eat, drink and be merry
Feb. 3rd, 2003 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j4Whew. Weekend. Party.
Went down to London on Friday for Kake's weekend-long party. Travelled down there with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lnr and ewx -- nice to have more company on the journey, particularly as sion_a was being very stressed about all the travel. The journey wasn't too bad on the whole except that they'd shut King's Cross tube station, so we had to walk to Euston, and by that time my back was killing me (the full 20-litre rucksack didn't help). Still we got there in the end (our arrival en masse resulting in the observation that "Cambridge has arrived!"), and daneel_olivaw (who is practically Cambridge-person-by-adoption now) arrived not long after.
It was great to finally meetmarnameow in real life, and to meet Caro and Pete(?) (even if I did make an idiot of myself flirting with Caro -- but sometimes it's fun to flirt with people who you know aren't available).
I'm having trouble remembering what happened when, as a lot of the weekend has disappeared into an alcoholic haze. Friday involved pizza, and a game of "I have never" which descended into the realms of WTMI rather more quickly than usual. (jiggery_pokery's recent post makes me think I should perhaps write something about "I have never" at a later date...)
On Saturday we went to Borough Market to buy interesting food. Borough Market is wonderful -- they sell every kind of food imaginable, and I kept being tempted by beautiful vegetables that I didn't have the faintest idea how to use, and expensive chocolates that I really didn't need. Managed to be quite restrained in the end, although I did buy heaps of lovely beer. We'd been given a shopping list of stuff to buy for the people who wanted to cook specific things, and this list included crab meat (becausemarnameow wanted to make sushi). However, they didn't seem to have any crab meat -- only live crabs. doop was being indecisive about whether or not to get a live crab, and I persuaded him into it, because I thought it'd be more interesting -- and indeed it was. Forgive me, but I'm now going to go into great detail about the killing of a crab ... vegetarians may want to look away now.
When we'd bought the crab, I insisted that we had to give it a name. It seemed important to me to prove that even if we'd named the creature, we'd still be able to eat it; otherwise it would have felt like I was deluding myself that it wasn't a real, living, breathing animal. So we called it Irving (though it was later shown to be female) and carried it in a plastic bag all the way back home. (I suppose people must have carried live crabs on the underground before, but it seemed like a very funny thing to do at the time.) We had to wait a while before someone turned up with a big enough pan to fit the crab into, during which time Irving sat on top of the freezer, moving a little bit occasionally. He didn't look very well, to be honest, and I wanted to put him out of his misery as soon as possible.
Eventually the time came to consign Irving to the big pan of boiling water. It's surprisingly awkward to get a crab into a pan, particularly when you're worrying that it might suddenly realise what you're about to do to it, and try to escape or attack or something. Not that it looked lively enough to do either, but you never know. In the end we just tipped it into the pan, put the lid on, and watched as its legs floated upwards and the visible bits of its flesh turned white. I hoped that death-by-boiling-water was reasonably quick, though Beckett suggests that it isn't.
Once Irving was done, we had the fun task of dismembering him and extracting the edible bits. I can honestly say that I've never had so much fun from a fish-counter. I wondered if I'd be squicked by pulling the crab to bits, having seen it alive and moving around, but it honestly didn't bother me at all. And it was fascinating to be able to see all the various bits of its anatomy, even if we weren't always entirely sure what those bits did. Particularly notable were some wonderful lung-like-things which were roughly cone-shaped, greyish-white, and looked like they were slightly ridged, but on closer inspection turned out to be made of hundreds of flappy flanges. There was also some brownish stuff inside the shell which looked like random visceral goop but when it was placed in cold water turned out to consist of thousands of tiny tendrils. We were puzzled for a while by the heaps of bright red stuff that we were finding, and ended up throwing it away, but apparently it was just unfertilised eggs and was entirely edible. (This was the point at which we realised that Irving had in fact been a lady crab.) I'm not over-keen on fish roe generally though, so I probably wasn't missing much.
I must say, I now have a lot of respect for people who prepare crab in restaurants and so on; and I also see why the damned stuff is so expensive. It took me and doop hours to extract a tiny bowl of crabmeat from an ever-growing heap of fragments of bone, shell, and random viscera -- although I suspect that's partly because we got so carried away with enthusiasm for examining and poking at the various innards.
So anyway... after 24 years of eating animals, that's the first time I've actually killed one. I have a claw as a trophy. :-) I'd be interested to see if I was as unbothered about killing something a little more "cute" and/or mammalian ... perhaps a rabbit or something.
sion_a now thinks I am scary. I can't imagine why.
Back to the party... while doop and I were going into rhapsodies about the internal organs of crustacea, and scaring off a lot of other people in the process, a lot of more normal cooking was going on.marnameow made absolutely fantastic sushi, and various people made some nice pasta salads and suchlike. Thank you to whoever made them, particularly since I took three tupperwares full of leftovers home with me, and have just had the leftover potato salad for lunch. :-)
As the afternoon progressed there was less cooking and more drinking. A lot more drinking. I must say that my memories of most of the conversations I had that evening are a bit hazy... I remember a fair amount of obvious flirting withmarnameow, which was nice (and I hope she didn't mind me behaving like a drunken slapper towards her); I remember having a long serious-ish conversation with julietk, the seriousness of which was slightly dented by the fact that we were both being rather giggly and flirty (and I hope she didn't mind me behaving like a drunken slapper towards her, either... um, there seems to be a pattern developing here) ... And I remember having a very weird conversation with Ingvar, who seemed to be alternating between trying to pull me, and explaining how monogamous he was. He then digressed onto the subject of cooking, and then on to killing people, and how he'd go about killing me. With demonstrations. Fortunately I got rescued before the conversation got any weirder ...
I didn't see much ofdaneel_olivaw during the Saturday evening, which was probably largely my fault; I felt like he was trying to cling to me a bit [which in retrospect a) probably wasn't true, & was probably just me being paranoid and edgy; and b) was quite understandable if he was clinging since he didn't know that many other people there!] and this was making me feel pretty twitchy. Having since read his LJ account of the party I feel horribly guilty about neglecting him so badly. :-( The problem is when I'm at a party I don't tend to want to just curl up in a corner with one person ... the way I see it, there wouldn't be much point in going to a party if I was going to do that. If I'm at a party where there's lots of people, I want to talk to lots of people. Also, I tend to want to have, well, partyish conversations at parties, rather than conversations about depression. And, above all, I don't really like having to try to be responsible for someone else's social interactions as well as my own. I guess that makes me a very selfish person and a pretty crap friend. :-(
Also feel in retrospect like I was neglectinglnr badly; I noticed she was being a bit mopey but she said she was just tired, and then I kind of got dragged into the maelstrom of general party drunkenness and loudness, and I'm not very good at noticing emotional subtleties once I get into that state. ... I just wish I was better at looking after people who are unhappy. :-/
Finally got to bed some time around 6am, and slept until midday, at which point I realised that we were probably going to have to abandon our (not-very-concrete) plans to go to BodyWorlds and/or the London Fetish Fair on Sunday afternoon. Certainly I was far too hungover to contemplate doing anything so energetic. Instead I pottered around, read the papers, and marvelled atmarnameow's knowledge of Barbie dolls. "McDonalds Barbie" is just horrifying, particularly the "ethnic" version ("Hey, black kids, you too can aspire to the minimum wage!").
sion_a and I made our way back eventually in the late afternoon; I fell asleep on the tube. Got an early night for once, and slept so soundly that I didn't even wake up when sion_a came to bed. Still a bit tired now, but then we had to get up quite early, as sion_a had to be back in London again, for work this time. I'm joining him there after work and we're going to (hopefully) really go and see BodyWorlds this time!
Anyway, all in all, good weekend (apart from all the emotional guilt... will deal with that later); thanks to Kake and doop and the rest of London-house for a great party, thanks to all the people who made food, and thanks to all the people who let me flirt drunkenly with them. :-)
Lots of things that I want to wibble about more abstractly as a result of the weekend -- I'll leave them for later, with a few keywords here as reminders to myself. [drinking games & peer pressure; alcohol; parties and depression; flirting/friendship; the london underground; killing things; anatomy as art]
Went down to London on Friday for Kake's weekend-long party. Travelled down there with
lnr and ewx -- nice to have more company on the journey, particularly as sion_a was being very stressed about all the travel. The journey wasn't too bad on the whole except that they'd shut King's Cross tube station, so we had to walk to Euston, and by that time my back was killing me (the full 20-litre rucksack didn't help). Still we got there in the end (our arrival en masse resulting in the observation that "Cambridge has arrived!"), and daneel_olivaw (who is practically Cambridge-person-by-adoption now) arrived not long after.It was great to finally meet
marnameow in real life, and to meet Caro and Pete(?) (even if I did make an idiot of myself flirting with Caro -- but sometimes it's fun to flirt with people who you know aren't available). I'm having trouble remembering what happened when, as a lot of the weekend has disappeared into an alcoholic haze. Friday involved pizza, and a game of "I have never" which descended into the realms of WTMI rather more quickly than usual. (
jiggery_pokery's recent post makes me think I should perhaps write something about "I have never" at a later date...)On Saturday we went to Borough Market to buy interesting food. Borough Market is wonderful -- they sell every kind of food imaginable, and I kept being tempted by beautiful vegetables that I didn't have the faintest idea how to use, and expensive chocolates that I really didn't need. Managed to be quite restrained in the end, although I did buy heaps of lovely beer. We'd been given a shopping list of stuff to buy for the people who wanted to cook specific things, and this list included crab meat (because
marnameow wanted to make sushi). However, they didn't seem to have any crab meat -- only live crabs. doop was being indecisive about whether or not to get a live crab, and I persuaded him into it, because I thought it'd be more interesting -- and indeed it was. Forgive me, but I'm now going to go into great detail about the killing of a crab ... vegetarians may want to look away now.When we'd bought the crab, I insisted that we had to give it a name. It seemed important to me to prove that even if we'd named the creature, we'd still be able to eat it; otherwise it would have felt like I was deluding myself that it wasn't a real, living, breathing animal. So we called it Irving (though it was later shown to be female) and carried it in a plastic bag all the way back home. (I suppose people must have carried live crabs on the underground before, but it seemed like a very funny thing to do at the time.) We had to wait a while before someone turned up with a big enough pan to fit the crab into, during which time Irving sat on top of the freezer, moving a little bit occasionally. He didn't look very well, to be honest, and I wanted to put him out of his misery as soon as possible.
Eventually the time came to consign Irving to the big pan of boiling water. It's surprisingly awkward to get a crab into a pan, particularly when you're worrying that it might suddenly realise what you're about to do to it, and try to escape or attack or something. Not that it looked lively enough to do either, but you never know. In the end we just tipped it into the pan, put the lid on, and watched as its legs floated upwards and the visible bits of its flesh turned white. I hoped that death-by-boiling-water was reasonably quick, though Beckett suggests that it isn't.
Once Irving was done, we had the fun task of dismembering him and extracting the edible bits. I can honestly say that I've never had so much fun from a fish-counter. I wondered if I'd be squicked by pulling the crab to bits, having seen it alive and moving around, but it honestly didn't bother me at all. And it was fascinating to be able to see all the various bits of its anatomy, even if we weren't always entirely sure what those bits did. Particularly notable were some wonderful lung-like-things which were roughly cone-shaped, greyish-white, and looked like they were slightly ridged, but on closer inspection turned out to be made of hundreds of flappy flanges. There was also some brownish stuff inside the shell which looked like random visceral goop but when it was placed in cold water turned out to consist of thousands of tiny tendrils. We were puzzled for a while by the heaps of bright red stuff that we were finding, and ended up throwing it away, but apparently it was just unfertilised eggs and was entirely edible. (This was the point at which we realised that Irving had in fact been a lady crab.) I'm not over-keen on fish roe generally though, so I probably wasn't missing much.
I must say, I now have a lot of respect for people who prepare crab in restaurants and so on; and I also see why the damned stuff is so expensive. It took me and doop hours to extract a tiny bowl of crabmeat from an ever-growing heap of fragments of bone, shell, and random viscera -- although I suspect that's partly because we got so carried away with enthusiasm for examining and poking at the various innards.
So anyway... after 24 years of eating animals, that's the first time I've actually killed one. I have a claw as a trophy. :-) I'd be interested to see if I was as unbothered about killing something a little more "cute" and/or mammalian ... perhaps a rabbit or something.
sion_a now thinks I am scary. I can't imagine why.Back to the party... while doop and I were going into rhapsodies about the internal organs of crustacea, and scaring off a lot of other people in the process, a lot of more normal cooking was going on.
marnameow made absolutely fantastic sushi, and various people made some nice pasta salads and suchlike. Thank you to whoever made them, particularly since I took three tupperwares full of leftovers home with me, and have just had the leftover potato salad for lunch. :-)As the afternoon progressed there was less cooking and more drinking. A lot more drinking. I must say that my memories of most of the conversations I had that evening are a bit hazy... I remember a fair amount of obvious flirting with
marnameow, which was nice (and I hope she didn't mind me behaving like a drunken slapper towards her); I remember having a long serious-ish conversation with julietk, the seriousness of which was slightly dented by the fact that we were both being rather giggly and flirty (and I hope she didn't mind me behaving like a drunken slapper towards her, either... um, there seems to be a pattern developing here) ... And I remember having a very weird conversation with Ingvar, who seemed to be alternating between trying to pull me, and explaining how monogamous he was. He then digressed onto the subject of cooking, and then on to killing people, and how he'd go about killing me. With demonstrations. Fortunately I got rescued before the conversation got any weirder ...I didn't see much of
daneel_olivaw during the Saturday evening, which was probably largely my fault; I felt like he was trying to cling to me a bit [which in retrospect a) probably wasn't true, & was probably just me being paranoid and edgy; and b) was quite understandable if he was clinging since he didn't know that many other people there!] and this was making me feel pretty twitchy. Having since read his LJ account of the party I feel horribly guilty about neglecting him so badly. :-( The problem is when I'm at a party I don't tend to want to just curl up in a corner with one person ... the way I see it, there wouldn't be much point in going to a party if I was going to do that. If I'm at a party where there's lots of people, I want to talk to lots of people. Also, I tend to want to have, well, partyish conversations at parties, rather than conversations about depression. And, above all, I don't really like having to try to be responsible for someone else's social interactions as well as my own. I guess that makes me a very selfish person and a pretty crap friend. :-(Also feel in retrospect like I was neglecting
lnr badly; I noticed she was being a bit mopey but she said she was just tired, and then I kind of got dragged into the maelstrom of general party drunkenness and loudness, and I'm not very good at noticing emotional subtleties once I get into that state. ... I just wish I was better at looking after people who are unhappy. :-/Finally got to bed some time around 6am, and slept until midday, at which point I realised that we were probably going to have to abandon our (not-very-concrete) plans to go to BodyWorlds and/or the London Fetish Fair on Sunday afternoon. Certainly I was far too hungover to contemplate doing anything so energetic. Instead I pottered around, read the papers, and marvelled at
marnameow's knowledge of Barbie dolls. "McDonalds Barbie" is just horrifying, particularly the "ethnic" version ("Hey, black kids, you too can aspire to the minimum wage!"). sion_a and I made our way back eventually in the late afternoon; I fell asleep on the tube. Got an early night for once, and slept so soundly that I didn't even wake up when sion_a came to bed. Still a bit tired now, but then we had to get up quite early, as sion_a had to be back in London again, for work this time. I'm joining him there after work and we're going to (hopefully) really go and see BodyWorlds this time!Anyway, all in all, good weekend (apart from all the emotional guilt... will deal with that later); thanks to Kake and doop and the rest of London-house for a great party, thanks to all the people who made food, and thanks to all the people who let me flirt drunkenly with them. :-)
Lots of things that I want to wibble about more abstractly as a result of the weekend -- I'll leave them for later, with a few keywords here as reminders to myself. [drinking games & peer pressure; alcohol; parties and depression; flirting/friendship; the london underground; killing things; anatomy as art]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-02-03 06:39 am (UTC)Don't worry. You're thinking good thoughts. You're cool. :-)
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Date: 2003-02-03 09:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-03 09:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-03 11:51 am (UTC)...
:) *hugs* I tend to always imagine myself as being an outsider, never belonging anywhere, so comments like that will always make me smile. And the sooner I move, the better.
...even if I did make an idiot of myself flirting with Caro...
If you did then there were a whole heap of us idiots! It was all in good fun.
..."I have never" which descended into the realms of WTMI...
Way??? Really? Oh... [wanders off feeling sheepish]
I didn't see much of
I didn't seek you out much, and you didn't seek me out much. You were clearly having fun, and I was doing my best to do so also. Chemistry and life got in the way for a while, s'all. You are not to blame, or responsible, for the way I feel.
I felt like he was trying to cling to me a bit...
It wasn't my intention to do so.
Having since read his LJ account of the party I feel horribly guilty about neglecting him so badly. :-(
I thought for a while about how much to write, and with what level of security because I don't want you to feel bad and I thought that this might have that effect. If I had really wanted to drag you aside and rake over the coals *again* I would have done so. If Ingvar hadn't given me a kick in the wrong direction at precisely the wrong moment then I probably would have made it through the night without SHing [acronym in use because your post has no padlock]. That said, my SH is linked to my habit of being poor at expressing how I feel, and bottling it. SH is a way of externalising the pain contained in those bottles. I'm tending to use [padlocked] LJ entries as an alternative place to vent those bottles, so I had to say something so that I don't forget about it when I come back to it in the forthcoming weeks and months (I am tending to re-read my posts, mood-diary style). I'd rather not exclude you from such postings, because it is important to me that you know how I feel.
*hugs*
The problem is when I'm at a party I don't tend to want to just curl up in a corner with one person ... the way I see it, there wouldn't be much point in going to a party if I was going to do that. If I'm at a party where there's lots of people, I want to talk to lots of people.
You and I work rooms differently. I view parties as a place to meet new and interesting people, and sno^W talk to them. But the conversations I prefer are the one-on-one type, and so I tend to talk to one person for half an hour or more, and then another, and so on. If there are more than four people in a conversation then I never seem to break into it, but sit on the periphery and listen. YMM (and clearly does) V. < shrug >.
Also, I tend to want to have, well, partyish conversations at parties, rather than conversations about depression.
I can't say I blame you there. I don't want to talk about depression at parties, especially my own. I want it to stop, but it keeps creeping up on me. And the last thing I want to do is feel that I'm spoiling two people's evenings in the process.
And ... I don't really like having to try to be responsible for someone else's social interactions as well as my own.
I'm sorry I make you feel like this.
I guess that makes me a very selfish person and a pretty crap friend.
Right. You have been, and continue to be, incredibly supportive to me at a time when I really needed someone and didn't know how to ask for help. You've been at the end of a phone, at the end of an email, rearranged weekends, tolerated me turning up on your doorstep at no notice, listened to me ramble in circles for hours, let me bitch, let me cry, held & comforted me, given me things to look forward to, given me things to hope for, introduced me to new friends, and helped me get to a place where I can start to rebuild. These are just the things that occur to me off the top of my head. We hardly knew each other a year ago. You are now my dearest and most trusted friend. I love you. *hug*
no subject
Date: 2003-02-03 05:10 pm (UTC)Oh, and how could I *possibly* mind you being a lovely flirt? Meow! (http://www.barbiecollectibles.com/showcase/product.asp?type=&subtype=&product_id=150397&series_id=150077)
no subject
Date: 2003-02-04 09:59 am (UTC)Nah, it wasn't that bad, and besides I don't really believe in the concept of WTMI or even TMI. It just seemed to get more sexual more quickly than I'm used to these days. I'm used to IHN veering rapidly back and forth from the mundane ("I have never owned a car") to the dodgy (you can make up your own example here!).
I thought for a while about how much to write, and with what level of security because I don't want you to feel bad and I thought that this might have that effect. If I had really wanted to drag you aside and rake over the coals *again* I would have done so.
I just feel bad because I know I was (only semi-consciously, though I caught myself doing it) deliberately trying to avoid that happening. I'd like to be able to say that it was because I didn't think it would do you any good to go over it all again, but I'm afraid it was a much more selfish motive of "I can't face trying to do a counselling session in the middle of a party". :-(
If Ingvar hadn't given me a kick in the wrong direction at precisely the wrong moment then I probably would have made it through the night without SHing [acronym in use because your post has no padlock].
Argh. What did he do/say to trigger that? Tell me by email if you don't want to talk about it on here. And I might have to go and rip his head off. (BTW the acronym is fairly common use so you may not be hiding as much as you think... just warning you.)
That said, my SH is linked to my habit of being poor at expressing how I feel, and bottling it. SH is a way of externalising the pain contained in those bottles.
<nods>
I'm tending to use [padlocked] LJ entries as an alternative place to vent those bottles,
Sounds like a good plan. I've often found that writing about stuff helps, though these days I don't seem to write anywhere near as much personal stuff as I used to -- I used to write heaps of (paper) journal ramblings, and I haven't done that for months, and I don't write the same kind of thing on LJ.
so I had to say something so that I don't forget about it when I come back to it in the forthcoming weeks and months (I am tending to re-read my posts, mood-diary style).
Do you find re-reading them helps? (Never had much success with mood-diaries myself, but interested to know if it works for other people.)
I'd rather not exclude you from such postings, because it is important to me that you know how I feel.
No, no, I don't want you to exclude me from postings. But you'll have to bear in mind that I'll probably want to make my reactions known as well (and I'm afraid I don't do restricted entries -- if that bothers you, please let me know and we'll come to some sort of compromise on sensitive issues). I don't want you to feel you have to protect me from reacting to your emotions, if you see what I mean.
You and I work rooms differently.
I don't "work the room" (euwww, networking), I just chat to whoever's around, flitting in and out of the conversations that sound interesting, sticking closer to the people who strike me as being interesting no matter what they're talking about. One-to-one conversations at parties always strike me as a bit exclusive.
Oh, I don't know. Everything is stressing me out at the moment. I don't really think I'm in any state to talk about this (or anything else) coherently at the moment.
Waving! Hopefully not drowning
Date: 2003-02-06 03:47 am (UTC)Dunno about drunken flirting, last time you flirted with me you were sober. :)
Have just added you and LNR as friends, as I've decided I *must* use LJ more, and now you can tell me off if I start slacking. I don't use names on LJ because of one of the people who has me listed as a friend (she's not on my friends list, if you see what I mean).
Hopefully you'll know who I am... if the picture hasn't already given it away... but if not, read my journal. You were AT one of the events described. ;)
Love and hugs and stuff
Re: Waving! Hopefully not drowning
Date: 2003-02-10 03:30 am (UTC)Hell, last time I flirted with you, you were getting married!
Hello, anyway. Use LJ more. Go on, you know you need a GREAT BIG TIME-SINK. :)