A Pirate's Wedding, Part I: A Bottle of Rum

There was a lot of drinking. There needed to be. After the stress of cleaning and moving out of my flat* the arrival of my bridesmaids was a more than welcome relief. Miss Melville came down from Aberdeen and Vi flew in from America with her husband, Wally, and their son, Smally Wally. The Paleo-embryologist (also known as the Welsh Cake, or 'Cake' for short) was the only one of the three who actually lived anywhere near me, and had been keeping me sane all summer by taking me to The Ram and pouring rose' down my gullet whenever I got stressed out.

So Thursday, the day before the wedding, exactly 3 things needed to be accomplished. They were
1. Print out the service books for the wedding and tie them with ribbons
2. Bake, frost, and decoarate the wedding cake
3. Attend the rehearsal

That's still a pretty full agenda.

The service booklets would have been done the day before if I hadn't fucked them up and if my printer hadn't wasted all the good paper I'd bought by printing off the fucked up copies even after I pressed the "cancel" button and dozen times and finally turned the thing off. So first thing Thursday it was hop it off to the stationery shop to buy more paper, phone dad and get him to come over to my hotel room where I'd set up my computer and laser printer and get him to supervise the rest of the printing, and then get Aunt Sr. Pain-in-the-Ass to fold, punch, and ribbon-tie all 90 copies.

That was accomplished by 10:30 am.

Then it was grab all the cake supplies and get a cab up to the University of Bristol Chaplaincy, where they have a full-size professional kitchen with TWO ovens, which i'd booked out for the purpose of baking my cake. (IRONIC: the reason I was able to use the chaplaincy is because I'm a member of the UofB Atheist society, which is part of the multi-faith forum, which has access to the chaplaincy office. Thus I, a godless heathen, was able to use my atheist connections to bake a cake in a chaplain's office for my giant, pompus church wedding. Brilliant.)

The bridesmaids were all supposed to meet me there at noon, and yet somehow, not one of them managed to make it there without assistance. I would take me too long to go to into the convoluted scenario when they all kept phoning me saying "I'm at the corner of pillarbox and lampost. Where are you and how do i find you?" but it took a while and became far more complicated than it ever should have been. You goofballs.

Finally cake-baking and wine-drinking commenced. The first thing that needed to happen was grating the 20 pounds of carrots for the carrot cake tiers. That took a while. The whole process was reasonably well organized though, and once we got the first cake in the oven it all went fairly well. At The Cake (the human one, not the eating one) and Miss Melville went to get my dress from The Cake's flat and take it to the hotel where i was staying, and I went with Vi and the Wallys to the church for the rehearsal.

The rehearsal was extremely rushed. We only had a 25 minute window, and the minister really rushed through everything. Which was kind of good because it kept my mother from interfereing and interrupting every 10 seconds with questions about irrelevancies, but it also didn't give time for the readers to practice their readings, which I thought was rather important. Pirate and I did get to practice our vows, using the names of Marge and Homer and not looking at each other. I managed to get through all the God bits without rolling my eyes, which was an accomplishment.

After that it was a fast dinner at the nearest restaurant** and then back up to keep working on the cake. This is where it all started to go tits up.

For one thing, the chaplaincy had double-booked the kitchen, and when I got back there were 3 muslim blokes there cooking a feast for Ramadan for about 50 people. I wasnt' able to get in the door. They said they would be gone in 10 minutes. An hour later they were still there so I just started working around them as best I could.

They finally left but the place was a mess. I was able to work around the mess, but when they came back to clean up it really go hairy. I needed the sink to keep washing mixing bowls and utensils as i changed back and forth between carrot and lemon cake and frosting, but they were using the sink. That killed another 45 minutes of valuable time.

Then at one point one of them TURNED OFF THE OVENS!. Thank GOD the Cake noticed and we turned them straight back on so there was no damage done. If she hadn't seen that happen 2 tiers of my cake would have been ruined.

And then finally one of the batches of frosting didn't turn out. For some reason it was complete soup. It wasn't usable. So we weren't able to get the whole cake frosted that night.

The Cake's b.f. (The Pud) turned up about 11 pm from York where he's doing his PhD in entymology. We called a cab to take the cake (small c) to my hotel where they agreed to refridgerate it for me overnight. The 4 of us -- The Cake, The Pud, Miss Melville and myself -- piled into a cab, and between us we were able to hold on to all 4 tiers of cake and the bowl of soupy frosting. It was nearly midnight when we got to the hotel, and the cake was still only half frosted!

Stay tuned for part II: The Big Day



*I vacated my flat on the Wednesday before the wedding and moved in to the hotel. On Thursday morning I woke up and discovered I'd left ALL my socks and underwear behind.
**The Rehearsal Dinner isn't a custom over here in the UK, which is good because I was able to eat and run

Short Human

One of my teammates just announced she's pregnant, so I had this printed up for her at the T-shirt place up the road.
Well what the hell else do you get a knocked-up rower??? (Someone better get me one of these when I start spawning, that's all I'm saying.)

Sorry *sheepish*

I am rubbish. I haven't posted in AGES, and for those few of you who give a shit it must have been really irritating. I'm sorry.

I can only make the excuse that planning a wedding, moving house, and trying to write a PhD is taking its toll. It's been frustrating for me, too, because I keep having all these thoughts that I want to share but don't have time to write down right away, and by the time I get the time I've forgotten them. But here are a few of the highlights from the past couple weeks:

Fringe:

Met Hendrix Cat for coffee and a truly great She Elephant for dinner (along with the Pirate). We had a delightful time and I was thrilled to meet both of them. I sincerely hope we have the chance to repeat the experience.

Saw Ed Byrne, who did half his routine on wedding planning. We were in pain from laughing so hard. That one really hit the zeitgeist's funny bone.

Politix:

Yay for Sarah Palin! She's going to destroy the GOP ticket. They talk big now, but at the end of the day a significant chunk of the Republicans won't vote for the McCain/Palin ticket for 2 reasons.
1. After all the flack about Obama's lack of experience, she's got even less. And everyone knows that if McCain gets elected, there's a better than average chance he won't live out the full term. She's so inexperienced she even said "Can someone explain to me just what the VP does all day?" Even the republicans, when pressed, won't vote for that kind cluelessness.

2. Her so-called "family values." She was brought in because McCain is too liberal (snort) for the evangelical right wingers. She's certainly nutty enough, but she's a mother with 5 kids all in school including an infant with a serious disability. The extreme conservative right think she should be home taking care of them! A man with her positions might have been a boon to the ticket, but not a woman with a baby.

She was also brought in to pick up some of the Hillary camp, but (most) women won't be stupid enough to vote for a vagina that is hell bent on taking away women's rights to control their own snatches.

And finally, she's so right wing wacko conservative that she'll put off a lot of the moderate undecideds that Obama is trying to woo and send them running to his camp.

So at the end of the day a lot of Republicans won't vote for a ticket with Palin on it, and they sure as shit won't vote for Obama, so they'll stay home. Result: low voter turnout on election day and victory for Obama. Thus spake Zarathustra.

Bridal shower:

Bridesmaid tried to plan one for me. Not one person came. So she tried again. ONE person came. They don't have showers over here, and I don't think anyone really "got it" or understood how important it was. *sad*

Wedding:

AAaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
The bridesmaids dresses were supposed to be rust-colored, not pumpkin orange. I sincerely hope my friends don't feel like they're walking down the isle in giant traffic cones. The swatch did NOT look that bright, I swear!

House:

Pirate has just collected the keys to our future house (only 12 days away!) and has begun taking carloads of my stuff down to Plymouth. I haven't been to Plymouth yet, but he brought me pictures. The garden and views are fantastic, the furniture is acceptable, and the kitchen appliances are strangely nonexistent. I really don't know how you can call something "fully furnished" and not include a refrigerator! So guess who's going fridge shopping this week? Yup, not me!

Blogger Hook-up in the Burgh of Edin

Pirate and I are going to spend a few days in Edinburgh at the Fringe this month. We'll be arriving in Edinburgh on Sunday 17th and staying for 3 nights, leaving on Wednesay 20th.

If anyone fancies a get-together for a meal or coffee or whatever, do let me know. (GSE??? Hendrix-cat?) Pirate and I would love to see you.

(off)road-trip!

Tomorrow I am going to bicycle from Brizzle to Devizes and back! It will be over 80 miles round-trip. I am very excited. I will follow National Cycle Route 4 along the Avon from Bristol to Bath and then along the Kennet and Avon Canal from Bath to Devizes.

The weather will be beautiful, there will be aquaducts and kingfishers and shady beach forests and ice cream, and best off all there will be Ziggy!

News on Monday.

Good Day, Sunshine!

What an amazing day it's been! I was going to write about the bloody awful day I had on Sunday at Pirate's cricket game, where the people at the Arundel Castle cricket ground were so unbelievably rude to me that by lunch time I was sitting by myself in the car, in tears, and wouldn't come sit at the table. Never in my life have I been treated so badly by complete strangers. So now I would like to proclaim loudly to all who hear that the Duke of Norfolk's 11 are the biggest, snottiest, nastiest, most condescending collection of stuck-up, aristocratic pricks I have ever met, and they can all go rot. To be fair it wasn't the players who were awful, it was all their hangers-on and the staff in the clubhouse. Cunts, the lot of them.

Some of what was said to me was so horrible it was funny, but to convey the true spirit I would have to type in an accent, which I suck at, so instead I'm going to tell you why today was so wonderful instead.

It started off with another mess of wedding reply cards, which are always fun. I haven't enjoyed going to the box to get my mail this much since I was 10 years old and expecting birthday cards with cheques in them.

Today I received a very, very formal acceptance from Pirate's great aunt Peer, who is the family aristocrat. I could barely make out her handwriting as it creaked off the personalized stationery, but lo and behold she's coming. No-one expected her to. Isn't that lovely? Yay for aged and decrepit relatives who do the unexpected!

We also got our first wedding gift today! Yay! It's the solid, Michigan maple, 3" thick, end-grain chopping board I asked for. It's 4 square feet. Proper chopping board. Very generous. (Now who will get me the knives to go with it, I wonder?)

Then I got an email from an old friend from High School that I haven't heard from in, like, geological time. He saw the announcement in the news letter and sent an email to the last known account he had for me, which still feeds in to my current account. We spent the day emailing back and forth, it turns out he's moving to Germany shortly, and would like to come and visit me over the summer, so I asked him to come to the wedding, and he said 'yes'! Whoopie! I haven't seen him in over 10 years. Amazing.

And last but not least (and this is the real cherry on the cake), the Hairy Man* I.M.'d me. We haven't communicated in almost 2 years. He took the breakup pretty hard, and I've never stopped worrying about him and wondering what he's up to. It's been a bit of a loose thread that I was never able to tie off. I tried to get in touch a couple times, but he ignored me, and so I left him in peace. And then tonight he Skyped me, right out of the blue. He's living with his new girlfriend, which makes me very happy. I wish them both well, and I hope it works out for him.

Oh, and a gift I ordered for the Pirate from Amazon arrived, so I'll be able to give that to him when he comes over on Friday.

Yay! Happiness abounds! (As does stress, but we don't think about that.)


*If you're new around here and you want to read more about the Hairy Man, click the 'hairy man' category on the sidebar. It's all there.

Kick me when I'm down

They ate my Oreos, the cunting fucking cunts!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't have words to express my outrage. It was bad enough deciding to race a boat that they knew I couldn't participate in, and in doing so effectively kicked me out of the boat club and cut me off from racing in what would have been my last competitive season. That was bad enough. That was heart-breaking.

I left training camp early and came back to Bristol, but I left behind in Reading the cooking equipment that I'd brought along. We were staying in University of Reading dorms, which are self-catered (ie you cook your own food rather than eat in caffeterias), but we had to bring our own pots and pans. I brought the biggest pots and pans. I brought the only pot that was big enough to cook pasta for 8 people, and the only pan that was wide enough to saute enough ground beef for spaghetti sauce for pasta for 8 people. So as a favor, as a fucking favor to the fucking cunts who kicked me off the team, I left my giant pots, pans, strainers, mixing bowls and wooden utensils behind for them to use for the remainder of the week. I also left behind some food that I'd bought but wouldn't be eating and couldn't be arsed to carry back to Bristol.

And then there were the Oreos.

I love Oreos, and they're one of the foods that (as you know) I've whinged that I can't get in the UK. At least not in any of the stores around here.

While in Reading we shopped at a gigantic 24-hour Tesco, and while walking down the cookie isle looking for caramel digestives and jaffa cakes, I saw them. Their gleaming blue, black and white packaging containing the promise of bitter, crumbly, fake-chocolate cookies sandwiching tasteless filling of lard and sugar within. Heaven. The kind of heaven that soaks up cold milk like Jeebus-krispie soaks up gay-hate rhetoric from the foaming mouth of Pat Robertson and turns into a slimy, mushy, fake-cocoa and fatty, sugary pile of slop on your tongue and leaves little black crumbs in the bottom of the milk. That kind of heaven. I bought a bag. (Obv.)

I made a big deal out of how I happy I was that I had found Oreos. Everyone knew of my Oreo obsession. When I left I made it extremely clear to everyone exactly which food I was leaving behind that was to be designated "communal." I even wrote down exactly what was mine and what they were entitled to. That was in one area of the kitchen. In another area, in a different cupboard, I forgot my beloved Oreos. It was a frantic, emotional morning, out of sight out of mind and all that. And I'm notorious for forgetting shit, just ask my 10th grade art teacher.

Before I'd left, but after it was too late to go back for the Oreos, I smacked my forehead and realized my error. I was really pissed off at myself, both for general stupidity and because I was looking forward to getting home, having a serious cry, and tucking in to a bag of the least nutritious, best-tasting comfort food that Ceiling Cat ever put on the face of the Earth, and now through my own idiocy I was depriving myself of one of the only comforts I had to look forward to.

I made a big wail over the whole thing and begged my Captain L and Coach O to bring my Oreos back to Bristol on the weekend with the rest of my cookware. This was not a case of accidental misunderstanding. They promised.

AND THEN THE FUCKING CUNTS ATE MY OREOS AND THEY CAN ALL DIE AND ROT IN HELL THE GODDAMN FUCKING ASSHOLES.

I know it's just a bag of cookies, but talk about adding insult to injury. First they gave me the broken heart of a lifetime when they told me they were racing a boat that I couldn't row and were thereby depriving me of the triumphal comeback that had been my sole motivation to keep training since I wrecked my back,
and then, in my moment of despair, they took away my one stupid comfort, a taste of home that I hadn't had in years. A simple, simple joy; a taste of home. The cunts ate my Oreos.



How could they?

Crazy anonymous de-lurking revealed!

Well, I finally found out who the anonymous goof-ball is that's been leaving tantalizing comments alluding to a shared past. It was one of my original suspects, the one i dismissed on the grounds that the grammar and punctuation in his comments was too good, and i would have expected more internet/texting-style shorthand from this individual.

He's a great guy with whom I was friends throughout high school (even "dated" for a short time, if you can call it that. I don't think we ever kissed, but we saw a few Disney films together over the summer and had some nice picnics.)

He took me to the homecoming dance, um, Freshman year? I think it was Freshman year. I remember that I was wearing a red dress when every single other girl in the school was wearing black velvet that year, and both his parents and one of his brothers were working as chaperones, and they spaced themselves strategically around the gym so we were never out of sight of one of them. I have never felt so conspicuous in my entire life.

Now he's living and working in Virginia with his wife and 2 kids, and seems to be well and happy, and that is good. We haven't spoken in some years, but it's nice to get back in touch. For a long time after high school I was really bitter about the way I was treated by my classmates (the girls were almost universally bitchy, snotty, petty, shallow, shrill, and two-faced, and most of the guys could have put "sexual harassment" as their #1 extra-curricular activity) and deliberately severed all connections with that life. Mostly now I'm over that chip (mostly), and getting back in touch doesn't seem to be dredging up the awful memories I thought it would. So that's good.

LC doesn't love me anymore

Apparently I'm too honest and sane to hang out with the Liars and Lunatics.

*sobs*

*blows nose into soppy, used tissue*

*wipes face on sleeve*

Danger, danger Will Robinson!

Someone from my high school past has found me and is commenting anonymously! Ooh, spooky! Who could it be? How did he/she/it find me? Did they lurk for a time and slowly put together the clues, remember the personality, and work out who I was? Was it someone who came looking for my internet identity specifically? Was it someone to whom I gave the URL a long time ago and completely forgot they had it? I knew a LOT of people in high school, but had very, very few friends. Is this person friend or foe?

Lets unravel the clues and see if we can narrow it down, shall we?

• The first thing we know is that Anon. is someone who knew me before 1996, and knew me well enough to remember that I hit a deer with my car. (It was a new/old car as well, my very first time driving it to school. A giant, gentle, lumbering 1987 Buick LaSabre in manatee grey. I liked that car, but it forever had the shadow of that tragic day over it.) This suggests it was one of my inner coven: Jayson, Steve, Rick, Joe, or Jacob. (Yes, all guys. I didn't get along very well with girls. They were mostly 2-faced and shrill.) There are a couple teachers who might, conceivably, have remembered the incident, but Mrs. L. is too busy to spend hours on t'internet playing with blogs, same with MEM. I could possibly see Art Cynic hanging out in blogland, but he wouldn't play goofy games of hide-and-seek in the comments. He'd just insult me and be done with it. So let's stick with the list of friends we've got going.
  

• The second thing we notice in Anon's comment under the post about locking myself out is that he uses capitals and punctuation marks correctly, and does not abbreviate anything. This likely eliminates Jayson. We haven't kept in touch in years, but he would be more the type to write with more internet jargon and slang.

• The next comment is also revealing. This is an individual who doesn't trust assumptions, but likes to have facts confirmed before presenting a response. A lower-case "i" notwithstanding, everything is still correctly spelled and punctuated, a true rarity in these short-cut times. It's a professional, almost legalistic attention to detail. Finally, there is the phrase "blue marble," a metaphor for the Earth. Our Anonymous commentor has something of the poet about him. That eliminates Steve, bless his methodical heart.

• Next comment: ooh, now we come to it! A Star Wars reference! That could easily have been Jayson, Steve, or Joe, and we've already eliminated Jayson and Steve. I had been leaning towards Rick, on the grounds that if it had been Joe there would have been a sexual innuendo by now. But neither Rick nor Jacob would never use a Star Wars reference; couldn't never see what all the fuss was about. The rest of us were all proper freaks, tho. And Joe was always good for a laugh, like to play and tell jokes.

THEREFORE: based on the three comments in the previous post, my guess is that my anonymous commenting friend is none other than Joe Price: mathematician, pianist, and comic extrordinaire!

If I'm right, reveal (or indeed revile) yourself now! If I'm wrong, give us another clue?

Why I shouldn't be allowed to live alone

I locked my self out today. In a fluey fog I left the flat without my keys, and the door locked behind me. As soon as I heard it 'click' i knew what i'd done. You know that feeling, when you realize something in the very instant that it's too late to do anything about it? Like when a deer jumps into the headlights of your car 6 inches from your hood (bonnet) when you're driving 50 mph and you have just enough time to think "well crap, i'm going to hit a deer," before you plough into bambi. Yeah, one of those moments.

Me and doors that lock automatically don't get along. I really shouldn't have them. Sadly, lots of student housing is equipped with this type of door, and since I've been a student for the last 10 years, I've had a lot of these doors. And locked myself out a LOT.

Would you like to hear about my very best lock-out story of all time? It's a good one.

I was an undergrad at Connecticut College, doing my double major in English and Botany. ('cause i'm that cool, sistah. *snaps fingahs*) I was living in Blackstone House, the substance-free dorm, where no alcohol, tobacco, or drugs were allowed, even if you were legal. (Sorry, what was I just saying about cool? never mind.) I lived on the second floor (first floor to you Brits) next door to one of my best friends, Billy-Jean. (Who just had her first baby, by the way. I WANT A BABY! WAH!)

Outside our windows was this goofy little balcony thing. It wasn't accessible by any door, and in fact we weren't supposed to go out on it at all. It was just an architectural feature of the building (which was made of New England granite and built in 1914, one of the three original buildings of the college and the oldest dorm). The down-side of this balcony was that people were constantly accidently throwing their frisbees onto it, and either I or Billy-Jean would have to retrieve them by climbing out our windows. The upside was that A) it was a great place to keep ice-cream in the winter, since Blackstone didn't have a kitchen or a freezer, and B) when I locked myself out I could go to BJ's room, climb out her window, cross the balcony, and climb into my own. This was useful since, according to college rules, if you locked yourself out Campus Safety would let you in for free once, but after that they charged you $10 a pop. Generally Sampus Cafety was pretty sympathetic to 'Stoners (the ironic, self-styled residents of Blackstone) since we never caused any trouble with partying and damaging property, but even so I didn't like to push my luck.



So one day, in my usual dipshittedness, I locked my self out. I hung my head, mumbled "for fuck's sake" and went next door to BJ's room. No answer. I tried the next room down, which was BJ's boyfriend's (now husband's) room. BJ wasn't in Tooth's room, but had some suggestions where she might be. Being a shy kind of girl, the list wasn't very long, and I tracked her down without overmuch difficulty.

I apologized profusely and asked her if she could come open her room so I could climb out her window. You wouldn't think this was a huge favor, except that she had a fish tank set up in front of the window I needed to use, and there were several plants hanging from the curtain rod above with tendrils hanging all over the place, along with numerous other obstructions in the form of furniture and clothes crammed in everywhere. She sighed but came along willingly. In total it took about 15 minutes to move everything out of the was so I could get out the window, which eventually I did.

I squeezed myself out, padded gingerly across the balcony (which was actually the roof of the living room down stairs, but we were never certain how much weight that roof would hold), threw open my window, climbed inside, crawled across the (strategically located) bed, walked to my door, opened it -- with the intention of going next door to thank BJ one more time-- stepped into the hall, and...

you guess it. Closed and locked the door behind me.

When I realized what I'd done I fell to pieces right then and there in the hallway, laughing hysterically. BJ heard the rucus, saw me in a state of impenitrable giggle-fits, immediately deduced what I'd done (I'm fairly predictable), and joined me in the chorus. I don't know how long we sat there, laughing until we cried at my sublime stupidity, but eventually we went back into BJ's room and repeated the whole procedure.

I've never lived this incident down. To this day, whenever i do something really, really dumb (which is often), BJ still reminds me of this story. And I still giggle.

I went on a pub crawl last night with the Atheist, Agnoistic, and Secular Society. The theme was "myths and legends." I went as Eve. That's Elrond's ho on the left about to do something lurid.

How d'y' like them fig leaves!

I did have an apple earlier in the evening, but I ate before this pic was taken. Sorry.

Song of Innocence

I almost didn't notice that today is the Fourth of July. You would think that for a cheerful expat happily living in the country from which America violently liberated itself over 200 years ago Independence Day would be a day of shame and regret, not pride and joy. And yet...

I don't have a lot of political associations with the day, but I do have a lot of memories of intense happiness, innocence, and frivolity. I LOVE the Fourth of July. For years it was my favorite holiday. The Fourth for me is a bit like Christmas is for people like, well, like me. The original intent of the holiday has been all but forgotten, but that doesn't negate the joy brought about by family traditions and celebrations.

This is what the Fourth of July was like in days of yore...


I grew up in a small city neighborhood. It was a dead-end street on the south end of town comprised of 23 homes and as many huge silver maple trees lining the street. The houses were built in the 1920s, and each home was unique. It was a quiet street, and as kids we used to sit on the porch in the summer eating watermelon and cherries (we weren't allowed to eat fruit in the house -- we lived in an agricultural state and fresh produce in the summer was so sweet and juicy you couldn't eat it without making a huge mess) and have contests to see who could spit their seeds the fartherst. There were no cars except the residents and the occassional idiot who thought he could use our street as a shortcut to dodge two sets of traffic lights, and would get really annoyed when he would discover the dead end. We thought this was endlessly funny and used to point and giggle and these directionally-challenged people (who invariably drove big huge Lincolns or Caddies and drove at 6 mph).

It was a close-knit neighboorhood, too. By the time I was 7 I knew every person on the street and they all knew me. Same went for all the kids. Most of the grown-ups worked either at the local utility (like my dad) or were teachers.* Us kids were allowed to play in most anyone's yard (we knew who the exceptions were), and if anything went wrong we would be looked after by whoever was nearest at hand. By the same token, if we ever misbehaved we were certain to be caught and recognized and a phonecall made to mom and dad before we even managed to get home.

*One year when the public school teachers threatened to strike our neighborhood had a little meeting and decided it wasn't a big deal because among them there was someone amply qualified to teach every subject at every level, so they were just going to open a neighborhood school and go at it the old-fashioned way. I always was bummed that the teachers' union managed to sort their problems out, because I reckon a neighborhood school would have vastly superior to the Catholic Prison I was attending at the time.

There were regular parties and get-togethers throughout the year. A "Progressive Dinner" at Christmastime, when each course would be served at a different home (no kids at that one), a corn roast on Labor Day to celebrate the harvest, a Graffiti Party on July 3 (more about that later perhaps), and the big one on the 4th.

The custom was that the newest residents on the street were put in charge of organizing the thing, which gauranteed that they had to meet everyone on the block and get involved. ("Welcome to the neighborhood! Guess what!") It was our equivalent of a hazing ritual, but it worked. And let me tell you, there were logistics to be worked out. (Though to be fair the 4th of July block party had been going on so long pretty much everyone knew their assigned role and did it whether or not the newbie organizers thought of it.)

• Bob had to arrange for and collect and set up the barricades so the street could be closed off to traffic. (This was important because of the fireworks at the park in the evening. If we didn't close off the street it became a giant parking lot by sunset.) It was his job because he was the only one with a pickup.
  
• The bed-grill had to be dug out and set up.
• Someone had to buy a dozen bags of charcoal, 50 pounds of chicken quarters, and 2 gallons of BBQ sauce
• Someone had to arrange for, pick up, and tap the keg. (Technically open containers of alcohol are not legal on municipal property, which the "islands" were, but one of the residents was the county deputy sherrif, and he knew that no one ever got drunk, misbehaved, or served alcohol to a minor, so he didn't care. Although the minors did have to serve the beer. We were glorified gofers, and I leared to pull a pint at the age of 8.)
• Someone had to get plastic cups, plates, cutlery, and napkins.
• Someone had to bring out a big washtub for the pop cans and enough ice to last that day.
• Someone had to get prizes for the kids' bike parade and make up silly awards ("Best use of pink streamers," "Best one-handed riding," that sort of thing.)
• Someone had to get a giant pile of sawdust from the local lumber yard and a bazillion pennies to dump in it
• Someone had to procure 2 big watermelons and hide them the night before, along with a trail of clues leading to their location. This was usually done at the graffiti party by our intoxicated parents the night before, and I can remember years when the clues were written and hidden when the poor volunteer had had a few too many, and the following day the clues didn't make any sense and the hider and forgotten where he'd hid the melons. Good times. :-)
• And of course there needed to be water balloons. And tug of war (over a plastic wading pool, naturally.) And sack races. etc. And prizes for all of the above.
• And everyone had to bring a passing dish to share. Joanne made the best baked beans in the history of the world.
  

There was an order to the festivities, an almost ritual-like adherence to tradition. The day started as soon a my brother and I awoke. Invariably it was a hot, sunny day. The pavement burned our bare feet (but who wears shoes when schoool's out?), and the grass was already getting prickly and dry. I insisted on wearing red, white, and blue every year. Marley (my brother) couldn't have cared less. The first order of business after a nourishing breakfast of whatever we could scavenge (usually Chef Boyardee and purple Kool Aid) was to decorate our bikes.

If dad hadn't already bought enough red, white, and blue crepe paper and scotch tape he got yelled at and had to rectify the situation immediately. I used to spend hours in the drive way covering every inch of my bike in the crinkly, patriotic toilet paper. Every bit of frame, streamers from the handle bars, and we'd weave it in and out of the spokes so the wheels were solid colors as well. If we were feeling especially ambitious we add things like pinwheels, action figures (G.I. Joe of course) or stuffed animals (in my case).

The hours between the completion of our two-wheeled modern art projects and the parade that began the party were the slowest hours of the year. Marley was a much calmer child, but I couldn't wait for things to get underway. I would run around the street making a nuissance of myself and trying to help everyone with everything and all the setting up. Slowly around lunch time people would being drifting out towards the center island with their lawn chairs and drink holders. Eventually, after a sizeable crowd had gathered, someone would give the signal for the kids to get their bikes, and...

... they're off!

Around and around we'd go, doing laps of the circular course until whichever dad was in charge that year had managed to formulate rediculous awards for us all. We would be called to a halt, line up our bikes neatly, stand at attention, and wait for our names. One by one we came forth, grinned at whatever corny honor was betowed upon us, accepted our brown paper goody bag with glee, and shook the hand of the presenter. The grown-ups clapped, and we took one more lap to give everyone a final opportunity to admire our patriotic velociped creations. And then we ran off to look at our loot and begin swapping the stuff we didn't want.

A variety of games then followed, including the water-balloon toss, which was remarkable organized. Dad used to bring out the water balloons in the wheelbarrow, all brightly jiggling in the hot yellow sunglight, a bouncing rainbow of cool wetness and squeaking rubber. Play proceeded as follows: Get a partner. Stand toe-to-toe along a chalk line in the road, all the pairs standing shoulder to shoulder. Pass the water balloon to your partner. Take a step backwards. Each time to throw the balloon, take another step. Keep passing the balloon back and forth between you, getting incrementally further apart. The pair who makes it the fartherst without breaking their balloon wins.

You wouldn't believe how much fun this is. And it's as much fun to watch as it is to play. When it gets down to 2 or three pairs the crowd starts going nuts and everyone yells "Oh!" when someone barely saves their balloon from breaking and the cringing runs through the spectators like a Mexican wave.

Slowly the game degernates into a free-for-all, with the remaining balloons being used in guerilla attacks and snowball-like water wars. My god those were the days.

Eventually it's time for dinner, and 4x8 sheets of plywood are set up on the saw horses to make buffet tables. Everyone brings out their folding card tables and plastic patio furntiure, someone has been slaving over a hot bed of coals (literally) for hours burning the chicken until it's perfect (perfectly black) which is now presented in a giant tub, and the kids are sent to wash their hands. The buffet becomes full of nacho salad, seven layer salad, potato salad, pasta salad, baked beans, fruit salad, and cole slaw. We all help ourselves to whatever we want and sit down somewhere, maybe with our own family, maybe at someone else's table.

Now, there is a particular order to the after-dinner games. The penny scramble is the last game of the day, but there's no point in doing that until all the kids have been covered in watermelon juice (ergo, sticky). But first the watermelons must be located! So the kids are divided up into two teams, each team is given its first clue, and they're off! Watermelons can't be inside houses, but short of that anything goes. Once they were even burried. First team to find their melon wins.

The watermelons are then sliced, seved, and eaten (with accompanying seed-spitting contenst, naturally). After the chillens are good and goopy, the penny scramble begins. A tarp is laid out on the ground, several garbage bags full of sawdust are dumped on the tarp, and giant piles of loose change are dumped into the sawdust. The smallest kids go first and get 5 minutes or so to dig around, then the older kids and so on. It's awesome. It's the modern equivalent of tarring and feathering, but instead of doing it to convicts it's done to children. It's not considered child abuse becase at the end of it, if you've been doing really well, you are $1.38 richer than you were before dinner, so no complaints!

As the sun turned orange and dipped below the house top it was time to fold up the lawn chairs, gather the remains of the potato salad, and begin packing it in. Kids were ordered to dust themselves off (outside), remove their clothes (also outside) and march inside and get the in the bath. Clothes were either then taken directly to the wash via a strategically held pitch-fork, or simply burned where they lay on the sidewalk.**

**I jest. Sort of.

All squeaky clean and in our jammies, it was time to lather up in carcinogenic insect repellent, grab the lawn chairs yet again, and wander up to the top of the street (grabbing a leftover piece of cold chicken from the tub on the way) where the neighborhood was once again assembling, this time to watch the fireworks. We had an excellent view from the top of the street, overlooking the park where the rockets' red glare lit up the indigo sky. We all shouted "Ooh" and "Aah" together and rated them on a scale of one to ten, Olympic-heckler style. Our towns fireworks were never all that great. They set them off one at a time to drag the show out as a long as possible, so you got to appreciate each firework individually. There were far more "2s" than "10s," but that wasn't the point.

The point was to spend time together as a community, and we were. We were a real community. We knew each other and looked out for each other and yelled at each other's kids and took banana bread to the new people. As kids we played in the street and never worried about a thing; the biggest danger we faced was falling off our bikes and getting a knee full of gravel. (No one wore helmets or knee pads back then.)

So the 4th of July for me was never about independence from the (now defunct) British Empire, or freedom from taxation without representation. It was never about self-governance, liberty, or flag-waving. It was a holiday of celebrating the summer with friends, family, community, barbequed chicken, watermelon, and sawdust. It was about being a kid, being barefoot, and, well, being free; free to throw water balloons at grown-ups, free to stay up past bedtime, free to play outside and eat cold chicken in your pj's, to listen to the drone of the cicadas during the day and the chirp of the crickets at night in total security, free to be completely innocent.

(click to make legible)

The block party doesn't happen any more. None of the annual parties do. By the time I was a teenager the character of the neighborhood had changed dramatically. The new families didn't want anything to do with block parties; they thought it was wierd. They put up tall fences around their yard and kept their children inside them. They installed air conditioning and sat inside all summer, instead of on the porch in the evening to catch the cool breeze and chitchat with whoever strolled by. They bought their kids nintendos instead of bicycles, DVD players instead of slip-n-slides, and the kids stayed indoors. They don't know each other. I don't know them. No one knows anyone. And everyone is afraid. They are afraid because they fear what they don't know, and they don't know their nighbors.

When I ws 16 I tried to organize the 4th of July party on my own. But no one wanted to come. The people thought "who is this stranger person at our door?" and told me they would be out of town. On the 4th of July I put my lawn chair out on the island and sat there for hours, hoping someone would join me, but no one came.


One final note: None of the above photos are my own. I nabbed them from tinternet because all my old pics of my family and memories are in albums back in the States, and thus inaccessible to me via compooter. Sorry if I knicked one of yours. It was with the best of intentions.

Having the Vicar for Tea

ok, not a Vicar actually, but a lovely, cricket-playing clergyman, which is just as good if not better.

The delightful Dave stopped over on Monday afternoon to break his journey to cornwall. He is the first blogger/imaginary friend I have met in Real Life (except the illustrious Herebe Monsters, but I knew him in Real Life before I began blogging, so that doesn't count). Even though I've seen photos of Dave over at LIAEMFC, it's much nicer to know someone in the flesh and blood and be able to fit a body to the digital persona. We passed a lovely couple hours chatting about life etc. and drinking tea. If only I hadn't burnt the scones.

Weekend excitement

Wow what a busy weekend!

Thursday (weekends start on thursday now), Pirate picked me up and took me to a leadership development seminar. (he gets browie points at work for attending these things.) the speaker spent the first 20 minutes talking in cliches, and the next 90 convincing me of a point about which i needed no convincing. so it was all a bit pointless, but it included dinner and it was an evening with the pirate, so that was ok.

Friday Pirate came over after an evening shooting (he's a toxophilite), and we went to a party where we had to leave after 5 minutes because we couldn't hear the other guests over the music and we couldn't see them through the pot smoke.

Saturday we

1) picked up my new evening gown, which is the first part of my birthday gift from the Pirate. (my birthday was in January, but it took a while to have it made.) Photos forthcoming.

2) went up on the Downs and ran around in the wind and mud playing catch and learning how to bowl a cricket ball properly. (I'm a bit rubbish, but he's a qulified coach and i'm an eager student, so i'm sure i'll get there eventually.)

3) went and got my Wishy! (This is the second half of my birthday gift.) My Wishy is lovely. He is a betta wishy, and his name is Sir Robin. We named him that because instead of attacking his reflection or a finger held up to the tank, he runs (bravely) away and hides behind his plants. Photos forthcoming.

4) went back to Pirate's house and took a walk around the countryside where he lives. We saw a family of baby rabbits, and i truly don't know which was the cuter, the baby bun-buns, or the Pirate's reaction to them. I've never seen a grown man coo like that before. I can't wait to make him a daddy someday.

5) had kielbasa for dinner

6) watched Kill Bill.

7) made sweet, sweet, lurve.

Sunday we

1) slept in and had a lazy morning lounging in bed, warm and snuggly (this is getting really nauseating, isn't it? oh, well.)

2) spent an hour being wishy-washy over how we wanted to spend the afternoon. those types of conversations drive me nuts, and usually the P is very decisive, so they don't happen often. thank god.

3) finally decided to go bowling (tenpin). Probably not the smartest idea in the world given my back, but it worked out ok in the end.

4) had a horribly, horribly, awful, terrible, unhealth, gross, disgusting, delicisous, amazing, fantastic, delectible, orgasmic lunch at Burger King. I havn't had a whopper in almost 2 decades. My GOD was that good. I so needed that.

5) eventually located the bowling alley (after 40 minutes of driving around with me suggesting we stop for directions and him continuing to drive while we both openly admitted we didn't know where we were going. argh!). At Hollywood Bowl I learned that people in this country have NO CONCEPT of proper bowling alley etiquite. The next post is going to be a manners guide to bowling tenpin. I kicked the Pirate's ass two games in a row. But that's not too surprising, since I've been bowling since I was 7, and on leagues since I was 11.

6) Watched Kill Bill 2.

Pirate is coming over again tonight, so I guess the weekend isn't quite over yet. I really like these Thursday to Monday weekends. I could get used to this.

Blinded by the stars

It's funny how things work. It's so easy to watch the news and become complacent, to allow yourself to be decieved into thinking that everything is crap and everyone on the planet is an asshole. We all have one, but not all of us are one. Everywhere you look there are nice people doing selfless things.* These people deserve baked goods. (I can't afford gilt statuettes, i'm sorry.)

In order to publicly recognize the selflessness of particular bloggers who have recently gone out of their way to do very nice things, I hereby create the following awards:

The award for the Most Helpful Comment goes to Just a Girl, for pointing out to me the blindingly easy way to put my old counter in my new sidebar, when I tried 10 other unnecessarily complex things and came up dry.

The award for Most Accomodating (aslo known as Most Willing to do a Stupid Task for No Visible Reason) goes to Dave, for assisting me in a failed experiment to fix my header. That the experiment failed was no fault of his. I just need to learn more about HTML coding.

Then there are some spurts of generosity that are so beneficent, so outrageous, so totally uncalled-for, that baked goods are simply inadequate thanks. These people were not asked for anything, but spontaneously and without any provocation bestowed upon me gifts both pragmatic and thoughtful. For these people, nothing short of homemade booze can express my gratitude.

The award for Most Random Giving of Most Random Kitchen Appliance goes to the immortal LC, who sent me a waffle maker. Oh, but not just any waffle maker! No, mis companeros, this waffle maker makes heart-shaped waffles! Romantic breakfasts in bed just got a whole lot sillier.

And finally, the award for the Most Thoughtful Warmer of Toes by Someone With Whom I Do Not Have A Sexual Relationship goes to our very own Timorous Beastie, who at Christmas time remembered that I have perpetually frozen toes owing to too many years of snow-shovelling, rowing, and falling in freezing cold rivers and sent me a bunch of chemical toe-warmer packs to keep the ol' tootsies toastie while I'm sculling and cycling here in the frigid British Isles.

The downside of this little award ceremony (if I knew hot to make my blog play music I would have for this post) is that you don't get to wear fancy tuxes and ball gowns and walk down a red carpet. On the other hand, you do get to escape being accosted by Joan and Melissa Rivers, so really it all comes out in the wash.

Thanks, everyone!


*If, when you read that statement, the first thing that leapt to your mind was Hugh Grant's voice saying "Love, actually, is all around," you need to cut back on the rom-coms. Serioulsy.

The Great Row

Spin wrote a post about feigning interest in subjects to attract male attention. It reminded me of the one arguement my beloved Vi and I have ever had.

Back when we were undergrads together in the warm, wet womb of academia, Vi and I were attached at the hip. We became instant best friends the night we met, and were inseparable from tht point on. (How we met is a cute story -- one of my favs, actually -- I'll tell it you another time.) We were so close, and people were so accustomed to seeing us together that a significant portion of the campus thought we were a lesbian couple.

(I should note that I also spent a great deal of time with Vi's boyf at the time, now hubby, Wally, and that several people thought Wally and I were a couple. There was also a contingent that saw how close the three of us were and had us pegged for a committed threesome. We neither confirmed nor denied anything. It's fun to keep people guessing.)

It didn't help our image that I spent weeknights in her bed (between Wally's weekend visits), we went to the gym together, ate every single meal together, studied together in the evening, and Vi even used to come to my botany seminars after our workouts, where she would happily snuggle up to my shoulder and doze in the dim room. The Botany Dept., to their vast credit, was not bothered by this. (They thought we were cute.)

I remember the one time I didn't eat a meal with Vi: She was late getting back from rehearsal (music major -- plays every instrument in the orchestra), and I was hungry, so I left her a note saying i'd gone ahead and would see her in the caffeteria whenever she got there. When she showed up she was in tears and wouldn't speak to me. After an hour I finally got her to tell me what was upsetting her, and I was stunned that it was because I had left w/o her for dinner. I enjoyed our mealtimes tremdously, but I had no idea it meant so much to her. I never went to dinner without her after that.

In church I sang in the choir (hell, most weeks i was the choir) and she played her violin. We always sat together. We even went to confession together. Everyone treated us as a couple, even though our relationship was never sexual, and she had a serious boyfriend. Where one of us was, the other was surely near at hand, and the whole College knew it and smiled on it.

We lived in the substance-free dorm in college, which meant no alcohol, drugs, or even tobacco were allowed in the building at any time. It was its own little universe, and we loved it. The dorm held 60 people on three, coed floors. (Bathrooms were coed as well, which made for some interesting stories.) The corridor on each floor was dead straight, with doors up and down on both sides, stairwells at the ends. The hallways were wide and high-ceilinged, with terrazzo floors and hard plaster walls. (read: NO sound absorption.) Every little noise echoed and reverberated for hours. You could drop a quarter and come back after class to still hear the ringing noise gently vibrating the air.

It was in this context -- best friends living next door to one another in a building that concealed nothing -- that Vi and I had our Great Row.

It was the fall semester of my sophomore year. I had just broken up with my godawful first boyfriend. I was seriously depressed, both my grandparents had just died, and I was failing two classes: cell biology and organic chemistry. I had never failed anything before in my life, and this was far worse than breaking up with the idiot who later became known as The Official Dickhead of the New Millenium.

It was winter, which in southeastern Connecticut means it's perpetually dark, 40 degrees F, and raining. (A lot like Manchester, actually.) This wasn't helping my state of mind.

It was late afternoon, Vi and I had finished with classes, labs, and rehearsals for the day. I came back to my room, dumped my bag and coat, and went next door to bitch about my day and get a little sympathy. (This was a regular ritual with us. We vented to one another, purged our systems, and were thereby fit to face the rest of polite society.)

I walked in Vi's room (we were way past knocking), and started right in. I was whining about orgo (organic chemistry) again. This was a recurring theme. I remember saying something along the lines of "It's not that I resent the insane level of work necessary to understand this crap. What I resent is having to spend so much effort learning a subject I'm not even remotely interested in."

And that's what started it.

Sounds like a pretty normal, college student whine, doesn't it? I bet most of you have said something similar at one point or another. "I'm just not willing to spend so much effort on something that interests me so little." The Pirate feels this way about cooking. Everyone has things they're not interested in, right? Wrong.

Not Vi. She's interested in everything. Everything. Do you grasp the meaning of "everything?" There is nothing that someone could offer to teach her that she would decline. There is not one single piece of knowledge that she would just as soon not bother with, thank you very much. There nothing she is not interested in knowing, regardless of the effort involved. And that's what she tore into me about.

She went off on a tirade about "How can you possibly not want to learn something???" She yelled at me. I yelled back "because it's fucking boring and i don't give a fucking shit." The door was open. Every syllable was carried down the hall and up the stairwell for every resident of the dorm to hear. We screamed. we shouted. we went at each other like starving heyienas on a rotting carcass.

Now, I am not a small woman, and I've got the lungs of a rower and (even more impressively) a marching-band trombonist. (That takes some serious wind, y'all.) And Vi? Let's just say that when she's riled she makes me look like a chiwawa barking at a rampaging grizzly.

I don't know how long we were at it. In retrospect there was a lot more going on that the issue being (loosely) debated. It was clearly more about tension and stress relief on both sides, but we didn't know that at the time. I thought Vi was being a snotty, condescending bitch, and she thought I had become the personification of willing ignorance, the most heinous of all sins.

Eventually we exhausted our fuel and the fire burned itself out. We stood there, blinking dumbly at one another, and then reached forward and threw our arms around one another, crying "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to yell! Please forgive me, I love you so much!" We sank to the floor, still hugging each other and dripping tears and snot on each other's shoulders, simultaneously laughing at our own absurdity.

After a time I said, "I'm starved; let's get dinner."

"Definately. Dining Hall X or Y?"

"X. Gimme a sec to get my coat."

And that was it. We zipped up to face the bleak December and walked out the door. We never did resolve the debate.

Later on after dinner we were sitting on Vi's bed crocheting Christmas gifts, as was our habit, when there was a soft knock on the door (which propped open). SJ, who lived right across the hall, said (very timidly), "Are you guys ok?"

"Yeah," we replied, confused. "Why do you ask?"

"Um, well, because I, we, that is, everyone heard shouting earlier, and we've never heard either of you shout before, and we couldn't imagine what could make you shout at each other. Em said to me, 'If CB and Vi are fighting, it must mean the apocolypse. Only the end of the world could do that.' We're really worried about you."

That was when it dawned on us how public our row had been. Truly until that moment we had no idea. And we were stunned and touched to learn that the power of our friendship was viewed with such admiration that nothing short of the Day of Judgement could tear us asunder.

That arguement is one of my fondest memories of Vi. It took me years to appreciate that she taught me an invaluable lesson that night, one drastically changed the way I view the world and my place in it. In short, I came to see that she was right, that there is nothing in this world that is not worth knowing, not worth the effort of learning. Sadly, the sum total of human knowledge being as vast as it is, it is not physically possible to know all there is to know, so life is one big prioritizing game.

I genuinely wish I could learn everything. I wish I could learn all the songs by all the bands that ever struck a chord. I wish I could learn all the stars in the sky, what's unique about each one, about all the galaxies, comets, planets, moons, constellations, nebulae, black holes, dark matter, and cosmic strings. I wish I would play every instrument, know every plant in every forest, the words to every poem, the life cycle of every animal. I wish I knew how every war was fought and lost and why and by whom, who ruled what kingdoms when, how merchant trade routes worked, all the organs of the human body and their functions, when the last dodo died, who shot JR, JFK, and where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. I even wish I knew how organic chemistry works.

For me, the most valuable thing about my friends is what I've learned from them. I never knew about bee-keeping until I met Wally. I had no idea about cricket until I met the Pirate. I had never listened to Iron Maiden until I met the Hairy Man. I couldn't play the piano until my Gentleman friend from Manchester began teaching me. I didn't know how to recognize and examine my own assumptions until Rich challenged them. In that spirit, Vi is the most important and special friend I've ever had, because she's the friend who taught me how to learn.

Comments

by the way, this is what a friend of mine had to say re the posts about my back injury.** She did it in an email instead of in the comments, but it was so sweet and funny I had to share it (hope you don't mind, hon.):

"Question: Are you Ratty?

Answer: NO!!!! You are The American Pie.....not Ratty. You are more like Mr Bloody Toad. Rowing, KNOWING that you were injured. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I love you, you daft Chaucer-loving bitch! DO NOT DO THAT AGAIN!!!!!!!!!

OK, rant over. I have read the three relevant entires in your blog and oh my fucking GAWD.......jesus, it was pure chick-lit and not the bad stuff that comes free with Cosmopolitan either....it was pure gold!!!!!!!!! Brief encounter? Yes, I think so. I like Handsome Doctor. I like him becasuse he rescued you and left again. This is Frodo-destroying-the-ring-and

-leaving-Middle-Earth stuff.

How is the back??????????? talk to me, or are you too busy being boarded by pirates?"

I love this note because I can hear her voice in my head when I read it. And though I hadn't thought of it in those terms, her comparison between Frodo and HD is rather apt. I love you too, Darling. Kisses from the northern hemisphere: MUAH! xxxxxxxx


**Personal to... You know who you are

Proper Drama, ER-style

ER Drama, part II

Brooding

It's Wally! and mother, Vi. (click to enlarge so you can appreciate the fullness of the glory that is his stubby little tongue sticking out.)

God, she's so beautiful I damn near weep every time I look at this photo. And how cute is that kid??? *sigh*

Wally was born last July, making me an (honorary) auntie for the first time. I got to spend a week with him in August, and i've gone completely gaga.

I want a baby. Specifically, that one.

Personal to... you know who you are.

And just like *that* he was gone. As abruptly as he came into my life he vanished -- in a whisper and an email.

Every so often, maybe a few times in our small lives, we meet someone whose presence changes us forever. I do not yet know in exactly what capacity I am altered, but I know I will never be the same again.

I'm not good at 'goodbyes,' though lord knows I've had enough practice at them -- far too much practice, really -- so I will let Walt Whitman do it for me:

Now, dearest comrade, lift me to your face;
We must separate a while -- here, take from my lips this kiss.
Whoever you are, I give it especially to you.
So long! -- and I hope we shall meet again...

(Calm down; i'm not talking about the Pirate. All is well on that front.)