PKMN

Cliffey decided a little while ago that we ought to throw a Pokémon Party - he'd heard stories about them and they sounded pretty cool. Everyone had to dress up as a Pokémon*, obviously, but it went deeper than that. Each room (except the ones we wanted to keep the rabble out of) became a gym: Cliffey's room was the electric gym, the garage was the grass gym, and the oven was the fire gym. You get the idea. Each gym had activites relevant to its theme, so electric gym had the N64, grass gym had grass-related activites, and the fire gym was...well, that was just an oven. We were going to make some chips but we forgot about that.

And most of these activities were, inevitably, translated into drinking games. The psychic gym had a higher or lower game, whereby an incorrect guess meant taking a drink, while a correct guess meant choosing someone else to take a drink.
All good fun. But obviously what you're all waiting for is the list of which pokémon were present. Well, I don't remember all of them, and the ones I do remember, I don't necessarily remember the names of the people who were them. Still, here's a partial list; do help to fill in the gaps if you can.

Charmeleon (Not sure who this was)
Charizard  (Again not sure, but they had crazy dragoneye contacts in so that was cool)
Squirtle (Think this was Dave)
Pidgey (Cartwright in a rather underwhelming towel-and-tape attempt)
Jigglypuff (Sarah, complete with marker pen and pinkish hair)
Zubat (Jen)
Psyduck (Ollie)
Poliwhirl (Tom, and possibly someone else?)
Machoke (Think it was Pat, but I'm a bit unsure between him and Dave because they were both painted blue; also Olly C.)
Bellsprout (Padbury, who later evolved into Man with a lampshade on his head)
Tentacool (Me with leggings on my head)
Onix (Meg)
Exeggcute (Luke, who later 'evolved' into Exeggutor simply by losing some of the balloons attached to his head and gaining a leafy thing)
Tangela (Elen, although this is rather dubious as she only decided on her costume after arriving)
Scyther (Mark in a rather impressive effort; his mum has been desperately searching for photos from the night)
Ditto (there had been several jokes in the runup that someone would come as a Ditto who had transformed into them, but I don't think anyone actually tried that in the end)
Snorlax (Cliffey; debate still rages as to whether Snorlax is blue or green but there we are)

Yes, it was limited to the first 151, and fortunately nobody strayed from that boundary. I wouldn't have minded - Gold, Silver and Crystal were arguably better than Red, Blue and Yellow - but Cliffey would.

I was just annoyed at whoever thought Tinie Tempah was a more appropriate choice of music than MIDI files of the game music on endless repeat.

I think it was Liv. Curse you, Liv!
Joel.

*There was some wiggle-room, naturally. We had an Ash, a Team Rocket, an Officer Jenny, a Nurse Joy, and Ed even dressed as an attack, complete with descending HP bar.

Father's Day & What Happened Before

At my parents' house yesterday, having handed my dad his card and Burn After Reading DVD, I was asked how Tom's party had been the night before.

I gave some vague answer, something along the lines of "yeah, pretty good", which was a fair summary of the overall night but did omit some important details like the broken toilet flusher and the people doing ketamine off Death Cab For Cutie CDs. I suppose I decided that my parents wouldn't be interested.

All of that aside, though, I think people enjoyed themselves. I had a rather in-depth conversation with Tom Rookes on the subject of living in uni halls, Cliffey and Dave organised a jam sandwich-eating contest, Padbury tried to light his farts...

Oh, and there was absinthe. Goblin-green, nostril-stinging absinthe. Tom brought some back as a souvenir of his adventures in Magaluf, and a few of us gave it a go. Mark and myself had trouble with it, eventually resorting to slapping the wall in a vain attempt to take the taste away; Pete took a sip and immediately fell on the floor.

But it was Sarah who was the real absinthe hero. She actually seemed to enjoy it, taking multiple shots of the stuff and commenting with a smile that it tasted "warm".

There were also ongoing shenanigans involving myself, Cliffey and an album by local band The Afternoons. But more on that another day, one when I don't have important events to review.

That sandwich-eating contest is supposed to be tomorrow, actually. Maybe I'll give you some sort of play-by-play.

Joel.

P.S. Cliffey and I went to pick up my organ today, the one I won on eBay for 99p. You'll be pleased to hear that it fit into Xander quite snugly (once we'd put the seats down), and is in fine working order. It even has a built-in drum machine, so you can play along to awesome beats! Cliffey suggested that we record me playing organ versions of various tunes from the original Pokémon games and play them at our upcoming Pokémon party, but I countered by recommending that we just download said music from vgmusic.com instead.

Tidy for the Party

Great Scott, he's done it!

Pete, assisted by his happy little elves Meic and Rob, have cleaned the house, and to a remarkable standard!

In fact, I'm sad that there's going to be a party now. It'll make a mess again.

Sorry guys, party's off. We're going to enjoy our clean house.

Joel.

P.S. Not really. Malibu time!

Utonium, Utonium - Jen's Party

Yesterday was not Jen Brooksby's 19th birthday, but it was (somewhat inexplicably) the day she chose to celebrate it.

Everyone was supposed to come in fancy dress, the theme being musicians. There were two Adam Ants, two Rihannas, an Axl Rose, a Britney Spears, and numerous others. A lot of people had put a fair amount of effort into their costumes.

None of them were us. In retrospect I should have been Jarvis Cocker; I already have the hair and a tweed jacket (courtesy of Tim Penn...the jacket, not the hair) and some thick-rimmed glasses would not have been hard to come by.

But this did not occur to me in time. Nor did the thought of bringing Tom along and just going as Tom & Joel.

Ten minutes before leaving the house, Cliffey was running around his room, trying to think of a musician he could dress up as using items he already owned (Sarah and I were sorted by this point, albeit in a fairly lazy way - she had on a Beastie Boys tee, I was wearing my British Sea Power top, so we were going as the Beastie Boys and British Sea Power). Eventually, he decided to wear his tiger onesie to Jen's house, because that way he could be...

...Cat Stevens.

I was taken aback with the excellence of this pun and immediately got a better idea than British Sea Power. I grabbed the gangster hat from the coat pegs in the hallway and, as I donned I dramatically announced that I would be attending under the guise of...

...Hat Stevens.

Now we had to think of a Cat Stevens pun for Sarah to be. We could write 'Welcome' on her forehead (Mat Stevens) or do her hair up (Plait Stevens) or put a cushion up her shirt (Fat Stevens) or have her spend the evening conversing in rhythmic gibberish (Scat Stevens) or have her wear a toga and drink a lot (Frat Stevens)...

This went on all the way to Penarth. None of these ideas were carried out.

Anyway, I spent most of the party using Jen's Virgin Media XL package to watch The Powerpuff Girls on demand with the sound off (someone, presumably an asshat, thought it would be a good idea to have music at a party), trying to guess what was going on.

I had fun.

Joel.

P.S. Some of the partygoers took the proceedings to Oceana, where festivities no doubt continued long into the night. I didn't go, because I knew I had to be up at 5ish this morning to go to work and wanted to get a decent night's sleep. Sadly this plan was scuppered when Sarah, Tom, Meic, Pete and a guitar all congregated in the room at 3am for a chat. Oh well.

Not Actually The Fourth Party

First of all, apologies for the lack of update-age over the past few days, but I've been in Penarth with Sarah all weekend in celebration of our 1st anniversary and I didn't think people would want to read about all our mushy exploits, so I just left it.

Last night some people gathered at the house to celebrate (?) the fact that Soph doesn't live here anymore. There were drinking games, conversation and croissants (Sarah got a box of 12 miniature croissants from Co-Op some time ago because they were reduced but then decided she didn't really want to eat them, so we shared them around last night and they went pretty quickly). 

Here is a list of the people present, in no particular order:

1. Sophie Jones (obviously)
2. Alex Smith (who threw up)
3. Joel Dear (me)
4. Sarah Macleod (who seemed to have been charged with organising the damn thing)
5. Thom Cliffe (who spent most of the night in bed because he's pretty ill at the moment)
6. Gemma Ward (who was not drinking)
7. Tom Bonelle (who was also not drinking; he had work in the morning)
8. Tim Penn (who attempted to shut me out of my own room while Megan fraped me)
9. Megan Williams (who insinuated that I like to interact with vaginas)
10. Qing Flarlarlar (who wasn't going to be in town long enough to attend but made some sort of special arrangements just so she could)
11. Meic Haran (who was a bit late as he had work but then he had been chilling in our garage earlier so it kind of evens out)
12. Herbdale Vladimir Fernandez O'Reilly (who once again complemented us on our The Princess Bride DVD/video/book)
13. Lukas Bochocki (who I didn't really speak to)
14. Joshua Price (who engaged in much debate as to whether or not he should get a haircut)
15. Nick Robson (who was accused multiple times of performing certain acts with a dog)
16. Daniel Grech (who has a pretty awesome beard even though everyone thought it made him look like a terrorist)
17. Adam Halton (who once again ended up playing guitar and wearing my hat)
18. DanGuy (who kept claiming that "God hates Penarth" and was subsequently called a dick by me)
19. Richard Walytschko (who assisted Halton in learning some of the tunes that were being demanded)
20. Penny Hines (for whom I'm trying to cultivate a reputation as The One With Whom JR Is In Lurve)
21. Liv Mortished (who had her croissant with some weird combination of strawberry sauce, chocolate sauce, and peanut butter)
22. Sian Lewis ("Very polite" - Tim Penn)
23. Anna ??? (Sian's ginger uni friend whose surname I was not privy to)
24. Matt Stone (who I've never met before and didn't see much of, rumour has it because he spent most of the night in Gem's room...)
25. Robin Tamlyn (who arrived quite late but gave Tim, Qing and Meg a lift so he was popular)

Now that Soph has left, this could well be the last house party 6 Tewkesbury Place sees. It was always Soph who told us we were having parties.

Joel.

The Third Party

On the night of Tuesday the twenty-first of September, two-thousand and ten, few of the tenants at Tewkesbury Place would have believed that a in a mere day's time, their walls would be shaking with animalistic frenzy, that their very dreams would be interrupted by a great cacophonous army of the inebriated.

Yet across the gulf of Cardiff, minds that are to our minds as a can of lighter fluid is to a half-pint of IPA, personalities boisterous and wild and unhinged, began to come towards Cathays.

At first the invasion was marginal. A sleepy received visit from the two landlords and a single confused looking guest were about the total of it in the first half-hour.

But then they came. In their droves, they came. I had been dozing in my bed when the first few had arrived, and I was still not fully conscious of my surroundings. But they cared not a whit for my sensitive condition, being loud and grating on my senses.

We thought we had it all under control, until Murphy brought down his damned speakers. The sounds coming through them were distorted but all-conquering. Walls offered no defence against their aural onslaught.

Myself and my friends, Tom and Sarah, hid in my bunker, passing the time playing idle games like Tekken and Fifa '01. Eventually, Tom could take no more, and made a go at escaping, promising that he would make contact when the maelstrom had passed. Now, in the aftermath of it all, I have yet to hear from him.

Sarah and I took one last look at the chaos around us and retreated as best we could into sleep. But the noise! The horrible quasi-music playing through those speakers came at our heads like a barrage from Hell itself.

This morning, the house was quiet. The night had taken its toll, though, and all around us were strewn bottles and glasses and gore. I know not whether I will hear from my friend Tom again, nor whether I shall sleep any better tonight.

The Second Party, or, Bye Bye DanGuy

DanGuy is not actually going back to Liverpool until Saturday, but he's otherwise occupied until then so we threw him a farewell party last night.

A lot of people were very drunk. I was not among them but I understand that it was a lot of fun, what with all the dancin'. One blonde person got very into it, and would have been awarded Life of the Party if we had awards like that.

There were a number of peg-based shenanigans going on, started, I believe, by that diabolical mastermind JR. He was outside, enjoying the breeze, when he found our clothespegs on the washing line and hatched a plan. For the rest of the night, everyone present was finding pegs pegged to their person. As I say, JR started it, but other people picked up the game, and by my reckoning the winner was Tim Penn, who managed to peg DanGuy's arm without detection.

Other things happened as well but these are best left to your imagination, not least because I've not got long left before it's tomorrow and this post is late. Suffice to say that the kitchen was quite messy this morning. Soph and Alex did the lion's share of the cleanup, and then made jam tarts. They made them wrong but whatever, it's the thought that counts.

Oh, and nobody broke any windows this time.

Joel.

The Party, or, How to Slap Windows

Mere hours after arriving at our new home, we opened its doors to a veritable stampede of friends, friends of friends, and Soph's sister's friends.

With something approaching 40 people in the house, there was bound to be some damage, so perhaps the broken window should come as no surprise. Certainly we have tackled the problem well; the perpetrator, who shall remain nameless, paid for a replacement, and it should be sorted by this time tomorrow.

Otherwise, the house came through it more or less intact. Soph was bemoaning the number of nearly-full cans left lying around, and one individual lost their keys in the maelstrom and probably had to wake up their parents at 3 in the morning upon returning home, but c'est la vie.

Today we went (minus Pete, who was sleeping) to The Crwys, one of the local pubs. Cliffey would probably like me to make a note of how miffed he was at paying £2.69 for a small bowl of ice cream when I paid the same amount for a big ol' treacle sponge chocolate sundae thing, but it seemed like a nice enough joint, and there's a quiz on Tuesdays so I guess we'll be returning soon enough.

Finally, I wish to inform you all of Cliffey's curtains, which are red, and so make the whole room red. It's awesome.

Joel.