My review: The Deadly Space Between (Picador, 2002) ►
◄ My review: Proline DM1945MP3 personal CD/MP3 player
This is the bit where we find out just how good all 128Kb (Spectrum +2) of my memory is, as the occasion in question took place sometime around May. Site updates? Moi?
Writing this a while afterwards may actually allow for a few more interesting "updates" on things. For instance, the fact that Stella hasn't headlined local news for multiple homicide probably indicates that those invited who never showed managed to evade her for long enough, or that (given I didn't know them, and still don't) she's as good at hiding bodies as she is with party food.
Well, they missed out. In fact, it probably wouldn't have been anywhere near as cool with a bigger mass of people. It's been quite a while since I went to a surprise birthday party. It'd been a while since I went to a birthday party... birthday drinking sessions don't quite count. This was a birthday party—cake, presents, pass-the-parcel (which was très impressive, down to the gag gifts every other layer or so) and odd-tasting alcoholic beverages (entirely the fault of us as guests. One was allegedly strawberry and one orange.) And lots and lots of party-poppers, which saw several people attempt to bundle enough together to make offensive weapons. :smokin:
The party was sprung a while before Glyn's actual birthday, so the presents bit was a formality, although the bubble-blower Sarah-Jane brought got some immediate use, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time looked quite interesting. (Skimming an excerpt from the beginning of the book, it's one I think I'd like to get around to reading at some point.) Motorised bubble-blowers are also interesting but, like vibrators, seem happier settling for on or off than intermediate currents.
Pass-the-parcel was followed by investigatory use of the novelties and reading from possibly the most arcane joke-book I think any of us had ever encountered. Samples escape my recollection, but it was a work you could imagine as having been farmed out to writers in another country and translated through VCR-manual-Chinese. The fake wound proved to be rather gruesome (mostly due to the sticky gunk on the inside of it) whilst the pepper tea tasted quite nice (until someone decided to add milk...) and the wall-crawling sticky eyeballs proved an enduring favourite. By this point, people had been mixing intoxicants sufficiently enough to make putting music on quite a task...
I'm sure there were meaningful and interesting conversations going on throughout the evening, but my memory sharpens back up towards the end, when a viewing of From Dusk 'Til Dawn rounded things off nicely. It were proper bo to meet Dave, Phil and Stella's family, and a good time was had by all (possibly even the cats, once they got used to so many people milling around....)
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