#oneaday 214: You’re Not Tom Cruise

I’m not Doctor Who, you’re not Tom Cruise. So don’t even think about attempting to invent your own cocktails.

I say this as a result of a memorable evening one night at university, a good few years back now. It was one of those evenings where we had just decided it was vitally important to get as blind drunk as possible, as is often the wont of people at university. At least one member of our circle of friends was in possession of some of the more “creative” spirits and liqueurs available, so we pooled our resources in an attempt to create The Next Big Thing.

To be fair, given the evidence we’d discovered on how easy it is to make a putridly-coloured yet remarkably tasty cocktail, we had faith in our own abilities to produce something delicious.

Shortly after arriving at university, we had all discovered the joy of the Juicy Lucy, a pint-based cocktail made up of a glug of vodka, a splash of Bols Blue, a bit of Taboo and then the remainder of the glass filled up with roughly half-and-half of orange juice and lemonade. The resultant glass of green liquid looks remarkably like what happens if you fill a pint glass with water and then squirt too much Fairy liquid into it. It also turns your poo green if you drink too much of it, a fact which several of us were unprepared for and thus spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time fretting the next day that we had some form of terrifying bum-cancer.

Alongside the Juicy Lucy was the even-simpler concoction dreamed up by our hall of residence’s bar on “Hawaiian Night” (a night when everyone was supposed to wear Hawaiian shirts, and they turned the heating up full)—the Passion Wagon. The Passion Wagon was, again, a pint-based cocktail consisting of a shot of Passoa (passion fruit liqueur) and a bottle of Reef. That’s it. It came out bright orange and tasted like Five Alive. It did not, to my knowledge, do anything unpleasant to the colour of one’s bodily fluids or waste matter.

So going on that evidence, we figured that making a cocktail was pretty much simply a case of finding things which might taste nice together and then combining them together in a glass. Also, that vodka, when added to any drink, immediately makes something “more alcoholic” without making it taste any different.

How wrong we were. The first mistake we made was forgetting that Baileys curdles quite easily. After creating a number of drinks that looked like someone had spunked in, we decided that we weren’t skilled enough to do that clever thing where you make the Baileys float on top. So we left that alone. For a while. Then we elected to try combining various different flavoured liqueurs together. The least (or most, depending on how you look at this) successful attempt was dubbed “The Brown Sauce”, owing to its resemblance in taste to HP Sauce. For the readers unfamiliar with the wonder of HP Sauce, it is good on a bacon sandwich. It is less good in liquid form and drunk.

Eventually we gave up and went back to staples like Archers and lemonade. We didn’t have another home-made cocktail night after that. We left it strictly to the professionals.

#oneaday, Day 138: Days in the Sun

It was another gloriously sunny day today. It’s easy to forget that England gets nice weather sometimes when an estimated 85% of our days are overcast.

Everyone is in a better mood in the sunshine. And, judging by the number of people in town, everyone skips work in the sunshine, too. I went to the park and sat in the sun for a bit and there were people from all walks of life all around. There was the chav in the open shirt who kept stroking his chest. There were the noisy, screechy girls. There were excited little kids on their half-term break headed for the playpark. And there was me.

Sitting in the sun is nice. There’s something extremely pleasant about the weather being good enough for you to be able to sit (or indeed lie) on the grass and just relax. If it’s been raining or snowing, or if it’s cold, you’d never even think about lying down on the ground and dozing for a bit. But as soon as it gets a little bit sunny? Everyone seems to come down with narcolepsy. Well, except those people playing frisbee.

Lying in the grass is one of those things that triggers memories, particularly of being very young. I can remember lying on the grass at primary school on hot sunny days. Sometimes my friends and I would just lie there. Other times we’d talk. Other times still we’d attempt to do those stupid moves from P.E. that no-one ever does in real life. And on one memorable occasion, a friend became convinced that by doing a shoulderstand and “squeezing a bit”, he could make himself fart at will. (He couldn’t.)

Besides school, other grassy memories are mostly picnic-related. I have oddly strong memories of visiting the Imperial War Museum at Duxford and sitting in the grass having a picnic as we watched the planes take off, land and do various pieces of death-defying aerobatics. Thinking about it, I don’t think we were actually sitting on the grass, more hanging around the car in deckchairs eating sandwiches. But sandwiches always taste better outside, as everyone well knows.

So it’s been a nice day. A very nice day in fact. Even the fact that I clearly got a bit burnt judging by the tingling on my ears right now (either that or someone’s talking about me) didn’t detract from the niceness of the day. So that’s good. Nice days are good. Nice days are much-needed. Nice days have been away for a long time, so it’s, well, nice to see them again.

Let’s hope this lovely summery weather continues for some time, and that we see more in the way of girls in tiny shorts and less in the way of shirtless bald chavs staggering through parks with cans of Tennents Extra clutched in their desperate sweaty gorilla-hands. And maybe some English people can get a proper tan instead of feeling the need to pointlessly slather themselves with orange paint.

#oneaday, Day 52: Nostalgiarising

Been feeling a little nostalgic over the last few days. The Final Fantasy story I told last night was just one of the things I’ve been remembering. I’ve been finding all sorts of other crap around the place recently – one of the most recent rediscoveries was a cardboard document wallet containing some play scripts, posters and a few other bits and pieces from when I was at university. I love finding old playscripts in particular, because we always used to scribble all over them and sign them on the last night of a performance. I’m glad we always did that, because it means I have great keepsakes like this. Ignore the dreadful attempt to draw Cloud Strife that is inexplicably on the front page.

Four points about these pages:

1. I have no idea what the stains are.

2. Yes, I am aware my script is bound using duct tape.

3. Don’t try and email “Costume Lucy”. She’s not there any more.

4. The “makeup” mentioned in several of the comments is referring to this:

(I’m the one on the right.) My mother inexplicably told me that me being dressed like this reminded her of my Grandad. I don’t remember my Grandad ever looking like that, unless I didn’t know him that well. (Yes, Mum, I know that wasn’t what you really meant.)

My time with the Theatre Group at Southampton University is one of the things I most fondly remember from my past. One day we’ll manage that reunion that Anja and I are always talking about. Maybe even this year. Who knows?

Also found in said folder:

Programme from an episode of Songs of Praise that our extremely non-religious secondary school attended, signed by Diane Louise Jordan of Blue Peter fame.

Programmes from other productions I was in – our extremely over-budget, ambitious, futuristic Macbeth from the time when everything had to look like the Matrix; our first attempt at taking a show up to the Edinburgh Fringe (A Month in the Country by Turgenev, performed outside. Not the wisest decision, but it was fun.)

My second attempt at freewriting from when I first found out about it – dated 16/9/01 at 21:36.

My “P” for “passed” plates for my car (which I never put on the car, because having “P” plates on is an invitation for other drivers to treat you like even more of an arse than they do already)

And, finally, this delightful 20th birthday card, hand-made for me by my friends Sam and Chris.

Rediscovering stuff like this is awesome.

#oneaday, Day 51: Final Fantasies

Picked up Final Fantasy XIII today, but I’m not going to talk about it too much just yet. I want to do a proper “first impressions” post. Suffice to say, though, I’m enjoying it so far. It has been extremely linear so far, as people have been saying, but it’s certainly not a worse game for this fact. So far all the characters seem appealing, and the dynamic between them, now they’ve all met each other, is shaping up to be interesting. I look forward to seeing what happens.

I wanted to talk about my memories of the Final Fantasy series generally, as it’s a series that will always be close to my heart for a variety of reasons. I’d never even heard of it prior to Final Fantasy VII’s release, but I was intrigued when I heard my brother discussing it and he mentioned the oft-quoted fact that it was “one of the only games that had ever made anyone cry”. It sounds trite now, of course, as everyone knows what FFVII’s “big shock” was, and the moment has lost its emotional impact. But I remember playing that game for the first time and not knowing what was going to happen – so when that moment at the end of Disc 1 came, I genuinely felt something. It hadn’t been spoiled for me. I knew something tragic happened at some point in the game, but that was it. I wasn’t prepared for them to kill off a main character like that. It was, of course, even more traumatic for the fact you could rename every party member in FFVII, so it was like someone I actually knew died. (Shush. I was young and stupid.)

Of course, killing off main characters isn’t something that FF has traditionally shied away from, but being unfamiliar with the series prior to that moment, I wasn’t to know. In fact, not only was I unfamiliar with the FF series, I was unfamiliar with the RPG genre in general, my only real experiences with it having been Alternate Reality on the Atari 8-bit (which, when I played it as a young child, I really didn’t understand) and the dreadful Times of Lore by Origin on the Atari ST. Neither of them had gripped me, perhaps because of the deficiencies these games held in the narrative department. Alternate Reality just didn’t have a story full stop (besides that which you made for yourself) and Times of Lore was just… well, crap. So, suffice to say I hadn’t felt particularly inspired to pursue an interest in the RPG genre – not until FFVII turned up, anyway.

A particularly fond memory of VII comes from one long summer when my folks were away in America for a few weeks. It was the first time I’d been left home alone and, among other things best left for discussion another day, my friend Woody and I spent a lot of time playing Final Fantasy VII. At one point, we played it for thirty-six hours continuously, whacking each other over the head with couch cushions when the other looked like they were falling asleep. Eventually, we did pretty much both pass out, with some peculiar dreams and talking-in-sleep going on. The tequila probably didn’t help matters.

We fell asleep as we were in FFVII’s Ancient Forest looking for the Apocalypse Sword prior to the endgame. I remember falling asleep to the music there and it infecting my brain. I can’t hear that track these days without thinking of the peculiar sensations of sleep deprivation, slight drunkenness and square eyes from staring at the TV for too long.

It was some time after discovering FFVII that I decided to explore the rest of the series and uncovered the world of the music of FF. I managed to track down some scans of the elusive “Piano Collections” books for FFIV, V and VI online and tried playing them. They’re wonderful arrangements – actually properly written for the piano, rather than simply transcribed – so the performance of them has become something of a trademark of mine over the years. Hearing any of those tracks always fills me with a sense of deep joy and nostalgia – not necessarily for the games as such, but because they remind me of times past – of good times with friends, of things that happened around the same time as me playing them – all sorts. Playing the games themselves has much the same effect. It’s actually been many years now since I played FFVII, VIII or IX. Although they are now somewhat aged, I don’t think the soft spot I have for them will ever leave me, and I’ll always carry the memories of what I was doing when I played them. (FFVII – that long summer. FFVIII – first year at university. FFIX – visiting my bro in America one Christmas.)

Yeah, I know. How lame to tell a Final Fantasy story. But I don’t care. 🙂