apparently, i am even more dismal at pool than i previously thought. and let me tell you, that's pretty impressive! though, apparently i can twirl a cue like nobody's business, with plenty of menace and resolve.

but that is no matter, because despite all the hype of the infamous tournament, that wasn't really the point of the evening at all, was it? no no no. the point of the evening, at least as far as i was concerned, was that i got to meet this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one in the flesh, and see my darling girlies again for the first time in ages. there was whisky and chattering and giggling and of course plenty of tramping around camden town. and, of course, i have photos. i will post them as soon as i figure out how to extract them from the dratted camera (including, yes, some stellar photos of stuart wearing my cap at a jaunty angle).

the only thing missing, of course, was the lovely third member of the troika, who we missed very much, particularly during our 2am ritual feeding down on old compton street, where we cackled madly about accents and changed the subject very smoothly (look, i've got water!), even as the good mark tried vainly to teach us some cockney rhyming slang. though there was absolute fiesta of fierce fabulous femaleness about that table (with which mark coped gracefully), we missed our owlet. of course, the prevailing theory is that if she'd managed to actually be there with us, the sheer power of the troika plus two would have caused the planets to realign, the heavens to turn themselves inside out, and basically the end of the world as we know it.

that's right. we can do that, when you put us all together. make no mistake.

anyway. i'm not doing the scene any justice really, but suffice it to say that it was a smashup good time, and though by the end of it my throat was sore and i was pretty much exhausted, i can't wait to do it all over again. for real.

we interrupt this morning to inform you that there are bagpipers in the field next to my bedroom window.

bagpipers.

apparently, they tend to swarm this time of year.

last night, i accompanied the fam to a carol service at the local church. as stuart said, 'hm. they're really giving you a  proper rural british christmas, aren't they?'

to which i affect my finest plummy accent and say: 'damn skippy.'

let me start by saying i was absolutely right, that the whole notion of sleeping in a room that is both silent as the tomb and dark as agent cooper's coffee is both disorienting and self-indulgent. after retiring at the shy hour of eleven last night, i slept through till about 12:30 out here, wrapped in feather bed and darkness.

of course, that could have something to do with the fact that i'd been awake for about two days prior to my lovely sleep.

yes, ladies and gentlemen, i have arrived on british soil. the journey was an adventure, though hardly one worthy of an adventure novel. i left my house in a made frantic dash, having frittered the day away with d., doing not much of anything at all. i packed in about five minutes and hurled myself out the door just as the taxi arrived; i am still wondering if i left the coffee pot on, or if my house is an inferno as i type.

arriving at the airport, i was met by the typical jfk scene--a line for check in that stretched somewhere to the middle of the departures lounge. utter chaos. but, i survived without mangling anyone (an actual danger, considering i hate both flying and crowds; they tend to make me testy), and made my way to the departures lounge, somewhere in the next terminal.

once i'd arrived and armed myself with the requisite trashy magazine, i was called to the desk, whereupon i was informed that i had been miraculously bumped up to business class.

this, naturally, led me to believe that i was going to die a horrible fiery death in return. i even had to call the biscuit to get him to convince me otherwise. you see, i had had a Very Good Few Days. so good, in fact, that i was certain that retribution would have to be had (i'm not very good at accepting large swathes of goodness; it's a balance thing)--i was on my way to england to see many people i love and do many fun things; i'd had a lovely little soiree the previous night; my occasional ability to avoid doing something stupid or be a complete jackass has kept me in good company; work can kiss my ass for ten days; and now, i'm suddenly confronted with the fact that i was going to have edible food and leg room on a transatlantic flight. terrifying.

but, i arrived in tact and on time, simply Blew through immigration and customs, and now i'm here, in our family's tiny tudor cottage, engaging in conversations about who is going to be redoing the thatching and the fact that the front door now looks like something out of a medieval torture chamber and smashing my head on the rafters. planning the inevitable christmas day trivial pursuit tournament (british edition circa the 1970's; hardly fair) and tomorrow's pool-to-the-death extravaganza.

see? my apartment simply HAS to be burning. 

and now, if you'll excuse me, i have some horlick's to drink and a fireplace to drape myself in front of.

bwa ha ha haaaa!

let the games begin.

in honor of my impending voyage to old blighty, this installment features park slope's own little slice of greasy british heaven, the chip shop. smack on the corner of 6th street and 5th ave, brooklyn's answer to the local chippy is heaven for (and fully staffed by) displaced british and the british at heart. i was first made aware of the chip shop because the biscuit used to live a block away from it, and dragged me there in horror the instant i revealed that i'd not been in. since then, it's been a perennial favorite for me--the top choice on those late summer nights at the gate, when we've been drinking for hours but don't want to move, as well as a great place for birthdays and first dates. the menu features what you'd expect--cod and chips, steak and kidney pie, meaty mac--all done up simply but perfectly. the desserts are where this place really shines though: if you are of the temperament that believes that everything is made better by deep frying, then you're in luck. because this is the home of the deep fried twinkie, the deep fried mars bar, the deep fried peanut butter cup and deep fried anything else you can think of.

for the more health conscious (who should really know better than to come here), all fishy things are available baked or steamed, and potatoes are also available mashed or boiled. additionally, for those missing a proper english curry, the folks at the chip shop have annexed their own dining room and turned it into the park slope curry shop, where you can get some killer korma, some mad fab masala and some thrilling tandoori, all served with your choice of naan or rice.

also, they do killer hangover brunch.

the decor is pure swinging london meets down home brooklyn--pressed tin ceiling, creamy yellow walls (on one side; spicy red on the side of the curry shop) with british pop memorabilia tacked up all over the place. if ever you were missing your old bunty book or blue peter poster, this is the place to go for a small sigh of nostalgia over a proper english beer.

call (718)CHIPSHOP to make an order, for more information, or just to get a fix on hearing that delicious accent. which, let's face it, you know you're seriously a sucker for.

personal favorites: chicken and mushroom pie. cod and chips (obviously). deep fried mars bar (only to share, unless you're really gunning for that coronary). scotch eggs. salmon and cream cheese omelet. chicken tikka masala. plus, they have IRN BRU and young's double chocolate stout! and very cute quasi-mod staff.

they say that you can read someone's past in their face, if you know how to read between the lines. i'm inclined to agree, though i think that if you want to read my history, you don't need to go much further than the eyebrows.

i was once told that i can be described in the point of my chin and the angle of my brow, and it's true. my left eyebrow is slightly higher than my right, the result of years of cocking it jauntily, in disbelief and incredulity, to express surprise and make a point. the lopsided brows (unlike my lopsided ears) show that i am an expressive girl, an animated girl who has had a lot of experiences worth cocking a brow over.

my eyebrows are also telling of more carefully hidden mental sensations. i had my eyebrows waxed on monday, and the aesthetician (waxer) was aghast at the state of them: sparse, fine, full of patchy holes. she asked me what i had been doing to my poor defenseless brows to bring them to such a state of destruction. to which i said: nothing but years of abuse can create that kind of lasting impression.

the story goes like this: at the ripe old age of sixteen, it came to my attention that my eyebrows took up as much facial real estate as groucho marx's did his. i'm not kidding. ask ross. he's seen my driver's license. anyway. at the time, having fallen victim to the ugly duckling syndrome and all the low self esteem that entails, i decided to take matters into my own hands and tame the savage beasts above my eyes. which i did. and they looked great. until i started getting a little extreme. i soon became obsessive about pruning the brows, to the point where it became a nervous habit. this is why i had only half of a right eyebrow during college. while i have calmed down some (resigned myself to a life of letting the professionals do it-- i will permit myself this luxury), the damage has been done. there are holes in my brows where nothing will grow anymore. these scraggly bits are almost like battle scars, proof that i have settled some scores with a few of my demons. i'm still crazy, but it's a different brand of crazy. and proud of it.

it probably sounds silly to you, that i consider my grooming habits to be telling signs of my own emotional fortitude, points in which i can take pride. but, when you consider the fact that many of the other ways i tried to destroy myself back in the day didn't leave any marks...i mean, a girl's got to be able to point to something when she talks about surviving herself. for some girls, it's a slash scar on the wrist. for me, it's my eyebrows.

i have a confession to make.

i find hard-core pornography unsettling.

i don't know why this is; as a liberated young woman of the twenty-first century, i feel as though i should be embracing porn with open arms, as though i should have my own collection. i'm certainly okay with it conceptually. i don't have a problem with people, en-relationship or otherwise, having collections. i don't have a problem with people appreciating or working in porn. i don't have a problem with buying it or selling it (or, at least i'd imagine i'd have no problem selling it; i've never tried). but there is something...

i've got to be honest. walking into XXX dvd and video on 8th ave today (office field trip, best not to ask), i just felt out of my depth. walls upon walls of video cases, each featuring a cleverly punned title and a pneumatic actor/actress, smiling or pouting in an approximation of seduction. an army of coiffed exhibitionists daring me to watch in awe as they shake their collective groove thangs.

really, though, i think what it is is that hardcore porn makes me feel like i'm fifteen again (kindly refrain from boorish comments, thanks), lost and bewildered in the jungle of human sexuality and jumping at all the shadows of lust. things lurk behind those cases that i can only imagine, that i can barely fathom, and that i am nowhere near bendy enough to accomplish. i know there are some who find innocence of that sort beguiling, but i don't relish going back there. and while i'm no longer quite an innocent in the world of sex, i am certainly an innocent in the world of porn; and having fought damn hard to be the jaded prat that i am, i am unsettled when reminded of how much there is left for me to learn, should i choose to learn it.

in the command room, we are bracing ourselves for war. ostensibly, next week is the week that bosslady deigns to grace us with her presence and deliver the annual reviews. how she plans to do this remains a mystery, as she's been missing for the four months she would ostensibly be reviewing, but prepare ourselves we do, nonetheless. and we don't fight cleanly aroudn here, no matter what the stories say.

in a way, i feel almost bad for bosslady, in as much as i can feel bad for someone who clearly has no conscience. when she walked in last week, 45 minutes late, to sit in on our meeting, the temperature dropped palpably. she knows we're not happy, with her, with this office, with anything. our conjecture is that she's going to adhere to the 'best defense is a good offense' school of thought; we're preparing ourselves to be mightily attacked. because she knows we're going to come right back with it.

so it's going to be an interesting time. i wonder who is going to come out the wiser; we've certainly got an advantage, three paeons against one overprivileged and underprepared quasi-manager. hardly a fair fight, really. but that's what we've been reduced to.

this isn't work, it's war.

some unidentified benefactor just sent our office an erotic toolkit.

that's an EROTIC toolkit. not an erotic TOOLKIT. abandon all fantasies of penis-shaped wrenches right now.

it wasn't addressed to anyone in particular, and we have no idea who it's from. it contained:

edible vanilla-flavored massage cream

two bottles of "oil of love" massage oil (spice flavored and raspberry flavored)

a feather tickler

lube (oh, excuse me, "Love Liquid")

massage oil, unscented.

so that appears to be our office's lone christmas gift. it's not chocolates, but, you know. it'll do. interesting gift choice with an added enhancement of mystery.

i took the edible massage cream. i have some calluses on my elbows that need some attention.