Prologue

An advisory note, before I begin: cheeky will be known as cheeky throughout this write-up. I am not good at replacing internet handles with real-life names, although I did at least remember to only ever shout ‘Kate!’ and nothing else when trying to get her attention in crowded public places.

And so, I’m going to write a little recap of our holiday. It may not be particularly original or witty (I haven’t felt witty for a long time), but it may provide a better record of actual activities than poor quality photos or our inane (and insane) ramblings in the pad that Kepp is now the proud owner of.

But cheeky came to stay at my house on the Monday prior to going on holiday on the Wednesday, so there was a little interlude which I shall recount prior to any exciting extra-insular experiences (sorry, got carried away by the ex factor there). On Monday night I picked her up from the train station after finishing work and she installed herself in the spare room in my house. (I do love having a spare room. And a house. It makes me feel so grown-up, and in a good way.) We had stir-fry for dinner, and watched no television whatsoever. I know, incredible. We did talk about tv quite a bit though…so that’s okay. Not much else was done this evening apart from cheeky laughing at the way I type and calling me scorpion girl. Hmph. That would be a stupid superhero. (Although not as useless perhaps as Grammar Girl, who I have just discovered (she does podcasts about grammar). Isn’t the internet a weird and wonderful place? Anyway.)

On Tuesday, I went to work and felt a little jealousy monster growl at leaving cheeky in bed. Sort of reasonable at 7am, but then I am rarely reasonable at 7am. I proceeded to do a minor amount of work at work, choosing instead to send quite a few pointless little emails to Keppet. As cheeky had my own computer turned on at home, she was a mute observer to this exchange every time gmail notifier beeped and showed another email arriving from Kepp. I found that strangely amusing. Cheeky herself managed to fill the day far more productively by catching up on Battlestar Galactica, so I also received excited emails containing many exclamation marks, descriptions of how she was shouting at the screen telling Anders to do various things, and gems like “I was bored of x, and now that x has been flown out the airlock x can go see Jammer and tell him all about how the people they trusted were Cylons and they can fume about it together.” This only lasted until she managed to kill my computer at about episode 5. Hmm. I think it just overheated with excitement – it was, thankfully, only a temporary thing. Or should that be momentary? She also tried one of my Fruity Oat bars (guess why I bought them), which later led to us dancing round the kitchen singing ‘make you bust out of your blouse!’ in fake squeaky Japanese voices. Ah, simple things…

When I got back from work, we hopped in the skitmobile and went off to Oxford to rescue Keppet from the physics department for an evening. Kepp and I had cocktails in Angels (it’s become a Thing now) – and no, we didn’t leave cheeky behind, I’ve just got myself in a grammatical tangle because she did accompany us but – cheeky had a glass of orange juice. Not a cocktail, even a virgin one. So there we go. We managed our usual effect on Angels – there were no customers to drive away this time with over-enthusiastic discussion of Angel episodes, but we did manage to make the bartender leave. She was so desperate to escape from us that she climbed a ladder into the ceiling. Seriously. From there, we walked into town to show cheeky a little bit of Oxford before the daylight faded, and basically just did a loop round Broad St, Catte St, Radcliffe Sq, the High and Conrmarket – popping into the Bodleian’s quad for a photo opportunity when we spotted its door was open (isn’t normally). We then dithered excessively about restaurants worthy of us, eventually plumping for Old Orleans. I ordered steak fajitas with (well, so did Keppet but she didn’t have) thoughts of a long-ago Bristol Hobbmeet. Jubal Early on ice! Anyway. They gave us a small bowl of salted popcorn, which cheeky and I devoured between us while they kept us waiting hours for our food. Our entertainment consisted of the kids’ menu and each other’s conversation…we read the kids’ menu. Apparently lemons have more sugar in than strawberries. *nods sagely* After dinner, we wandered back up to the skitmobile by way of G&D’s – the bestest little ice-cream shop (and other good things, such as those superb breakfast bagels we had once), where we had ice-cream…well, Keppet had tea. But I had ice cream. We then skipped the rest of the way back to the skitmobile, discussing how fun it is to act stupidly late at night, because passers-by just assume you’re drunk. You don’t get half so many weird looks as you would in the early afternoon, for example. Keppet got a lift back to her abode, and was probably unsurprised that the cd player was playing It Never Rains in Southern California. Certain things are predictable around me and cheeky…anyway, we then drove the hour back to my house and sat around in my bedroom playing more music while I started packing…until it got to midnight and I realised I didn’t want to die of exhaustion. So I went to bed, and as I drifted into happy dreams of a holiday, cheeky took over the living room and polished off season 3 of NZ show Outrageous Fortune, which she had already been watching that week and which I must find a copy of, I think. Anything that can provoke a text message saying ‘drugs rape & violence! Yay!’ has to be worth watching, right?

On Wednesday, I once more had to get up and go to work. Life is so unfair. But the day went fast and cheeky cajoled my computer into playing the final few BSG eps, so this time I got emails entitled, for example, ‘Jump!’ At 3pm I made a hasty exit (this was not really cheating, as I’d gone into work early), scooted home, packed all the remaining necessary things (bar one), locked up the house (having a few last-minute checks of whether I’d left the stove on) and drove us an hour up the M1 to East Midlands airport, on holiday at last.