trishpiglet's house tonight. 1songstress was great, really a pleasure for me to see in action - I felt a bit like I'd brought a ringer, she's such a brilliant singer! Fortunately we did some duets that sucked ("Funkytown," "Take a Chance on Me"), and "Baby Got Back" went down in flames, so we were in no way making people feel like it would be too hard to follow us. It was also nice to see thekumquat, ellbie and nickmc, werenerd, some_fox, and co-host babysimon ... you guys all rocked out! I know that a night doing karaoke with friends wasn't exactly the brilliant London nightlife scene you'd hear about in the magazines, but it was definitely exactly what I moved here for - a night with good friends, enjoying each other's company and being silly and supportive all at the same time. Our big excitement ("ooh, visiting London, must have Experiences") of the day is going to the James Turrell exhibit, which, for the uninitiated, was projections of light against walls, or of holes in walls and light showing with no perspective at all. Though I'm in no shape to explain his art (there was some drinking at the karaoke, not that I need Dutch courage to sing), I did get a couple of great reactions from little kids at the exhibit. So, James Turrell as seen through the raw eyes of the under-five set.
Kid one: (walks up to blue screen on wall)
Me: (walks up to the blue screen)
Kid one: (slowly puts their hands closer, closer to the elevated screen ...)
Me: (watches. Will she leave a spot on the wall?)
Kid one (as her hands pass through the screen into the hole that is actually where the light is coming from): SCREEAAAAAAMMM!
Me: (laughs hysterically)
Kid two (about four, walking into a dark room with another hole with light shining out of it): It's so dark.
(pause)
A bit too dark.
(pause)
I prefer the other one.
(leaves the room) (this one was good enough that I wrote it down)
Oh, what did we do the rest of the day? We left the house at 1:30, we wound up at Debenham's at about 4:30 (slippers were purchased), and gave up on shopping just in time to miss the cafe's opening hours. Then we hit Clark's (all cute red ballet flats now sold out), BeardPapa's (today's flavor: capuccino; total purchase: three puffs and three hot teas), then some place about half a block closer to the Tottenham Court Road tube that sold sparkly hair crap that
1songstress and I were able to avoid like magpies on tinfoil. I got a red diamante giant hair clip and tiny red diamante ornamented bobby pins; 1songstress got three actual buttefly clips in white and opal and some butterfly hair dangly. All in all this made us late for getting to Tooting Broadway, but it was a good evening anyway, and no one was mad at us for being late. Good bus ride home in the magic 270, some talk about family matters, along the lines of WTF mom, WTF our aunt, WTF the other cousins, WTF women who think they can do nothing but be pretty and expect someone else to take care of them.
*yawn* Decidedly feeling good about living here. :-) I like that I'm sitting here getting my hair braided. Night, all.
