Masquerading as a luvvie, dahling...

It's been quite a while since I frequented the theatre. So long, in fact, I can't actually remember what the last performance I saw was. Tonight, a motley crew of us dusted off our high-brow hats and celebrated our friend's birthday with a visit to the theatre, dahling, to see An Inspector Calls. Oh, alright - it was via the pub, but hey - who says luvvies can't scoff curly fries? The play was interesting and the set looked fab (I remember seeing the old black and white flick many, many moons ago and loving that so I was trying not to compare the two in my head), but our seats were right up in the nosebleed section and were so high up that the people on stage looked like beetles in period costumes. Oh well, I suppose that's what you get when you masquerade as a arts critic on the cheap.

And that's apparently all I have to say this evening. I bid you goodnight.

Bring on the sangria...

I love a decent catch up session with friends. Especially with those you don't see nearly often enough! Last night I headed out into town for tapas and lots of talking - for a long-overdue reunion with some pals from my MA. This merry bunch of folk included the star guest - the seldom-seen gorgeous gal from Athens who just jetted over to visit for a few days: cue lots of duty-free ouzo produced from her bag for each of us and the rest of the night becomes a bit blurry!

Tapas is lovely but it's lovelier in the relaxed-and-nestled-away-up-the-steep-cobbled-street-restaurant of El Torero. The sangria soon flowed copiously along with the gossip and it was fantastic. I learned all about my pals C and M's new pad in Durham; L's updates on her latest novel (she's up to number three - and I'm very jealous, having read one and two); A's job for a Greek theatre company; as well as everyone giving their lowdown on the recent cinematic offerings (hey, we're all ex-film students so we're allowed to judge). Lots of loveliness.

And to round the weekend off nicely, today is Mother's Day so I'm heading over to my folks' for some Mum cuddles and to bestow some flowers and nice things upon her. I like weekends like this. I just wish they happened more often - I guess I'll just have to get saving for that trip to Athens to make them happen more often!

Top o' the morning to ya...

I love an excuse to get into the kitchen and whip something different up, and last night was no exception! OK, I did have a reason. Wait - I'll rephrase that. I FOUND a reason. Yesterday was our 'official' 7th anniversary (i.e. the day we actually first went out together), and also St. Patrick's Day. And while neither myself nor The Other Half have any Oirish ancestry or links whatsoever, I thought what the heck and decided to try my hand at some Celtic cuisine for the occasion. Here's what I cooked up a storm with:

Soda Bread
Ok, I ran out of time to actually make this myself but it looks simple enough! And the supermarket coughed up a pretty good alternative to homemade.

Beef and Guinness Stew
I adjusted the quantities for two people, and used a mixture of button and chestnut mushrooms as I didn't have shiitakes. Plus I chucked in some chunks of carrot to pad it out a bit.

Colcannon cakes
So simple to make and could go on the side of lots of meals. I used the bacon to top them - but if you were veggie you could always sprinkle with grated strong cheese instead.

Cheesecake with Irish whisky sauce
This was delicious (we had to wait a wee bit of time to actually attempt to eat it, however - we were soooo full up after the stew!) and I'm not a whisky fan, but this was absolutely divine.

Yum, yum and yum again. I don't think I'll be waiting until next year for St. Paddy's Day to come around before I make this little lot again.

Will you have a cup of tea, Father? Ah, go ON...

Times are hard. So hard in fact, that a group of friends and I have taken to hosting our own festival instead of buying tickets and trekking to the back end of beyond. Except this is a festival with a difference – it’s (DIY) TedFest 2009! And it had its first outing this weekend. You see, there's a birthday in our midst - my pal S, who is now no longer the nice round number of 25. And she's a big fan of Father Ted (who isn't? It's fantastic!). We really wanted to go to the actual TedFest in Ireland, but as we're all skint - this do-it-yourself job is (almost) the next best thing.

If you've never seen Father Ted before - hang your head in shame. I strongly recommend that you watch it. It's classic. Here's a bit of a scene-setter: three incompetent Irish priests - Ted, Dougal and Jack - live in a decrepit old parochial house on crazy Craggy Island with their bizarre housekeeper Mrs. Doyle, and get into all manner of mishaps and misunderstandings with the insane folk of their parish. So simple, yet it's got some of the best lines and catchphrases from comedy - ever! Anyhoo, I digress.

The night was a huge (if surreal) success and everyone made an effort with the costumes and scene-setting. S got into character easily as Mrs. Doyle the demented housekeeper, and served everyone their drinks from teapots all evening. We each brought a selection of sandwiches with us so a mountain of bread became the table centrepiece (again, if you've never seen the show, this will mean absolutely zilch to you); The Other Half did wear his new wig and take a pet brick along for company; and the room was generally filled with priests, nuns, weird villagers and Lovely Girls contestants. And we played the game I spent Saturday morning creating out of an old notice board, some embellishments and some pictures I found online of babies with inordinate amounts of hair...'Pin the 'tache on Pat Mustard's Hairy Babies'! A good time was had by all.

Pat Mustard's (the hairy, randy milkman of Craggy Island)
offspring...before they were studded with moustaches in a
'Pin the Tail on the Donkey' manner.

I'll be steering clear of sandwiches for a long time though, that’s for sure.

Wig Wham Bam...

Well, this week I did something I've certainly never done before. No, not swimming with dolphins (although I'd like to one day); not skydiving from a hot air balloon (can't say I've ever really thought about that one) and not even finally sitting through the whole Lord of The Rings Trilogy (I managed half an hour of part one and fell asleep, and have never attempted again). No. This was neither exciting nor daredevil, but it was something I wouldn't care to repeat. Namely, having a domestic with The Other Half over a grey wig in the middle of a fancy dress shop. I kid you not.

On Monday, we went shopping for some bits and pieces (namely a wig for him) for the imminent TedFest party we're attending. Since he is going as old Father Jack, a quick bit of research on t'interweb told us we probably wouldn't get a Father Jack-specific wig, but something along the lines of a mad scientist/Beetlejuice-looking grey wig would do, especially as we could do the finishing touches to the costume ourselves to make everything more Jack-esque. So, off to the shopping centre we trotted to have a trying on session in every costume shop we could find. And by god, it was trying.

Tensions started to fray when we kept having to go backwards and forwards between different shops to compare wigs. Which pretty much all looked (and cost) the same. I'm not sure what The Other Half had a picture of in his head - I'm guessing he was looking for a packet labelled 'Father Jack wig', which I calmly explained several times over we were never going to find and we'd just have to get something as close as we could. Then the argument started when I found a Beetlejuice grey wig - which ok, didn't look exactly like Jack's hair, but we could trim it and it would be ideal. Apparently not good enough, despite the fact that nobody except our friends would see this, and nobody would care anyway if it wasn't an EXACT replica of Jack's mangy locks as they all knew who he was supposed to be going as.

It continued. The Beetlejuice wig just wasn't going to cut it as the picture on the front showed that the scalp of the wig was grey, when it should have been pink. This is when I lost it, there and then in the wig shop with a comedy polystyrene brick in one hand and a giant fake priest's cross in the other. The staff were so bemused by this weird couple shouting at each other over the colour of a wig's scalp that I left the shop and went off to buy a cup off coffee. On my return, I found a sheepish-looking Other Half with a bag in his hand. Turns out, he'd tried on the flamin' wig after I stormed out, only to find that the scalp was in fact pink, not grey. And it did look rather Father Jack-like after all.

I have no words.

What's shakin' baby...

Things have been a tad hectic of late, so here's the craic from this week in easy-to-digest chunks:

The seven year itch?
Not a sign of it, huzzah! On Monday, The Other Half and I realised that it was 7 years to the day since we met. (Whilst very inebriated at a party.) Although not our 'official' anniversary (we started dating on St. Patrick's Day), we celebrated with homemade spicy Thai burgers. Well, why not?

The bathroom saga continues
By god, does it. Nothing is ever simple in our house - it's going to take a lot longer to finish than we all thought due to fiddly little jobs that are taking ages to do. The plus side is: we now have working lights in there, yessss! Now for the ceiling, the vanity unit and all the tiling and grouting...

Hospitals smell
The Other Half had his annual heart check-up at l'hopital on Thursday (hole in the heart baby with another weirdly named defect I can't remember how to spell). This was doubly good as they said all is well with him, and because I tagged along - this got me out of a hideous networking event with work. Groovy.

Birthdays times two
It was my Dad and his twin sister's birthday on Tuesday (happy birthday, Daddy) and last night there was a family get-together using the occasion as an excuse. (Not that they need one.) Thankfully this time, family members refrained from horrifying me with all-too-detailed tales about distant relatives' personal lives. And we had cake. Yum.

The wig hunt
Next week we're at a party for my friend's birthday (and a sort of housewarming in her new flat, too). The theme is Father Ted, probably the funniest show in the world ever bar none. I'm now rooting through all manner of junk in the house in an attempt to assemble costumes, but we still need to go on a wig hunt to replicate Father Jack's hair.

The bathroom blitz...

Groan. We’re doing our bathroom up. I say we – what I mean is, my Dad is the builder extraordinaire; my Uncle the electrician is (surprisingly enough) fitting the spotlights; The Other Half is the labourer and I am the on-call tea and biscuits girl. There have been the usual mishaps of things not fitting how they’re supposed to, missing parts, wonky fittings and damaged panels…but nothing compared to the chaos that would have ensued had The Other Half and I been left to our own devices.

In our previous abode (the little flat), we attempted to spruce the bathroom up ourselves with some new flooring. Only we had no money whatsoever so ended up with some delightful ‘tile effect’ lino. Lovely. For reasons unknown, we used the old carpet that was down (who has carpet in a bathroom, for goodness’ sake? It’s very, very wrong! It was glued up the bath panel and everything!) as a template to cut from, and forgot that the design would therefore be inverted. We ended up with a fetching gaping hole in the wrong place that had to be covered with a bath mat at all times to hide our mutual incapability with DIY.

Things could be worse. At least after this, we'll actually have a ceiling instead of gaping plasterboard holes, and fully functional lights instead of a lone dangling bulb with exposed cables. Still, having to strategically time going for a wee is not my thing, really. But it'll be worth it. I hope.