This past slightly-more-than-a-week has seen the commemoration of SiC’s birthday (he’s now one thousand years old – or maybe slightly less; I’m rounding here) and also our first wedding anniversary. A whole year and I’m still married! Will wonders never cease, eh? I figure this is either because a) SiC is the most patient person in the entire world or b) SiC is the most stupid person in the entire world. The jury is still out.
To celebrate the birthday, we rounded up a decent assortment of our friends from London and forced them to engage in a sordid group barbeque in our garden. They were very good sports about it, and even seemed to experience passing moments of enjoyment. Unfortunately our contingent plan to annoy the shit out of our neighbours failed miserably – the garden is so freaking huge that the hideous cacophony from the barbeque area scarcely reached the house. Curses!
In fact, the whole party was a stunning success. We strategically invited six Australians and a South African in order to glean maximum barbeque expertise (the South African grimaced visibly every time SiC upended yet another bag of charcoal briquettes onto the barbeque – Saffers are proper purists). We also scammed a projector for the evening and a Nintendo Wii (or ‘Nintendo Poo’, as I like to call it) and projected the games on the side of the house so people could play virtual tennis with life-size virtual characters. Arguably it would have been easier to just play actual tennis, but where’s the fun in that?
Everyone was very lovely and well-behaved and nothing inanimate got smashed. I got pretty smashed though, and I think a few other people did too. One of the Aussies came out of the bathroom around 3am and announced to everyone that “Hey, in the bathroom? There are two pennies on the floor, and a bunch of cleaning products? So it’s like, there’s a leprechaun? That cleans the bathroom? But you have to pay him, so that’s what the pennies are for!”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I said.
“What? I was just thinking about it,” he said sheepishly.
Personally I think it’s a brilliant idea. I’m going to run out right now and get me a bathroom-cleaning leprechaun.