Party, cubed… (Blog 121)

Yesterday, I celebrated three times in one outing (well it was an outing for me, technically) with my family round my brother’s new house. First of all, I celebrated the fact he had a new house, and secondly and thirdly I celebrated two people’s birthdays: That of my 70 year old dad, (actually he turns that age, tomorrow but it IS nice to concentrate parties into super parties), and that of my brother’s mother in law or something like that. Let’s just simplify things and call her a relative, even though I’m not truly related to her. Anyway, no one likes getting older do they (well old people don’t) so really, I only celebrated the new house, now that I think about it. ‘But Simon, before you continue, I want you to give me some statistics on how much people don’t like getting older’. Ok, just for you: Because I’m now 30, my dad is exactly 2 and a third times worse off than me. I could have brought that up at the time, but I chose not to.

How did we celebrate? We all got a takeaway curry. To be specific, I got a vindaloo. I know you may be thinking ‘nobody celebrates with vindaloo’, but I do like the perhaps 'practical joke' dish. Yes, when I eat I like to be in severe pain. No, only joking. Just pain. As we all ate, various rock and metal bands played on the stereo, as my baby niece kind of just hanged around in the background. Judging by her face, she liked the music. What can I say? Hardcore baby. Her favourite band seemed to be the nice and peaceful sounding The Stone Roses, which didn’t surprise me at all. As far as I’m concerned it’s impossible not to like them. Just as no one really dislikes pitta bread. (A random food? Actually, when I was 7 in school, I remember pupils tasting all kinds of products, and it seemed EVERYONE liked the dough based treat. Universally liked? Wow, that really stuck with me. Whoops, I’ve digressed). However, to be fair, (about The Stone Roses in case you’re understandably confused) instead of liking the tune, the newborn might just be a genius super baby who somehow understood and liked the lyrics. They went ‘I want to be adored’. Did she relate to the words? Maybe.

After all that business we all (apart from the baby to be clear) played upsetting virtual reality games such as Resident Evil. Having not played computer games for a while now, I was very impressed to see how far the technology had progressed. It’s almost like some crazy person with a knife is coming right at you! Isn’t that great? Because I am now a grown up hardcore ex-baby, I wasn’t particularly scared, but let’s be logical; it’s weird to be frightened of things that are fictitious. In contrast, I am plagued by fears of getting sucked into a black hole and the world turning to liquid s**t, and rightly so; the thought that there are huge indestructible and ultra powerful hoovers at the centres of galaxies is quite unnerving. How would you feel if everything gets destroyed in the middle of your town or city? Creeped out most likely. It’s the same thing, just on a smaller scale. Well I fear the holes if I spend too much time watching sciencey space videos on Youtube, anyway. Half an hour or more of them and I’m done, usually. Anyway, after a lot of further gaming, it was time for me and my dad to get a taxi home. (As driving home slightly drunk would obviously be illegal). Was the journey worth writing about? Nope, so byeeeeeeeeeeee.