Fa La La La La La La La La

In the spirit of Laura's Christmassy wintry cheery blogpost, here are some particularly festive moments from my day.

1. Half of the staff at work had to leave at midday due to the snow, leaving those of us who live in St. Albans to attempt to run a cafe, but I didn't mind because the customers were very sympathetic and full of the joy of Christmas (except for one of the virgers, but oh well.)

2. I accidentally squirted milk directly into my eye in front of some customers. A little elderly lady said "Oh dear, you just baptised yourself" which made me laugh.

3. A little toddler named Edwin kept getting in my way. His parents were saying: "No Edwin, out of the way Edwin," but I didn't mind because his name was Edwin.

4. Steve from work and his boyfriend Clive gave everyone a box of licquor chocolates each. This was especially nice as I have never even met Clive, and the chocolates are delicious.

5. The Abbey looked beautiful in the snow as I left at 4.30 (we closed early.)

6. Once I got to my road, I decided to run down it while listening to Fairytale of New York. I would recommend this to everyone.

Old Age

Ironically, after blogging about still being a child at heart and enjoying Christmas pantomimes, I now appear to be aging at an alarming rate.

I am surrounded by old people every day that I work, because at a cafe in a cathedral the majority of the customers are, well, ancient. There are obviously exceptions, like their grandchildren, choirboys and the occasional young person who possibly wandered in by mistake. However, some customers come in so regularly that I have named them (in my head) "Crazy Old Guy", "Smelly Old Guy," "Old Guy With The Adorable Face," and "Old Lady Who Looks Like A Hammerhead Shark." And now I am worrying that aging might be catching. That, or these people do not go to the cafe because they are old; they are old because they go to the cafe.

Perhaps there is something in the coffee.

I found a grey hair.

An actual grey hair, just hanging there next to my cheek and my ear, amid all the other black ones.

I showed it to my Mum, and she said "maybe it's blonde." After all, my brother was born blond, and his hair has got darker ever since and is now dark brown. The same could be happening to me in reverse. But I compared it to one of my Mum's actual grey hairs, and it truly was grey.

This is only the beginning. Soon I will have wrinkles. And backpain (actually, I already have this today). Soon I will call everyone 'dear.'

A grey hair. This is ridiculous. I read books from the 'Young Adult' section. I have a cuddly toy lion. I know all the lyrics to 'The Teddy Bear's Picnic." I pulled it out. It is not coming back.

Oh no you didn't!

Oh yes I did.

Jack won four tickets for the whole family to go and see the panto of Peter Pan tonight at the Alban Arena. I know I am eighteen, and that I have finished school, have a job, and am technically a grown up, but I really, really enjoyed it.

Tomorrow at work almost everyone is going to be talking about what a fun night they had and how drunk they got etc., and I can pretty much guarantee that none of them had as good a night as I did. There was music, exciting special effects, a camp Smee, adorable lost boys and topical jokes. I saw Rolo's husband in the queue for chocolate ice-cream during the interval, and my brother laughed very loudly during any quiet moment, as expected.

I laughed, I booed, I shouted 'It's behind you!' and I clapped my hands because I believe in fairies.* We were sitting in front of a huge crowd of cub scouts, and during a version of 'For Good' from Wicked with Neverland-related lyrics (don't ask) one of them yelled "Don't get all emotional!" It was funny. Or maybe you had to be there, I don't know. And Larry Lamb from Gavin and Stacey was excellent as Captain James T. Hook.

Anyway, now I can go back to being a very serious grown up who does not sing along to a version of 'Another One Bites The Dust' sung by pirates. Expect the next blog post to be about the current economic climate, or my views on the student protests, or mortgages. In the mean time, 'I always want to be a little boy** and to have fun.'

*Shut up. Of course fairies are real.

**Girl.

Got Me Thinking

Both Laura and Jane's excellent blog posts, as well as Friday's episode of The Graham Norton Show, got me thinking more about this whole fame business (or, you know, showbusiness.)

On The Graham Norton Show, they always seem to pick guests that you would never expect to see together, like David Boreanaz and Sharon Osbourne, or Cynthia Nixon from 'Sex and the City' and David Mitchell, and the contrast is usually what makes the programme entertaining.

Except occasionally they will have a guest who is unbelievably famous, and is billed as the main attraction, and with very few exceptions I will never care about this person as much as the other, more minor celebrities on the show. For example, on Friday the main guest was Justin Bieber, and the entire audience screamed whenever his name was mentioned, but his presence almost put me off watching it. The only reason I did watch it was because of Jack Black and Miranda Hart. At one point someone from the audience screamed 'I love you!' after Justin Bieber had spoken, and Miranda Hart said 'Thank you.' Obviously she was joking, but I kind of wish the audience member had actually been speaking to her, or at least to Jack Black.

I think to properly admire someone famous you have to identify with them in some way, so on those kind of programmes where they have Justin Bieber next to Miranda Hart or Katie Price next to Jo Brand I don't understand why anybody would tune in for the former rather than the latter.

On a semi-unrelated and not-at-all profound note, I think Sally Philips who plays Tilly in 'Miranda' (I sat down, I gave it another go, I laughed out loud) is aging in reverse. She looks younger than she did in 'Bridget Jones's Diary.' So, now I think there is a fifth category of celebrity, which is 'Famous People Who Age Backwards.' These are surely the most dangerous.

My Family and Other Shenanigans

Everyone's favourite eccentric religious cafe was closed today for some kind of event, so I got to spend a Sunday at home with my family, who, after four weeks of Sundays without me, were behaving more weirdly than normal.

As it is November, my Mum decided that we had to eat the Christmas pudding which my Aunt and Uncle gave us last Christmas, presumably to make room for a new one this year. She poured too much rum on it, so it burned for a very long time before we actually got to eat it. I never eat Christmas pudding on actual Christmas day, so I didn't really mind eating some now. After we'd finished, we got talking about toys Jack and I had when we were little, and Dad reminded me about a teddy bear we had that my parents had named 'Orifice' because apparently it was shaped like a polo mint, with a massive hole in the middle and a bear's head attatched.

Aside from family stuff, yesterday at work I broke my first glass (at work, not ever) and at one point thought I had broken the coffee machine, but it turned out that probably wasn't me, as I am not the first person to accidentally try and make a latte when the milk fridge is empty.

Oh dear. I have a stomach bug, and no title for this blog.

It is 13.28 and I have been lying in bed all morning and not eating anything, as I spent a significant portion of last night either throwing up, trying not to throw up or listening to the Deathly Hallows audio CD to distract me from throwing up. What endless fun. Which must, of course, have stopped by at least Thursday morning as I need to work on Saturday and apparently in the catering industry you can't go into work until forty-eight hours since your last vomit.

I can't believe I just used the word 'vomit' in a blog post. I'm so sorry. Not that it's a very rude swear word or a racially offensive term or anything, it's just a little bit gross. Although luckily I have been actual throwing up-free for 12 hours and counting.

Really Weird

Edited post because I have some interesting facts courtesy of the Lonely Planet Guide to Australia.

In Queensland, there is a place called Laura. It's a sleepy settlement that 'comes alive in June of odd-numbered years with the three-day Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival,' and includes somewhere called the Little Laura River. I was just thinking "I will have to go there and take a picture of the road sign" when I saw that on the very next page of the travel guide is information about Queensland's largest fresh water river, the Jardine river. It describes the 'impenetrable country of Jardine River National Park.' Apparently it's named after John Jardine and his sons Frank and Aleck, who were selected to supervise the area in 1864. Frank Jardine married a Samoan princess (Jane I found your real parents.)

I was a little freaked out. So, question for Laura and Jane, did you secretly go to Queensland and name places after yourselves?