Strobe tuna can votes vomit
The 31st of December was a good day. I finished Passage to India in the morning and transcribed quotes from it in the afternoon and felt accomplished at having 2000 words worth of primary text material and decided it was okay to celebrate new year's eve a little.
Went back to Connaught to give airbed to Benjy and realised I hadn't picked it up from reception the last time he returned it- abject failure. Benjy gave me a box of chocolate and a tiny bottle of champagne to pop at midnight, and I laughed at him "What do you think I am? Some burgeoning alcoholic?" but he said it was because he's afraid I'm too stressed and tense and it's incentive to meet people and give it to them, if nothing else. Anyway, got my Van Gogh bamboo laminated for the flat and cleaned room a little. Met Thomas briefly, watched Worlds Break results live on Twitter with tense Marvel background score making me more tense.
Walked back at 5.45 to meet Jo for dinner at 6 at Bibimbap. They turned over the 'closed' sign just as I arrived and it was such a delicious meal. We decided to experiment with the raw egg cooking in hot bowl and it was amazing, no wonder that's the traditional way, it's such a good binding agent. Also made resolutions on napkins while waiting.
We went back home and opened the Bailey's Haagen Dazs and it was deeelish. Kirti and Caitlin arrived and we ate and ate and made tea and it was super cute. Thomas then called "what did you say the flat number was Harish?" even though he'd just been over the night before.
Out came the Scrabble board and he'd brought cider and crisps. We played a hilarious game of weird words that we began calling party words and then I played 'strobe' and it was like woooooo partaaaay and someone played CAN and I played TUNA and K-Jo played together and still lost and they were so cute and I betrayed everyone with the Z on the triple and Thomas disallowed my KO-OK and there were Eurovision songs playing and much score tension and it was great.
We then proceeded to make another round of tea and decided we should probably start preparing to leave before 11, so I boiled potatoes and make garlicy peppery wedges and chips in the oven and then we packed all the food and wore 5 layers each and stole all of Angus' clothes and filled the hot water bottles and got ready to go.
Walked to Primrose Hill, passed a looooong while limo on the way and turns out it was Shalini Aunty and family and friends in it. So amusing. And I carried a mug of imperial spice with me while walking and have decided that walking with tea in an open mug in the cold is not ideal because it swooshes around and in 15 minutes it was iced tea.
Found the muddy hill and slipped and slid up it through the thronging masses of people and managed to squish sit down on plastic bags and eat warm potato and ate caramel fudge and then counted down and watched all the sets of fireworks in every direction and returned the lost pug and hugged in a line because it was too slippery to move and had a sip each of champagne and it was done and watched the lanterns and it was nice. Really nice.
Tried confidently galloping in the park once we were down and ended up sliding straight onto my bum after having avoided the muddiness for so long. Walked home and went straight into a warm bath.
Kirti was playing Love Hua Hai in bed and we fell asleep to good music and it was a really nice beginning. The perfect party with all the perfect party words.
