The Word Cloud

Miranda came to visit me in Potters Bar. She was due to arrive on Friday, but decided to come early on Thursday  - *Yay!* but *Panic!*

I rushed around, trying to make my flat less minging. I managed to clean the toilet, and excavate the kitchen sink. I also bunged the worst of the floor debris in a big bag, but by the time I had to leave to meet daughter-dude from Victoria, my gaff was still looking like a cross between the Somme and Nora Batty's vagina. Oh well.

So, Miranda arrived and we went to my pub, the Oakmere. Initially, there was a random human sitting in my Inner Sanctum (the snug), so we had to sit elsewhere, but halfway through our first drink, the landlord - Matt - popped his head round the corner and said "Your office is free now, by the way" so we got to sit in my fave spot with a view of the squirrels and ducks in the park. When we got back to my flat, we spent half the night on the Interweb, inflicting our fave musics on each other. She showed me many awesome cool stuffs she's found online, eg this. It was a lot like when Miranda was lickle, and we used to sit together on the sofa, reading kiddie books - I used to extemporise on the stories, adding all sorts of bizarre and surreal details to make the stories last longer. (We had a animal book, where I did the noises, and Miranda copied me. Unfortunately - teehee - this led to Miranda having a tantrum at playschool when the teacher did the same thing with the kiddies. I wasn't good at doing elephant noises, so I'd told her that elephants go "Ping!" When the kindergarten teacher told the kids that elephants go " Eurraaagh!", Miranda wasn't having it. "My Daddy says elephants go 'Ping!' " Oops. Just as well they didn't get around to doing tortoises.)

On Friday, we went to the pub again (pattern emerging here), and decided to play a drawing game. (I used to love lying on the living-room floor doing drawings with my daughter, and Miranda knows that, so she'd suggested bringing pens and paper with us). The game is simply this: you draw a representation of the name of a town - eg: grassy bank with a hole in it, bloke kneeling down with his head in the hole, rabbit sitting nearby looking puzzled. Solution: Edinburgh ( it helps if you have a London accent with that one). This resulted in us laughing like loonies, and shouting out strings of random words as we attempted to guess: "Alien wardrobe artichoke!" etc. The more maniacally we laughed, the more nervous the humans became. "Gusset fungus!" The humans who had invaded the Inner Sanctum went away, but unfortunately they were replaced by a family with kids. Meanwhile, Miranda had drawn a town - Lewes - which involved a extremely badly drawn picture of a toilet. I totally couldn't guess what it was supposed to be.
"Lava lamp?"
*laughter*
"Blender? Mincer?"
*more laughter*
"Is it something you would cook with?"
*hilarity*
"No - gasp - I hope not!"
"Could you make music with it?"
*hysterics*
Miranda drew some additional clues: toilet roll holder and bog brush, which I misinterpreted variously as 'Asthma inhaler' and 'Tampon'. Miranda, barely able to speak, managed to scream "Nooooo!!!" I asked "Are they some form of ammunition? Is it something you could kill people with?" Miranda pretty much fell apart, and the human family decided to sit elsewhere.
On the way home, we stopped in at the 24hour garage to score snout, booze and noms. As we piled up the plunder at the checkout, the git behind the counter gestured us contemptuously aside, and said he was going to serve the bloke behind us first, cos he'd bought petrol. I was pretty much outraged. "No-one has ever done this to me in a shop before! What are we, not good enough or something?" Once the petrol-buying dude was done (he seemed just as surprised as we were, and more than a little embarrassed) the checkout git finally deigned to serve us. "Are you sure there isn't someone else you'd rather serve first?" I sarked. When we got back to my flat, we watched a Cheech and Chong movie ('Nice Dreams') together.

Saturday was almost sensible, until it started to snow. (Yay! Miranda will be stuck here and not able to go back to Worthing on Sunday *does a little dance*). As the snow settled, Miranda cooked me yummy foods - a important first! She videoed me nomming, and posted it here. As the snow built up on the rooftop outside my 3rd floor window, Miranda decided to scoop up handfuls and make snowballs with which to bombard passing humans on the street below. We also watched people trying to enter the petrol station opposite, and failing as their wheels spun helplessly. Some of them looked up while attempting to push their cars, legs windmilling cartoon-style, at the sounds of hysterical laughter from above. They seemed somewhat resentful at our unhelpful 'we're in the warm and entirely taking the piss' attitude. It was better than reality TV, watching the cars slithering around and waiting for them to crash into each other, or at least for a pedestrian to fall and break their ass-bone.

On Sunday, we tried to watch a DVD on my pooter, but somehow managed to disable the speakers (Duh!) so we ended up playing a card game called 'Shithead' which Miranda taught me. We also discussed a huge, squashed, dried-up spider that I'd forgotten to hoover up, and having such a egregious fit of hysterics that we both thought we were going to be sick. I introduced Miranda (who hates country music) to the delights of Waylon Jennings, and she called me a redneck, which is totally true.

On Monday, despite my insistence that it was still snowing ("It's invisible snow - that's the worst kind!") Miranda departed for Worthing. I escorted her to Victoria, where I had to hand her over to Alex, and off she went. I travelled back to Potters Bar with a lump in my throat, trying to think about anything but our wonderful weekend together so as not to burst into embarrassingly public tears - which is so dumb, cos she's gonna be visiting again in  three weeks time. I am such a dweeb!