I was over there.  I was explaining to her that although my Dad is not from Iceland originally, he has in fact lived there for most of his adult life.  Children process vast amounts of new information each day, and I could almost see the cogs whirring around in her mind as she listened to what I was telling her.  I whittled on for a while..."In Iceland there are elves that live in the rocks....The mountains of Iceland contain families of Trolls....The ground is sometimes covered in several feet of snow in Iceland in the winter...."

Whilst I was talking to her, she turned and looked at me with those gorgeous big brown eyes of hers.

"Yes," she said. "I know all about Iceland."
"Really?" I said, somewhat incredulously.  I knew my friend hadn't visited Iceland before, as I would assume she would have mentioned it at some point, and I didn't think the study of Nordic countries was in the syllabus for most pre-schools.
"We've been there," she replied, with a very serious look on her face. "It's red."

My friend and I looked up from the little girl and looked at each other with matching looks of confusion.  We both fell into hysterics at exactly the same time when we realised what she was talking about.

"No honey," my friend replied through her giggles to her little girl. "Edda means Iceland the country, not the supermarket!"

Water Sports

Around the time of my 9th birthday I went on holiday with my mum and step-dad to Thailand. It is a truly beautiful place, and I feel so lucky that I had the opportunity to go there. We had a wonderful time - drinking in the sunshine-shocked warmth, eating the exotic, seeing the spectacular, navigating the wild and enjoying the luxurious.

There was, however, an incident. I think there is always some kind of incident wherever I am concerned. It involved me, the beach, a quiet afternoon, my mother and a large inflatable object attached to a 15 year old speed boat. We should have known it would end badly.

It seems my 9 year old soul was going through an adrenalin-junkie phase. I wanted to go on a jet-ski, but mother-dearest wouldn't hear of it. I wanted to go para-gliding, but mother-dearest wouldn't allow it. I wanted to go water skiing, but mother-dearest shook her head. I wanted to go abseiling, but mother-dearest stamped her foot down. And rightly so - I was 9 for heaven's sake!

Eventually, after my 9 year old attention span had flitted between various heart-attack inducing adventures for a day or so, it finally settled on something slightly more sedate. Slightly.

The hotel had it's own private beach, and this beach had it's own offering of water sport activities (see jet skiing and water skiing above). Now, I'm not sure whether my mum was actually interested in partaking in this particular activity, or whether my constant outlandish demands were making her soul whither away and die somewhere deep within her, but she actually said those magic words every kid wants to hear: "Oh alright then!"

So we walked through the pool area one beautiful sunny day to reach the idyllic crystal-clear Pacific ocean. Well, I say walked...actually it was only mum that walked. I ran around her in circles, pleading with her to hurry up. We reached the water sports section where all the jet skis (sigh!) and motor boats were tied up, and spoke to the pleasant looking but bi-lingually challenged beach attendant. Mum slowly explained to him what we were looking for.

After a few confused looks and apologetic smiles, he suddenly understood what we were asking. He looked us up and down - my mum in her swimming costume and a beach sarong, and me with my tiny scrawny 9 year old frame clad in a bikini. "Two?!" he practically shrieked. Mum looked non-plussed (looking back, my constant whining and nagging may have prompted her to have a lunch-time glass of wine), and replied, "Yes please, just the two of us."

He muttered to himself as he backed off the make the arrangements.

After a couple of minutes (well, it seemed like hours to my impatient mind) he motioned for us to follow him down the wooden ramp towards the boat. The way I remember it is this: There was a gleaming speedboat tied to the dock, with a powerful engine at it's rear waiting to roar into life. Attached to the end of the boat by a thick length of rope was a long yellow inflatable shaped like a banana, that had five separate seating areas with wide black straps to hold on to.

The way my mother remembers it is this: There was an ancient looking pile of rust floating in the water with a leaking engine attached to the end of it by some sticky tape and glue. On the end of a frayed piece of nylon string attached to the back of the boat was a large inflatable object shaped like a soggy sausage. There were five separate faded areas where people had straddled the object over the last decade or so, which were further marked out by damaged and almost-missing straps which she presumed she was supposed to hold on to.

Anyway, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. So, I instantly proclaimed that I wanted to be right up front and, ignoring my mother's protests to the contrary, happily launched myself on to the banana-boat. Mum carefully negotiated her seat right behind me, and wrapped one protective arm around me whilst desperately searching for purchase on a practically non-existent "safety" strap with the other hand.

The huge excited grin on my face soon faded into abject horror as the speed boat kicked into life and sped out across the water. I didn't realise the sea was this bouncy. I didn't realise we would be going this far out to sea. I didn't realise we would be going this fast. And I sure as hell didn't realise that two people (and one of them being a 9 year old skinny wretch) going on a banana boat ride intended for the weight of five people was Not. A. Good. Idea.

Oh, we bounced and flew all over the ocean. Literally. Every time we hit a wave, I would go flying off the banana. Mum didn't know whether to laugh or cry as she watched her tiny daughter swim back towards the inflatable banana after being launched several feet into the air for the 10th time. At one point I was flung forward, and was clinging on to the rope that kept the inflatable banana attached to the boat. I distinctly remember mum holding onto my twiggy ankle at the point (and laughing hysterically, I might add).

After what seemed an eternity of lack of gravity and wild G-force mood swings, the speed boat pulled back into the shoreline, and we both jumped off and ran/swam/jumped/crawled back to dry land. Out of a British sense of politeness, Mum managed to mutter some words of gratitude to the boat driver, whilst I made a silent promise to myself to never again engage in any activities that involve speed, the sea and inflatable objects.

I have always kept this promise.

My mum

My mother is a very brave and intelligent woman. She moved over to England from her native Iceland with her three daughters when she married my step dad, and forged out a new life for herself in a strange country. She always worked hard, and then went back to full time education to obtain her A levels and then a degree in Sociology.

However, as English is her second language she often as problems with her spelling. Now, everyone that knows me will tell you that I am really pedantic about spelling and grammar, so she would always ask me for help with her essays by proof reading them for her and helping her out with her spelling. She has gotten a lot better with it though over the years, but she still struggles with it a bit.

Here is a selection of the kind of things she sends in text messages and emails:

“Good morning Sweathart, how are you?”
Translation – Good morning sweetheart, how are you?

“Yes I’m just having a class of wind and then I’m off to bed”
Translation – Yes I’m just having a glass of wine and then I’m off to bed

“It’s been tough at times, but we shoulder on…”
Translation – It’s been tough at times, but we soldier on…

“To be honest, it depends on my shit pattern”
Translation – To be honest, it depends on my shift pattern

Yes, she is a very special lady.

The Helmet Holiday

I’m visiting my Dad in Iceland for a few weeks (actually I may be here for longer, catastrophic-volcanic-eruption-depending) and we got to talking about some incidents from my childhood. There are probably a thousand stories about stupid things I did back then that make me cringe today, but the Helmet Holiday really comes out top of the list.

I was a dainty 6 year old when I met up with my Dad in Scotland for a caravan holiday on the west coast. We met at my grandmother’s house in a suburb of Glasgow, and after caving in to the pleas of his only child we went out to the toy store before we made the journey through the Scottish wilderness to get to our caravan. I had recently been given a bike for my birthday by my mother, which was waiting for me back at home in England. I must have been rather excited about the bike, because I begged my Dad to buy me a helmet (such a safety conscious child!) from the toy store we were in. Of course, with it being a toy store, there really wasn’t that much choice in the way of helmets, but I saw the one I wanted instantly.

It was yellow. Bright, brilliant, sunshine yellow. It even came with Postman Pat stickers that I could artfully customise it with. Needless to say, nothing could stop me from being over the moon about having such a glorious helmet. Whilst my Dad dutifully carried the box it came in whilst we walked back to my grandmother’s house, I jammed the helmet on to my head and proudly walked through the streets of suburban Glasgow whilst plotting where to place the Postman Pat stickers.

Sadly, my brain wasn’t all that artistically evolved at the tender age of 6, but I thought I did a pretty good job of hastily attaching every single sticker onto the helmet in the midst of my excitement. Once the stickers were jammed onto the helmet, it went straight back on my head. And it stayed there.

Almost all of the photographs that exist from that particular holiday show me wearing my bright yellow head-gear. Building a sand castle: with the helmet. Walking on the rocks: with the helmet. Eating breakfast: with the helmet. Sleeping in the bunk bed: Without the helmet (My Dad had to put his foot down somewhere. I don’t know how he managed to pry the damn thing off me!).

The trouble is I never actually rode a bike on this holiday. I didn’t have a bike to ride – mine was a good 300 miles away in the East Anglian countryside. My Dad says this simple fact didn’t seem to bother me; I just loved wearing the helmet regardless.

Nowadays I don’t ride bikes that often. And I hate the colour yellow.

Baby Oh- Oh- Oil

I can be very dumb. Hard to believe, I know, but it’s true!

I was visiting my friend for her Halloween party last year, and we always get to talking about our school days whenever we see each other. She reminded me of something I think I will never live down…

I shared a bathroom with my older sister when I was growing up. Of course, this naturally means that the bathroom was always full of bottles of various potions and concoctions that only teenage girls can accumulate to such a vast degree. I was taking a shower one evening, and started washing my hair. I did the usual blind groping for the shampoo bottle and managed to find the right one. When I had rinsed the shampoo out of my hair, my hand reached out for what I thought was a bottle of conditioner. I squirted out a dollop of it onto my hand and put it in my hair. Almost immediately I thought the texture was all wrong. I blinked several times to get the water out of my eyes so I could look at the bottle.

Oh crap, I thought. It’s Johnson’s Baby Oil!

I frantically tried to wash the oily mess out of my hair; I was rinsing and rinsing and rinsing until all the hot water was gone. This of course prompted a rant from my very pissed off sister for not leaving her any hot water, but she couldn’t resist laughing at my still slick oiled hair.

Needless to say I went to school the next day in a very foul mood. My friend that I was visiting last year said that she would never get the picture out of her head of me storming into Art class that morning looking like I had combed a vat of butter through my hair, ranting about the woes of Herbal Essences bottles feeling too similar to Johnson’s Baby Oil.