Ahoy there, mateys!
British people love fancy dress…they just love it. If there’s a birthday or a sporting victory to celebrate, what better way than by dressing up as cops and robbers or doctors and nurses? When I came to study in the UK last year I had no idea what fancy dress was – I was thinking ball gowns and tuxes. Once I figured out it was actually a group of people dressing up for a night out, I was still a bit confused as to why this would be fun in any way. That was before now.
Becky’s birthday (my third roomie), is coming up at the end of October so we decided to go out the weekend before Halloween and have a birthday/Halloween night out, complete with costumes. I haven’t dressed in costume for years, so I was stoked – Halloween is neck-in-neck with Thanksgiving for my #2 favorite holiday. Kelly and I spent this past weekend going to shops and getting things to wear for our costumes and I think we did an amazing job…she’s going to be a cop (an American one, not a bobby) and I’m going to be a pirate! I’ve secretly always wanted to be a pirate, so I’m very much looking forward to this. I even bought a sword and everything and spent all afternoon yesterday stabbing at things and jumping off the couch. Now all that’s left to complete the look is a parrot, which is proving quite hard to find. We found one in the fancy dress shop we went to yesterday in Northfields, but it was massive! It would have been more like a condor perched on my shoulder, so I think I might just have to do without one. Shame. Kelly’s outfit turned out great, too. She bought this cop hat and some handcuffs (even some cute handcuff earrings!). We had so much fun dressing up that we just sat around like that for a while watching TV, she as a cop and me as a pirate.
It was nice to have a down weekend. Becky went back to Rugby this weekend so it was just the two of us and so we shopped, watched some American Big Brother DVDs (until the disc messed up just before we saw the season finale…noooooo!), and we each cooked a meal for each other. I have to say, Kelly’s steak with sautéed mushrooms and onions far surpassed my sundried tomato and pine nut pasta. At least I can say I’ve progressed beyond grilled cheese sandwiches.
I had a bit of bad news last week when I got an e-mail at work saying that MSN Messenger was no longer allowed due to security concerns. I relied on chatting to my buddies during down-time to keep me sane as I’m reading these reports about travel sickness, mortgages, whatever. I was crushed! Kelly and I found a way to entertain ourselves another way though, and that is through constant e-mailing. Today we played a game of MASH via e-mail, which was absolutely hilarious. According to MASH – the game that all 6th grade girls know and love and trust to foretell their future happiness or lack thereof – I will become a magazine editor in New York. I’ll marry JP and we will live in a renovated Victorian mansion where we will have no children, but we will have a pet cat. And it’s a good thing I liked the little Skoda car we rented this summer, because, according to MASH, that is what I will have the pleasure of driving. Not such a bad future, I must say! It could be worse…when I foretold Kelly’s future she ended up riding the 266 bus on the way to her home in Cricklewood. 🙂 Throw your gang sign up, Kel!
Tags: costumes, food, Halloween, London, pirate, Random, UK, Working
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