(no subject)

[chess]

Had a great time at the 8-10s Christmas Party on Sunday night. Fairly early on ate an entire necklace of sweets (y'know, the candy beads that are practically all sugar and E-numbers) that I won in Pass the Parcel for singing a nursery rhyme (Baa Baa Black Sheep, with drum and bass accompaniment thanks to some of the others there) and spent the rest of the time on a complete sugar high. I thought the sausage rolls I brought (shop-bought, I hasten to add :-) ) were wonderful, even if it appeared most people were more interested in the sweeter and weirder things on offer.

Normally I dislike Pass the Parcel intensely, because I'm always terrified of getting a really bad forfeit; at Crowded House I normally sit out because the forfeits are often gross things like eating a spoonful of mustard, and strong tastes affect me really badly. Pete and Ju had a good idea to make it more fun, though. Each forfeit had sweets with it, and if you didn't want to do the forfeit, you just had to pass the sweets on. They'd coupled them with really tame forfeits though (like singing a nursery rhyme, and impersonating a celebrity, and singing the national anthem while on one leg), and only Ju herself actually refused one.

Even before I had the necklace that pushed me straight over into a sugar high, I was acting fairly crazy, because what's the point of playing children's games if you don't go at them like a rabid monkey? Children do, after all; or at least, the children who have fun at parties do. We played the chocolate game (bar of chocolate, knife and fork, winter scarf/hat/gloves, dice... everyone rolls the dice, if you roll a six you put on the scarf/hat/gloves and try and eat the chocolate with the knife and fork), which I used to be the absolute master of, due to not being embarrassed to tear things apart frantically and lean right over the chocolate to shorten the chocolate-mouth distance that the knife and fork have to carry chocolate and only putting the clothes on just properly enough. (It's odd how sometimes I can be very competitive, even though I don't generally think of myself as competitive at all.)

One of the church elders, whose house we have 8-10s in, dressed up as Father Christmas for us, and I did a very crazy little kiddie impression, complete with squeaky voice. We were meant to just spend £1 on something to put in the present sack, and I'd put in a Bob The Builder plastic saw with candy in (you know that something's an utterly atrocious and unsaleable item when they have to fill it with candy to make people buy it). I was the first one to get something out, and I got this massive box of Milk Tray! Thankfully I was on too much of a sugar high to feel too embarrassed or worried that I'd got something wrong; I rewrapped the chocolates slightly so no-one (including me!) was tempted to eat them there.

Then we had 'special presentations'; The Jug, which is given to the person who gets most spectacularly lost and/or is the most help to the leaders; undisputedly this went to Simon for both. Then two new ones, Sleepy Cow (a cushion with a cow head and legs off the corners) to Manwel for his habit of sleeping all the time, and Raving Rabbit for the most insane person, which went to yours truly :-). I then proceeded to prove them right by bouncing around going 'Eee!' and 'Fluffy!' and 'Rabbit!' a lot, in a ridiculously high voice. (Sugar + E numbers + the Chessypig = excessive quantities of bouncing and squeaking.) Also everyone got little presents.

Julie had brought weird jelly with stuff in (Haribo sweets in one, chocolate swiss roll and chocolate chips in the other) which she and quite a few of the others thought was really gross but I liked, maybe because I had already had quite enough sugar to make anything with more sugar in seem appetising. Pete then proceeded to chase me around the room with ice-cream; his favourite game atm is dabbing ice-cream on my nose. Julie was rather annoyed with him 'cos he got ice-cream all over the floor. There was also some squirty cream and paper plates, and inevitably some of the cream ended up on one of the plates and subsequently all over Jake's face. (I would like to at this point assure you that I had nothing to do with this at all; I was too busy being chased around the room at the time.) Akiko took photographs.

Pete also tried to feed Raving Rabbit, who said that he couldn't eat crackers because he was furry, didn't eat Party Rings because he was a carnivore, and didn't want a sausage because it was old, burnt meat, he preferred fresh fingers. Then Pete and Jake both failed to prove that I needed a cracker, due to being crackers. I was starting to get a bit tired by this stage, and I think I was somewhat subconsciously mimicking Akiko's accent; I was definitely talking in a strange (and somehow quite 'gentle') voice, somewhat like Akiko's but somewhat more childish. I also kept speaking with my hands an awful lot more than I generally let myself. It was nice to have an excuse to let myself go, with people who act pretty insane themselves so weren't weirder out by it too much.