The First Time I ...

Cherished readers and vaguely interested blog-trawlers alike,

You’ve been patient. It’s been roughly two months since my last post.

You’ve waited long enough.

I’ve chosen this glorious day, the birthday of Strictly Speaking star Andrew J Hansen, to make my return to the blogosphere. I’ve spent those two months frantically working and frantically not working but still, for some reason, not blogging. Well, that time has finished. My sabbatical is done.

And so welcome back to the Wonderful World of the Life and Times of Stranger Things.

Ah, the semester holidays. That blissful time of year between the end of one long, exhaustive, work strewn period and the beginning of the next. These holidays begin as we are freed from exams to flit, swallow-like, from the hallowed halls of our esteemed school to parties, events, disco ice-skating, film premieres, laser tagging. To unceasing celebration and congratulation, four and a half magical weeks with no major commitments and no need to so much as pick up a pen.

Unless, like me, you keep a pretty thorough diary which needs daily updates.

And if, like me, you’re an incredibly lazy person and waited until six weeks after the holidays had finished to start writing the holiday post, you’re going to be increasingly glad of this diary as it would otherwise be virtually impossible to recall incidents that passed roughly two months ago. As I only have one real style of free writing, I’ve basically just quoted directly from what I wrote at the time. I am a LAZY PERSON. You know this.

 

The most interesting thing about these particular holidays was the extraordinary amount of things I did for the first time EVER. Hence, to get this post into some semblance of order, these things are the only ones I’ll be discussing. 

  

1. The first time I went extreme laser tagging

Obviously I’ve been laser tagging before, but always with parties. You know, where everyone gets into teams and then you all finish happily at the end with pizza and cake. Not the kind where everyone’s on their own, you’re playing with no music and a group of strangers, and it basically feels like you’re involved in an actual fire fight, the difference being that when you shoot your friends they run away muttering accusations about you instead of you having to make a follow-up apologetic visit to their family bearing their corpse.

Lala, Peanut, Phoenix and I went laser tagging directly after exams. We’d all crammed spare clothes into our schoolbags along with our calculators and protractors and the moment they announced ‘You can leave the hall,’ we sprang up, leapt gleefully down to the bus stop and right on to a bus to the closer of the main shopping centres in our city. It was crowded with fellow exam-free Year 11s. Most of them hadn’t thought to bring extra clothes and so were fairly obvious. After arriving at the centre we found a public bathroom and changed out of school uniform, a subtle ploy that, as I later realised, was rendered completely pointless by the massive school logo on my bag.

We began by going to Max Brenner and eating waffles. Aviator, Giuseppe, Bob Dylan and a couple of other people were at a table across from us. Aviator came over at one point to chat to us. As one, everyone else at the table rose silently, collected their things, and slipped out the door, pausing only to motion us to be silent. They didn’t return. Aviator only noticed when an old woman noticed his schoolbag sitting alone under the now-empty table and stopped to harangue him about the importance of taking care of your possessions.

Shortly after that we headed off for Zone 3, the laser tagging place-to-be, with only minor injuries along the way (Peanut rolled her ankle in the middle of a zebra crossing and Phoenix cut her finger on the button of a traffic light. Lala had concussed herself on a cupboard the day before. Seriously. My friends are all idiots).

The first game we shared with a couple who appeared friendly until we’d been exposed to their technique of appearing behind you at inopportune moments, shooting you, and then melting away into nothing. Peanut and Lala’s team came first, then the other couple, then Phoenix and myself. The second game we played individually and Peanut more than doubled the next score down. This was a blow, as we’d been hoping her insurmountable self-confidence would prove a hindrance rather than a boon. Whenever she shot someone she’d skip away laughing.

And that, waffles and hidden violence and not so hidden confidence, was my first time at proper laser tagging.

2. The first time I hosted a Beatle birthday

Giuseppe, Marie-Clare and I have a fine tradition of making cakes to celebrate significant dates in the Beatle calendar. To anyone wishing to track these:

 

Feb 24/25 – George Harrison’s birthday (the 25^th is also the birthday of James and Oliver Phelps, the Weasley twins in Harry Potter. If you’re interested)

June 18 – Paul McCartney’s birthday

July 7 – Ringo Starr’s birthday

October 9 – John Lennon’s birthday

November 29 – George Harrison’s deathday

December 8 – John Lennon’s deathday

 

Anyway, this was the first time I’d hosted a birthday one at my house. I think my last one was George Harrison’s deathday. Anyway, I made a fairly attractive cake for Paul McCartney’s 69^th, we got together and played Beatles board games for hours before watching heaps of the films. Marie-Clare managed not to cry upon Paul’s entrance in the Concert for George but was defeated by his and Ringo’s embrace at the end. Sad. Her behaviour, I mean.

And that, cake and dramatic heart-wrenching sobs from Marie-Clare at midnight, was my first time hosting a Beatles birthday party

 

3. The first time I went to a house with a tennis court

Eggleston has a TENNIS COURT at his house. AND a swimming pool. And a grand piano. He claimed to have a library, but Aviator and myself examined this closely and in reality it’s more like a medium-sized room with three shelves of books. Tennis courts aren’t really that exciting in real life. Sure, it’s fun to play tennis in the dark at 10 o’clock at night, listening to that Hi-5 L-O-V-E song on the speakers because Eggleston’s iPod is plugged in and he likes it. For about ten minutes. It gets a little wearing after that.

 

4. The first time I hosted a blog anniversary party 

Some time over my temporary hiatus, my blog had a birthday. Happy Anniversary, Stranger Things – may it be the first of many.

To celebrate I decided to have a blog party. Not a big thing, just something casual. I spent the day beforehand organising it. The idea was that Phoenix and Peanut would come over, and we’d plan slightly (or just talk about chocolate, as it turned out), and then go into Civic to purchase supplies.

I meant to wake up at 6:30 a.m. in order to have time to prepare before my friends’ arrival. It didn’t work out quite like that. Instead I awoke at 9:21 with Peanut standing outside my bedroom door.

I got ready in record time and, when Phoenix arrived, we headed into Civic and spent the whole day buying suspiciously cheap items from Hot Dollar and these amazing chocolate bars called ‘Titan Bars’. They’re like Mars Bars, but ten times cheaper AND are far more referential to Gattaca. We also found some insanely cheap, glittery shirts, and kept them for use in the pass-the-parcel.

 

The party was on the 1^st of July and those present were Ness, Marie-Clare, Brandine, Gwen, Aviator, Falcon, Phoenix, Giuseppe, and Shoelace. Phoenix had arrived earlier to help me stick streamers up and blow up some Christmassy balloons I’d found. She was also supplied with a camera. Thanks to her photo-taking abilities in conjunction with her subtle photo-editing abilities - in replacing all of our faces with blog-related images - I'm able to supply you, the reader, with some somewhat suspect images of the event. That's me on the left, hanging streamers. I don't know if you can tell but my jumper says 'Leslie M.' on the back.

We basically just played party games, such as Beatles musical chairs or ELO pass-the parcel. That's Marie-Clare and Ness in the picture, with Shoelace partially concealed in the background. Thanks to some fairly precise rigging of the music on my part, Aviator ended up with the glittery shirt. 

That's him in the picture - bear in mind he doesn't normally have Miley Cyrus's head. Phoenix just has a bizarre sense of humour. He tried it on (the shirt, not the head), decided he didn’t want it, and left it at my place. Now I have a shirt I have no idea what to do with. If anyone wants it, tell me.

We played a game in which we had to pin the head on Andrew Hansen. In hindsight this wasn’t the greatest idea. Not only was it fairly creepy, I now have about thirty little Hansen heads scattered all over my kitchen. There's about ten on a jar of macadamia nuts. The weirdest one is the one stuck over the head of a Barbie fridge magnet.

We also had a Secret Santa thing I rather enterprisingly called Hidden Harper. Aviator wrote me a letter. I’d given Marie-Clare a bottle of clear liquid labelled ‘DANGER: CHLOROFORM’. Giuseppe was given a can of minestrone. Falcon got an interesting feathery hat Phoenix had designed for him. Aviator's wearing it in the picture, along with a fake pirate hook and the ghastly scarf I knitted for Falcon after I lost that Doctor Who bet. I can't even begin to explain why.

Shoelace had brought a pinata stick for Vyvyan, which turned out to be very convenient.

I’d spent the past couple days creating a pinata of Matt Smith’s head. Much as I loved my creation, my personal favourite part of the party was when we got to bash his head open and basically consume his brains.

I have to admit I did a killer job on the papier mache, though. The pinata stick broke before the esteemed Messr Smith was so much as dented. We had to play cricket with it before we got it to open.

Finally, we had a Mystery Auction. Phoenix and myself were the auctioneers. The deal with a mystery auction is that you give out a very vague description of the object – such as ‘It’s convenient and basically a holy object’ for a mug with Jesus’ face on it – and then let people bid on it. Obviously we had to allocate a basic kind of money for this. I designed it myself. You could kind of tell. Not many regular banks include Stephen Fry’s face on the notes. And the TARDIS was a dead giveaway.

Anyway, this part got pretty interesting. Giuseppe was delighted with the Jesus mug. Gwen got an exact copy of one of our Relay4life umbrellas. Someone got a pair of odd, fluffy socks and a rain poncho, and one of those stamps librarians use to mark the dates in the back of books. Aviator bid outrageous amounts for what turned out to be an image of the painting of the TARDIS from the final of the last series in a plastic frame.

The second he realised what it was he raged madly, and then claimed he would take it home and destroy it. Turned out he forgot about that. It’s been on my bedside table for the past three months.

Oh yeah, and that's the creepy Hansen jar.

And that, with the conclusion of my first year’s exploration into the blogosphere, was the first anniversary of Stranger Things.

There was actually something I noticed about the party several weeks on. Nobody had really wanted to take anything home, except for Giuseppe and her Jesus mug, so I hung on to most of it and chucked most of it out. Yes, Ness, I ate your chocolates. Sorry about that. Anyway, school had begun again and I was casually walking along, shivering in the early morning, when Aviator hallooed me.

‘You look pretty cold there, Leslie.’

‘It’s a cold morning.’

‘Not for me it isn’t,’ he said cheerfully, and pulled up one of his trouser legs to reveal his socks. They were pink, fluffy, and indubitably the ones from the blog party. He moved on before I could (a) comment or (b) laugh.

You can say many things about Aviator, but you can’t deny he has a certain style.

 

5. The first time I dyed my hair

I dyed my hair red. Not permanently red, just temporarily so I could figure out if I liked it or not. That was a little while ago and I’m still not sure whether to go permanent or not. Anyway, it was a relatively simple thing to do. So far as I can tell, dying your hair consists of:

(i) wash your hair. Put on those bizarre plastic gloves. Apply dye to hair. Apply dye to ears accidentally. Remove dye from ears.

(ii) chill for about an hour by reading gripping Raymond Chandler novel. I went with The Big Sleep.

(iii) wash remaining dye out of hair.

(iv) take pictures of new, coloured hair. Post on Facebook.

It only lasted three days, anyway. It had gone by the time we went disco ice skating.

 

And that, complete with the extra half an hour I accidentally spent with the dye in my hair because I’d gotten to an especially hair-raising bit in the book and didn’t want to stop, was my first time dying my hair.

 

6. The first time I went disco ice-skating

For the record: disco ice-skating is EXACTLY like regular ice-skating but with loud modern music pumped into the ring and a couple of occasional disco lights. And the ice-skating rink I go to has music anyway. Sure it was a little later than usual, and it was a Friday night, but that was basically it.

Getting there was interesting. Lala’s sister Helga was giving her, me, Aviator and Kevin a lift. Once Lala called front I was forced to cram into the back with Aviator and Kevin on either side of me. It’s not a large car. The rink was a relief.

Reedy, the virtually professional ice-skater, had organised the night. Also there were:

Hitler (also a virtual professional), Sharona, Latte, Bob Dylan, Shoelace, Ness, and Cthulu, not counting Lala, Aviator, Kevin and myself. I think that was everyone. Also Beartrap, whom I’ve barely seen (bearly seen … hilarious) since he left the school several months ago. Employment seems to be suiting him.

Actually, Eggleston was there as well, something I would’ve thought I’d find hard to forget, given a certain incident that occurred.

 

EGGLESTON (E): Leslie, you can’t just skate around the edges all night.

LESLIE (L): Why not?

E: Try coming out to where we are.

(I come out to where he is and frantically grab his arm to prevent a collapse)

E: Ok, you’re fine now.

(He lets go and skates away)

L: What? Where are you AAAARRRGH OH F***

(I fall over backwards, as may have been evident from the sudden change in dialogue)

E: Oh, sorry.

L: Can I have a hand up?

(He tries to help and then awkwardly drops me again)

L: ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

 

And that, in no real way different to my normal ice-skating experiences, was my first disco ice-skating session.

 

7. First time at a dinner party

Obviously I’ve been to dinner parties before, but it’s always been tagging along with my parents, never one of my own friends. At least until this holidays.

Ariane hosted a dinner party for a few choice acquaintances during the holidays. I’ve a sneaking suspicion she invited those she considered least likely to offend her mother’s sensibilities.

I arrived at Ariane’s house before anyone else: she’d laid the table elaborately, complete with napkins and champagne glasses. To be clear, the glasses contained sparkling apple juice. But they looked effective. The others all arrived in the next half an hour.

It was a fairly posh occasion. Both Aviator and Ram, the only boys, were wearing bow ties and suits. I’d opted for my semi-formal dress as it’s the only remotely dressy thing I own. It was topped off neatly by a weird, spiky necklace I made when I was nine and spent two years unsuccessfully trying to palm off on to people.

The guests were Brandine, Peanut – the first time I’d seen her since she’d returned from Melbourne – Marie-Clare, Hitler, Aviator and Ram. There were three complete courses. Little tomato-and-feta pastry squares, then chicken (despite the fact that Ariane herself is a vegetarian), and, finally, tiramisu. I’d never been to a dinner party like that before, with just my friends, but I certainly hope to again. They’re a classy lot. The conversation wasn’t memorable enough that I can recall anything we talked about, except for Aviator giving an intriguing example of ‘grippening’ on Hitler, yet was simultaneously so funny I had trouble not elegantly propelling a mouthful of tiramisu across the exquisitely laid table on a number of occasions. Sparkling, I suppose you’d call it, if not totally clean. When the meal was over we experimented with Ariane’s espresso machine, Brandine and I doing our very best to make Marie-Clare a latte. On the first attempt we ended up with two extra-concentrated coffee drops.

And that, elegant table laying and classy company, was my first proper dinner party.

 

8. First time at a midnight Harry Potter premiere

The return of Phoenix to the country, the school, and my group of friends has wrought a number of significant changes in my life. The most relevant one to the above sub-title is that of her obsession with Harry Potter. I like Harry Potter. I’ve always liked it. Phoenix, however, loves it.

Hence her return means I’m far more involved in the Pottersphere than I would be otherwise. I’ve re-read the books, re-seen the films. My favourite characters are George Weasley and Fabian Prewett. I have developed a deep, unchangeable love for the Phelps twins, actors for Fred and George, more so the moment I realised they were on Kingdom as well. The moment the Magic Quill challenge on Pottermore came up I made my early access account and celebrated wildly when I was allowed in. My username is QuillStorm 142. If I actually know you, send me a friend request on it, we can do wizards duels and brew potions together and do crazy things like that. I may go into more detail about Harry Potter in relation to me in ensuing posts, but for now, all you need to know is that Harry Potter is becoming an increasingly large aspect of my life.

This is most noticeably relevant to the release of the last ever Potter film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2. I went to see the last one with a phenomenally large group of friends, as is mentioned in the post ‘Formalities’. But never before had I gone to the Australian midnight premiere of a Potter film, and I’d decided that this time, the last opportunity I would ever have, I would.

Of course, it’s not just as issue of seeing the film. The midnight premiere is when all the hardcore fans turn up and give of their best. Costume-wise, I mean. And we were determined to match them.

There were six of us going: Peanut, Lala, Helga (Lala’s older sister), Phoenix, Phoenix’s friend Tonks, and myself. Peanut was in Melbourne until shortly before the premiere and had already decided to go as Trelawney. Tonks, surprisingly, had opted for Tonks. This left the remaining for of us without a plan.

And so, five days before the premiere, Lala, Phoenix and I turned up at the shopping centre we also went to before laser tagging in an attempt to search for costumes.

Phoenix and I got there first and amused ourselves by looking at this weird Ken-doll thing that repeats your words in a disturbingly lower-pitched voice. Laura arrived shortly afterwards and told us about the idea her sister had had: that we all come as the founders of Hogwarts. Phoenix and I respectively called Slytherin and Ravenclaw the moment this was suggested, which Lala followed up by deciding on Gryffindor, leaving Helga to take up the part of Hufflepuff. To this end we all decided to knit scarves with our house colours. In five days. Not an easy task.

So that we’d all match, we all bought sparkly lengths of material in our respective colours, which we somehow managed to sew into capes over the next few days. Mine was the best. It really was. We wandered into Toys R Us to see if we could find soft toys of all the animals associated with the houses. Snakes, birds, and lions are relatively easy. You know how freaking difficult it is to find a toy badger? The closest we could find was a penguin and a panda. In hindsight, the penguin wasn’t all that badger-like. Actually, I was its only advocate.

Having done this, we bought props. I had a dodgy fairy tiara plus magic wand to act as Ravenclaw’s sacred diadem. Phoenix got a locket half-price because it was broken and Lala a foam sword and a plastic cup.

The next time we all met up was before the premiere itself. We arrived at Phoenix’s house beforehand – although Lala was two HOURS late – and prepared for the big event. Everyone else had put slightly more effort into their costumes than I had. Tonks had a Matrix-like coat and purple hair, and Peanut’s hair had to be seen to be believed. Phoenix and I had fun putting all the tangles in. Peanut probably had less fun removing them. I’d glued a bit of paper to the ‘diadem’ saying ‘Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure’ in biro. My scarf wasn’t finished so I just threaded some wool through where the needle had been. It looked dodgy. Super dodgy. Especially in conjunction with the lurid blue lipstick I was wearing. I didn’t look wise and noble so much as badly frostbitten.

We were the only people in the cinema dressed as the founders. There were Voldemorts, Gryffindors, a surprisingly small number of Harrys, Whomping Willows, two Snitches and one enterprising trio dressed as the Hallows. Phoenix thought it would be a wonderful idea to truly enter into the character of Salazar Slytherin and wander around telling the Voldemorts how proud she was of her descendants. By the time we’d left, the letters Lala had glitter-glued onto her sword, spelling ‘GODRIC GRYFFINDOR’, spelt ‘ORIC RFINDR’. Helga had brought individual packets of tissues as preparation for all the death scenes.

And then we went into the film. It was fantastic (although I always think every film I see at the cinema is fantastic. It’s only later I have second thoughts). I actually went to see it again with my family later that week. It’s the end of an age. Probably symbolic of the end of childhood. Most of us are 17 now – I certainly am – which makes us legally adults in the wizarding world.

Doesn’t really cross over into reality, but even so.

And that, sparkly capes and bizarre make up and Potter-loving friends, was my first – and last – time at a Harry Potter midnight premiere.

 

And that was my holidays, a collection of first-times and last-times and I-do-this-all-the-times. Not to mention my first time going over a month without posting.

So welcome back everyone, and let’s just hope it’s the last time as well.

It won’t be, but I’ve always considered myself to be a bit of a pessimist, and I’d like to have a go at unsubstantiated hopefulness for a little.

After all, there’s a first time for everything.