Frame of my Mind

I’ll go right out and say it, my mum got me a really special Gucci watch for my birthday! It has a rectangular face (which does admittedly make it hard to read, but fashion over function, right?) and has two diamonds in it. It came in a gold box within a larger gold box – I was oddly excited by this!

Of course it was way too big to fit around my tiny wrist so we went to the jewellers on Saturday morning where they took out all of the extra links. At the same time me and my mum got a chance to walk around Bournemouth town centre where she bought me a new pair of gloves (my others were stolen – how odd) and a scarf. We also stopped at a cafe to eat toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch.

Later, after Justin and Helen arrived, we headed out to spend an obscene amount of money on food and alcohol for the evening. We did actually eat most of the food but there’s still a lot of alcohol left as well as some Cornettos (the strawberry and mint choc chip kinds). As I was getting changed into the-dress-that-is-too-OTT-to-ever-wear-out-but-OK-to-wear-in my little brother produced another present for me – some perfume. Diesel’s Fuel For Life Unlimited. It actually smells really nice, it’s quite subtle and musky.

Eventually enough people arrived to get a ‘party’ going but first I had to dig out and show everyone my favourite birthday present yet. That’s right, there was more. I was purposefully holding off showing it ’til everyone was there so that they could all see it together.

My mum had slaved for ages over this wonderful scrapbook/photo album of my entire life from my birth to the present time (with a couple of pages left over to fill with my 21st year and beyond). I almost cry every time I look at it. The pages shown feature my birth certificate and tags from the hospital, and my first Christmas. These were the second and third pages, there was a page prior to it featuring photos from the hospital just after I was born. Highlights of the scrapbook include the first picture I drew at school, various report cards, holiday snapshots, college acceptance letters, swimming and dancing certificates and right at the end my brother’s contribution; “Who’s looking after who? Is this the future?” above a photo of me, as a three year old, pushing my mum along in my pram. All of my friends were amazed, particularly Naomi, Jen and Sophie who had attended school with me when I was younger and so were prominently featured amongst the scraps and photos. I will treasure this forever.

We did all eventually get tipsy and started playing drinking games. First we tried playing ‘21′ but that didn’t really work out (nobody could remember to get up and turn around after my brother lost and invented this rule to replace calling the number seven) so Justin explained his game ‘ippy tippy’. It involves a burnt cork, some shitmix (tippy) and some slight tongue twisters (well, it especially seems that way when you’re drunk). Our tippy was a gin, Bailey’s, Smirnoff Ice, sambucca, Jack Daniels, vodka, coke and pineapple concoction (yes, the Bailey’s curdled) so we were all avoiding making mistakes as much as we could. Unfortunately Justin lost with nine tippies and my brother won with only two (but not before we made him drink the most awfully curdled tippy you could ever imagine.)

In all, it was a pretty fun evening even though we did end up crashing in the most awkward places over whatever surfaces we could clear. There are various photos on my Flickr but many are set to friends and family only due to them being embarrassing drunken photos.