The Cheerful Insanity of Me

Don't often do meme's, but this one sounds a bit of a challenge...

Rules: Use the first two letters of your name to answer each of the following questions. They have to be real . . . nothing made up! If the person before you had the same letters, you must use different answers. You cannot use any word twice and you can't use your name for the boy/girl name question. (via jacquic)

1. Your name: Owen
2. A four-letter word: Owed
3. A boy's name: Owain
4. A girl's name: Owena
5. An occupation: Owenite
6. A colour: Owlish Tawny
7. Something you wear: Owser tanned leather (says the vegan...)
8. A food: Owsen (getting desperate now...)
9. Something found in the bathroom: Own Brand Toiletries
10. A place: Owensboro
11. A reason for being late: Owing Time Elsewhere
12. Something you shout: Ow!
13. A movie title: Owls of Ga Hoole
14. Something you drink: Owdham Edge
15. A musical group: Owusu (no I'd not heard of them either)
16. An animal: Owlet
17. A street name: Owgan Close
18. The title of a song: Owner of a Lonely Heart

...and yes I cheated and used google to find some of them

This is one of those memes that seems to have gone around a lot for years now and I've so far avoid it. Well until I somehow managed to ask ladyofastolat to pick 5 things from my interests for me to talk about.

Oh well, here goes:

Blue string pudding (English seems inappropriate for this one) whistle whistle-whistle whiiiiistle whistle-whistle-whistle whistle. Whistle whistle whistle whistle-whistle whiiistle whiiiiistle whistle-whistle whistle. Whistle-whistle whistle whistle-whistle-whistle-whistle whistle whistle. Whistle whistle whistle. Whistle-whistle whiiiiistle whistle whiiistle whistle-whistle-whistle whiiiistle. (hope you got that, because that's all the explanation your going to get)

Coathangers This is about the only explanation I can give for this one (it's not my coathanger or my wall, but it is my, rather poorly taken, photograph)


Neil Gaiman I discovered Neil Gaiman when Neverwhere came on TV when I was at school. I bought the book of it shortly after when it came out and have worked my way through most of his other books since. I like the way he manages to ground the fantastic into real life situations, particularly in Neverwhere and American Gods. Rather than creating a whole new reality to talk about, he generally seems to just twist the one we've got to his own ends. Not really looked at the comics much though, as I never really was a big one for comics in general.

Real Ale You can't go around with morris dancers and other real ale drinkers without developing a taste for the stuff, especially when a lot of the other stuff pubs serve drink-wise is fairly tasteless and uninteresting. I therefore fell down that slippery slope. I wouldn't say I've got any particular favourites though, I'll generally go for the ones I know less well, because they might be more of a surprise.

The Goons Here I was, freshly run over with my bagpipes irreparably flattened, and without a remedy. The weight of the steamroller had made a lasting impression on me. I was now two inches thick and twenty-four feet wide. This- this was very awkward. People kept opening and shutting me. Then I discovered the goons had had a very similar storyline and radio 7 was repeating them on a Monday morning. Started listening to them on listen again as I didn't have digital when I first discovered this until I moved back to London and was able to listen to them before going to work (falling in the water is a very good way to wake up on a Monday morning). The rotten swines have deaded them now though :-(

Yesterday was fun.

Was a bit worrying at first when at 10.05 I seemed to be the only Gog there 10 minutes before the procession. Hoddeston offered me a kazoo, so I could process on my own though. The rest of the side arrived shortly after that though, so I didn't have to resort to that.

It was the first time they'd asked me to call a procession, which was quite fun and seemed to go reasonably well (we didn't have a lot of music, so it was a little difficult to hear). Not sure what the rest of the side thought of it, but I was fairly happy with my calling for it. We seemed to keep a fairly consistent distance from the team in front, did a reasonable number of figures where there were large bunches of audience and they all seemed to hear me ok.

We did our spot in the main display, which seemed to go ok. It was a bit of a shame that the audience had thinned out a bit by then though (then again, that will partially be the sides earlier in the display disappearing off and it's difficult to maintain interest of shoppers for 9 dances).

The rest of the afternoon was a fairly relaxed affair going around with Bedfordshire Lace and St Alban's Morris Men. The spots were only 30 minutes, so we got about 3 dances at each. I wasn't convinced by some of the spots as Christopher Place and especially outside the Cathedral seemed to be away from the crowds (there was pretty much literally no-one but us at the latter), but then there are limits on where you would be allowed to dance and the market was taking up most of the main shopping area in the city centre.

Had lunch between the displays and the first spot, so during the actual lunchbreak I ran off to the amazing tea shop next to tourist information, which morganmuffle has introduced me to when I went up there in May, and dragged half of Molly with me. Actually, I think I managed to drag all of Molly, but only half stayed for tea, the other half opting for the pub instead (admittedly a difficult choice).

Turns out it's a really good thing to post details of where we'll be dancing on here, as jinglebellafeed turned up at the Cathedral spot bearing many ice-lollies. If you ever want to know how to make molly dancers happy that's a good way of doing it *subtle hint for anyone else reading this*

We only did one dance at the last spot, as people had to run off, but it was quite interesting to see Wicket Brood doing a version of the Mississippi Mud Dance (one we nicked ourselves from Ouse Washes), but with Sticks in Border Style.

To make things even better the weather remained hot and sunny until we finished dancing and only then did it start the thunderstorm :-)

Stomp were amazing as ever in the evening.

All in all a good day and I seemed to have endless amounts of energy. Still seemed to have plenty left after the whole day of dancing, plus the 4.5 mile walk back home from St Pancras. Think I must be getting fitter again, which has got to be a good thing given I was feeling a bit unfit dancing back in April.

Feeling more tired today, but it's more "lack of sleep" tired rather than "lots of dancing" tired, which also makes sense as I can only have got around 5 hours of Friday night and didn't get home and to bed until about 3 am last night.

Rounded off the weekend with a trip around the Tower with miriammoules today, which was nice. Once again, managed to escape without having my head cut off, which has also got to be a good thing.

There seems to be a thing going round facebook at the moment with people listing what they're thankful for each day for a month, perhaps I should just be thankful for not having my head cut off each day for a month... That is rather reliant on me not having my head cut off though, so I guess as I can't tell the future I'll leave it, especially given Thrales will probably make attempts on it. *crosses fingers and acquires large amounts of duct tap just in case*

Then again, perhaps I'd get a sainthood the same as Alban did for having his cut off? Do you think they'll mind that I'm not Christian like he was?

NEXT TIME ON THE WEEKEND LIFE OF A hmmm_tea: Touring the Borough with Thrales on Friday, followed with being at Paddington at 7.45 am on Saturday morning (ouch!) to go off to Chepstow for the weekend dancing with Wild Hunt.

So it appears I've been caught by this meme:

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me. It will be about or tailored to those five lucky "victims."

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
- what I create will be just for you.
- it'll be done this year
- you have no clue what it's going to be. It may be fic. It may be poetry. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange. (ooo, I like this clause...)

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to put this in your journal as well, if you expect me to do something for you!

To make life simpler, please comment on the original post on livejournal rather than the feed in facebook (I'll ignore any comments on the latter).

As there are still a few of the film quotes left, here's a second quote from each of them before I give you the answers:

( Quotes )