ramblings
After last year, Christmas was blessedly conventional. Relatives came down for Boxing Day. As the evening wore on my Mum produced from the back of some cupboard a word game from the late 70's called 'Kan-U-Go', which some people took as a heavy hint. 'And if that doesn't work, we've got one called Piss Off', she said. No, she'd never say that; I had to.
For New Year we went to Suffolk. Dave drove on the way there. The last time we stayed in these cottages we were the first to arrive so this time we resolved to be ridiculously late, and almost succeeded, driving up in the dark. 'Thank you for driving carefully through our village', a sign said, before we'd even entered the village. Dave was so shocked by this presumptuousness that he promptly dropped his cigarette into his lap and proceeded to drive very wildly through their village, demolishing garden walls and running over pets. Serve that village right.
Once there, we watched telly. There didn't seem to be much point in going outside. Whenever we did, something went wrong. Yokels (including a woman who looked like Boris Johnson in a wig) stood at the side of the road, staring grimly at us. The second night Nicki drove us into the next town, careering through the pedestrianized high street in the belief that it was too late for pedestrians. (It was certainly too late for the ones she mowed down.)
We went to a curry house located under a closed branch of Boots with blanked-out windows. We hesitated - it looked like a trap. Amanda asked two passers-by where the Thai place was, but having told us, they proceeded to enter this underground curry house, thus rendering it less suspicious. So we followed them in, and it was incredibly busy and understaffed, but we couldn't leave now because the two guys we'd asked about the Thai were in there and we already looked weird for following them in (like we'd changed all our plans for them - like we'd fallen in love with them or something) and if we left now we'd really blow their minds.
That curry was a long time coming.
We also went to Framlingham castle (closed) and Dunwich, which - apart from having fallen into the sea at some point - was being afflicted by a very cold and constant wind (wind was a problem for everyone on this holiday, but that's another story). In Dunwich we went to the Ship, which catered for ramblers and was itself suitably rambling - rooms everywhere, all higgledy-piggledy; dogs running around like in a medieval castle. The elderly barman looked as though he'd been working there for seventy years without a break. He undercharged Rhys, who said he thought the guy had had a stroke. 'Shouldn't you have called an ambulance then?', asked Mat. But it turned out Rhys had meant at some time in the past.
New Year's Eve involved a murder mystery evening in which I played a mafioso, Mat's younger brother. Amanda said mine was the worst Italian accent she'd ever heard, even worse than Mat's, and he was only doing a Borat impression. My real brother was the murderer, confusingly. Then there was Singstar, only Rhys forgot the microphones. Well done, Rhys! And I write that without irony, for the first time ever in my life and almost certainly the last.
It ended in drunkenness, predictably, though not for Mat, who is of course sympathetically pregnant, and was sitting on the sofa with his laptop when I staggered in, for all the world like a disapproving parent, watching me walk into walls. 'Are you going to vomit?', he asked. I lay on my bed fully-clothed with the lights on for a time, wondering which way it would go, but in the event I was not ill. Though with people sitting around my bed in the mornings (it was a sofabed in the lounge), I often felt like a convalescent.
For the first time we had the presence of very young children (a screeching as of pterodactyls through the wall in the morning) to deal with but, having watched Phil demonstrate to his son how to get the last drops of rose from a box of Blossom Hill, I'm sure they'll be going the way of the adults very soon.
For New Year we went to Suffolk. Dave drove on the way there. The last time we stayed in these cottages we were the first to arrive so this time we resolved to be ridiculously late, and almost succeeded, driving up in the dark. 'Thank you for driving carefully through our village', a sign said, before we'd even entered the village. Dave was so shocked by this presumptuousness that he promptly dropped his cigarette into his lap and proceeded to drive very wildly through their village, demolishing garden walls and running over pets. Serve that village right.
Once there, we watched telly. There didn't seem to be much point in going outside. Whenever we did, something went wrong. Yokels (including a woman who looked like Boris Johnson in a wig) stood at the side of the road, staring grimly at us. The second night Nicki drove us into the next town, careering through the pedestrianized high street in the belief that it was too late for pedestrians. (It was certainly too late for the ones she mowed down.)
We went to a curry house located under a closed branch of Boots with blanked-out windows. We hesitated - it looked like a trap. Amanda asked two passers-by where the Thai place was, but having told us, they proceeded to enter this underground curry house, thus rendering it less suspicious. So we followed them in, and it was incredibly busy and understaffed, but we couldn't leave now because the two guys we'd asked about the Thai were in there and we already looked weird for following them in (like we'd changed all our plans for them - like we'd fallen in love with them or something) and if we left now we'd really blow their minds.
That curry was a long time coming.
We also went to Framlingham castle (closed) and Dunwich, which - apart from having fallen into the sea at some point - was being afflicted by a very cold and constant wind (wind was a problem for everyone on this holiday, but that's another story). In Dunwich we went to the Ship, which catered for ramblers and was itself suitably rambling - rooms everywhere, all higgledy-piggledy; dogs running around like in a medieval castle. The elderly barman looked as though he'd been working there for seventy years without a break. He undercharged Rhys, who said he thought the guy had had a stroke. 'Shouldn't you have called an ambulance then?', asked Mat. But it turned out Rhys had meant at some time in the past.
New Year's Eve involved a murder mystery evening in which I played a mafioso, Mat's younger brother. Amanda said mine was the worst Italian accent she'd ever heard, even worse than Mat's, and he was only doing a Borat impression. My real brother was the murderer, confusingly. Then there was Singstar, only Rhys forgot the microphones. Well done, Rhys! And I write that without irony, for the first time ever in my life and almost certainly the last.
It ended in drunkenness, predictably, though not for Mat, who is of course sympathetically pregnant, and was sitting on the sofa with his laptop when I staggered in, for all the world like a disapproving parent, watching me walk into walls. 'Are you going to vomit?', he asked. I lay on my bed fully-clothed with the lights on for a time, wondering which way it would go, but in the event I was not ill. Though with people sitting around my bed in the mornings (it was a sofabed in the lounge), I often felt like a convalescent.
For the first time we had the presence of very young children (a screeching as of pterodactyls through the wall in the morning) to deal with but, having watched Phil demonstrate to his son how to get the last drops of rose from a box of Blossom Hill, I'm sure they'll be going the way of the adults very soon.
posted by martin at 11:49 AM
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