Anna-rchy Weekender.

Yet another debauched, uber-splendid weekend, this time to mark (belatedly) my favouristist friend evers (Whelk's) 30th . A group of 17 of us had hired out a youth hostel conveniently attached to a public house about 5 miles from Avebury, Wilts. (The Goddard Arms, Clyffe Pypard - allegedly pronounced Clive Pippa (?) http://www.yha.org.uk/hostel/hostelpages/4016.html). The ale-fest began in ernest at 5pm, and a few of us fought the good fight through till 7am before sucumbing to an hour and a half sleeping/comatose respite.

A couple of interesting facts we acquired:

Allegedly in those thar parts (if you believe the mad woman working there) a regular steak is actually a pastie...its the rest of us that are wrong, although all but one of the peeps that had ordered this got what looked remarkably like steak...curious eh?

In preparing the dinner table (and obligatory embarassing birthday banners to adorn the room) we located a lo-hot of banners for 60th and 80th birthdays, and to me the weirdest: congrats on your wedding. This was in the youth hostel part, 3 dorms. with single bunkbeds...not a perfect honeymoon I'd imagine altho I may suggest it to my sister. Also not ideal I'd imagine if any of the 80ish years old hostelers happened to be incontinent, it could be prudent to bag the top bunk just in case methinks.

Also a vague question of grammer arose (amongst this party where the majority were teachers - look at the piccies and see if you'd allow any of this lot to shape your child's mind - hehehe) You know how you can pride yourself on something? What about if you're referring to a he? and the instance is in the past? Is it he prided himself? Dunno, sounds odd...but anyhoo one of the party is a super-clever phd french honey Bjork who lives here and she insists that all french people have to learn the irregular english verbs by heart, therefore any not in that list are regular. We played around with a few, such as the new verb minger (past tense mingered) and mumra (past tense mumrad). Building a picture in your minds yet as to the level of silliness in direct correlation to alcohol intake?

I was also introduced to a strange concept - champagne (which I know and love) with redbull and vodka!! Bjork's beau and I were asking her what this would literally be translated to in french, and she had to reply that such a tramp drink would not exist and therfore could have no name!! Brilliant..(actually it didn't taste too shabby, but I hate the smell of redbull)

And gloriously...the Whelk and me had got each other the exact same 30th birthday present!!! First edition of Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea, and first edition of Jay Nussbaum's Blue Road to Atlantis...my favourite books, and first editions...aaaaah!!! You know how when you buy a present for someone quite often you get something you'd really love to recieve? Well we both did. How cool? We have always been sooo similar (our birthdays are only 2 weeks apart), our families are scarily similar..we are almost the same person if I'd just taken her path (continued super-intelligent academia and education), and she'd just taken mine (travelling beach bum hippy). It makes our 30th even more precious really, loving that!