Rupa coming, seeing Corin again, Mikey and Julian... Thames Festival, illness etc

So, I'm F*cking ill. again. Jeebies. It's super piss taking.

I was ill, last week, fever for two straight days, just lying in bed all aloney, then I was fine, went to 10+ judo, did the Thames festival (awesome) then just chilled on Monday and Tuesday. Decided to try and go to Tai chi in the fearsome rain, failed, came back with a mild sniffle, went to an AWESOME session of Judo on Wednesday... dying thursday, friday but feeling a little better today.

It was MAN flu. I hate the mild insanity I suffer when I have something like that though, I can't really take being confined to bed for several days. Most people settle in, whack on some DVDs and just chill. I die inside, wondering could the hours go any slower. And I get so lonely! What I really really want is someone to come and give me a cuddle, but naturally being diseased I'm treated like a leper. My mum describes me as turning into a 5 year old. I'm just sad, lonely and depressed when ill, dare I say it: even a bit irrational. It doesn't help that in this state, when I'm not sleeping I spend hours just thinking. I've got nothing to take my mind off things so I just spend hours pondering and thinking about my life. And because I'm feeling physically poor, everything seems to take on a bit of a negative tint.

God I hate feeling vulnerable.

Anyhoo, enough whining.

The Thames festival was AWESOME! In fact that entire weekend was fairly sweet as far as the weekends of my life go. I shall start from the Saturday:

Saturday:
I had a lovely session of 10+ judo. Yes. I do Judo with children. And no, they aren't that much smaller than me. It's why I go. I partnered up with Sophie, sensei's daughter, who's pretty good when she wants to be but does spend quite a lot of time being fun and 10 years old. She's pretty cool, she has quite a cool attitude, which I imagine is probably a bit of a problem at school but absolutely fine by me! But during groundwork and standing randori I got partnered with another little girl new to this class, who's just turned 10... and she's weeeeny and so cute. she had her hair all plaited back, and just the biggest eyes. During groundwork she pinned me down with mune katame (basically lying down diagonally across someone) and I rolled her over. I think it was the first time this had ever happened to her because she went all quiet for a second and I got worried for a moment thinking 'oh god did I scare her? Is she ok?' And then she looked up at me from the mat, giggled and asked me to do it again. Afterwards I went with Tom, who's 17, and has a curly 'fro, (side show bob style) information valid for this next point. While in Newaza randori we were rolling around, and I face planted him into the fake wall. He was really quiet on account of being stunned, and just remained planted in the wall. For about a second I was really worried because he paused for just a little too long for my liking... then I died laughing for about 5 minutes. It looked like his hair was sprouting from the wall. He was fine, a little stunned and luckily he saw the funny side to my just dying of laughter.

After the awesomness that was Judo, and hanging out with Louise at the dojo it was onwards to an afternoon of meditation down at the sivinada centre.

It was a pretty cool session of meditation, did some bear OMing although I admittedly couldn't last the whole 20 minute session. I found it difficult to meditate with the room. It was open meditation, so there were a surprising number of skinni health freak bitches who either left early, or were a bit pious. The person taking the meditation gave me a nick name 'Nirvana' spanning from a joke I told when she was explaining the point of the class. It went something along the lines of her saying 'So, yeah, it's not like we're going for Nirvana or anything' to my retorting 'I didn't think you could achieve Nirvana in a session... or in a single life time for that matter.' Afterwards we stayed for food. It was some good ayurvedic vegetarian munchies, the sweet was particularly nice. We also met up with this other woman from the punjab, born of Birmingham, but living in London and just chatted for hours and hours...

THEN RUPA CAME!

God I love Rupa, if she were an man, we'd be an item. By some luck despite train delays we managed to get off the train at the same time as her and we all went back to mine. It was AWESOME! She helped me clean my room. All those who know me well will understand the grave undertaking this feat was. But yes, with Rupa's leadership, some disco tunes, and half the night we managed it. I have a clean room. I can take people into my room. There is FLOOR!

Then we went to sleep. The first night we were a bit... YOU there! stay on YOUR side. *poke* *shove* *kick*

Sunday:

Then it was the day of the closing of the Thames festival. I was up for going to see the night carnival and the firework display and we'd invited Mikey, Julian and my good old friend Corin - who'd I'd not seen in about 4 years.

Me and Rupa made it down by about 5pm ish, and we just walked over around via the London Eye, we went up and down the promenade a bit, saw a man do a very elegant and balanced dance with some glass orbs. We also saw a modern indian dance/song and beatbox fusion show, and then we went and ate some Ghanian food while watching diversity up on stage. Then bought a new half size giant bubble wand (portability) and a small bottle of fluid. Eventually we went over to the National gallery to use the ladies and sat in there a bit as it had become cold. At this point I put on my bright orange fleece and we started eating my jelly beans. I got a voicemail saying that Mikey and Julian had arrived (about 2 hours late) and we walked back up towards the London eye thinking we probably won't find them. Up by the fudge stall, I tried to call Mikey but it went to voicemail, but got lucky with Julian. I told him what I could see, to which he inquired 'Are you... wearing Orange!?'

Mikey tried to jump me, but I turned around just in time and it turned into a hug.

So we all introduced ourselves, and began to amble downwards towards the site of the carnival. We made a detour though to the crazy plant man and I bought some Lemon thyme because it's a childhood smell, and I love it. Mikey insisted we all get a picture of us and crazy plant man.

Eventually we managed to squeeze a space fairly close to the parade, and sort of teetering on the edge of the curb I could see quite a lot.

And my, it was an amazing sight to behold. Colours, sparkles, glitter, floats and dancers it was moments after moments of pure joy. I remember the near naked dancing girls, decked out like Brazilian dancers and bejeweled bras and thongs (Mikey's face lit up, Julian looked down at the ground). Me and Rupa were dancing. Eventually I left the crowd to find Corin who ironically had been sitting by a tree behind us. And it was so good to see him. We spent a couple of minutes behind the crowd just catching up and hugging. It was amazing to actually meet him again. He expressed glee at my height... 'You're just so SMALL!' as he had forgotten what it was like to be around me. And then we went back to watching the parade, which was continually brilliant. Just all the different themes, and the colours. There seemed to be a bit of a seasonality thing happening, with white floats and dancers being wintery, and then there was a death type theme with skeletons, and then there was harvest, with giant onions and children. And then there was a brilliant party float, which just had two radio DJs playing bonkers with urban dancers who got us all dancing.

When it had finished I introduced Corin to everyone else and we stood around just talking and getting aquainted. I remember introducing Julian and Mikey as being married for 6 months and Rupa as my lesbian lover. To which Corin decided to beseech the world for a man to call his own. All in jest of course.

And then we went on to watch the fireworks over the Thames...

... which were amazing, naturally. I wouldn't expect any less of my home city. Seriously though they were brilliant, it was combination of location (over the Thames, the fireworks themselves reflecting off the surrounding buildings of glass, and the river waters itself) and the fireworks themselves being so very spectacular.

At some point before watching the fireworks, we decided that Julian was dressed like a lamp post, and that I was dressed a heater. Mikey decided to pretend I was a heater and warm his hands over me, while I waved mine about like a fire. Myself and Corin played a game where we determined whether or not I could kick him in the stomach from a standing position. I can. Rupa wondered for the millionth time why the hell does she know me. Then saw the fireworks and remembered it's because I'm awesome.

After the lighting high of the fireworks we ambled over to the Fire garden. It was a bit of an uncomfortable walk, but I'd been really looking forward to seeing it, and I sensed everyone else was the a bit... 'Um ok then,' So naturally I was a bit tentative and hoping it was awesome. And luckily it was possibly one of the greatest sites, and sights I'd ever had the greatest fortune to behold. It was utterly startling, amazing and surreal. The moment I walked through the margin of trees to the green of the Modern Tate it was like going through the looking glass and falling through the rabbit hole, entering the wardrobe and falling of the edge of the world. That was the feeling, but it was our moment of walking over the concrete and through the white birch margin to the garden of the fire alchemists.

I loved it. The fire had been placed in all sorts of strange and beautiful ways so that in one sculpture it looked like a bath tub and show of fire. Another sculpture was these giant spheres with little flames dotted around. My personal favourites were the smaller sculptures, which looked a bit like autumnal and a little like they might be in a Tim Burton film one day but far less threatening, or obnoxiously alternative. But instead of leaves, little leaf-like flames To me they were just magical, the first wander around that garden was a pure and perfect moment for me. It took me back to a time when I was little, and just had a pure gentle appreciation for things like the sky, and ice cream. I still have a pure gentle appreciation for the sky. I just don't look up as much as I did when I was 3 years old.

After a little wonder around, where I fell into my own little world. I came back to the group and we got cold and found one of the little pots of fire which was free. There were many little pots of fire just dotted around and people were sitting around them as they were nice and camp fire-like. And all five of us sat and warmed ourselves around the fire. And we talked, the way you can only talk when huddled around a fire together. Mikey set the 'round the fire question of the most pain we'd ever been in. I think myself and Corin might've tied that one. His appendix exploded, when my appendix came out I had an allergic reaction after the operation which led to my being off all post-operation painkillers for 2 hours. Rupa's was her bending a finger backwards, Julian's getting his foot run over, and Mikey's getting his nose broken? Then we spent ages burning twigs and throwing things in the pot of fire, while making silly voices. I came quite close to burning coring with a glowing twig. I don't think he noticed, or if he did he was very cool about it.

We would've stayed there all night (or at least until 3am when it suddenly gets freezing cold) but a man came to tell us that they were dismantling the garden and thus we had to move on. Corin walked us to the bridge, then said his goodbyes before heading in the opposite direction. Mikey, Julian, Rupa and I walked up to Waterloo, where we managed to get a train to Leicester Square but then had to get the night bus as we'd missed the last tube.

We walked over to the stop, Julian made a detour, so myself, mike, and Rupa went to have a look at the fourth plinth in Trafalagar Square. It's the plinth where every hour they pop a random person on it and hope they do something interesting. There was a naked man on it the other day, there were complaints but he wasn't being crude so people just had to deal with it. We seemed to have just missed a fun looking man for a woman who stood up there and took pictures from the plinth.

Eventually Julian rejoined us, and we went onwards to the bus stop and waited about 5 or so minutes and got onto the night bus. We all managed to get a seat, and we sat vaguely together in the sense that we all had to sit on a bench with a stranger, but all the benches we were on were all adjacent to one another bar Mikey who was centrally opposite thus in communication range of myself, Julian and Rupa (we were sat in that order starting from the Anterior end of the bus but not at its extreme). We tried a little conversation but, we were all a bit tired out by this point. Mikey had an earache, Julian was brooding over something and Rupa was out of range for me to gauge her condition. She later admitted to just dozing for a while at this point.

I eventually fell asleep anyway, as I do on long journeys or when tired on public transport. We kept going over bumps though, the motion of which kept nudging me awake. There was a point when I think I must've woken up, and was very lucid where Julian's eyes looked very softly at me and he looked very pretty. I thought I was dreaming at the time, but I surmised that it must've been a moment of semi-conciousness. I did keep waking up subsequently and asking questions such as where are we? How long to go? And Michael poked my foot once to get me to wake up because the man sitting next to me looked a bit worried. When I politely asked him, he just wanted to get off the bus and wasn't sure how to disturb my sleeping, and had been considering ninja-ing over me or something. After that Rupa came and sat next to me, but refused to let me nap on her. So I lay on her and squished her right up next to the window. She was not impressed.

Eventually we all got off at the Bus garage. Julian went home, and Mikey waited with us for a bus. I put on my Judo hoodie at this point as it was gone 1am and rather colder. Then Me and Rupa got on the 281 and went home, did the girls out late brisk 'I'm not getting mugged so help me' walk to my house to find my stupid Dad had bolted the door. Because he is a bit of a fool. My Mum later ripped him a new one for it.

Eventually got in, had some spinach and Paneer (Mum made it... it was awesomely lovely. The paneer was just right) and then put on some Pajamies and had a hot chocolate with Rupa. She fannied about brushing her teeth. Then we went to bed.

It was really cold though, so I snuggled up next to her back for warmth. She craned her neck around, and I looked up at her hoping she wouldn't tell me to sod off. She just said 'aaawwww,' and admitted she was cold too, and that I was like I little animal.

So we huddled up for warmth. Not in a lesbian way. More like Bear Grylls and Will Ferrel in the artic circle kind of way.