Iceland: Day 3

Damn, it’s been a long time coming. But enough about my sex life.

Alex and I were not-so-rudely awoken on New Year’s Day by fireworks. At eight in the morning. It’s a testament to the human character that we can be so excited about new things, we’re willing to forego sleep and celebrate for eight hours straight. Well, I say ‘we’; I was sleepy. I’m evolving towards hibernating for the winter.

After a hearty breakfast in the dark (Iceland gets four hours of daylight during the winter at most), we piled into a small coach, to be transferred to a bigger coach and taken to the Blue Lagoon. Now, if you watch my sarcaschicks videos, you’ll hopefully have at least an idea of what it was like there. Imagine, if you will, splashing in a hot bath which smells vaguely of eggs. While you’re in said relaxing, smelly bath, you’re also prancing around in a swimming suit with your dangly and squishy bits one wrong move away from being exposed. Now imagine doing these things OUTSIDE IN SUB-ZERO TEMPERATURES OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS.

When the bottom half of your body is submerged in water at 40 degrees celsius and your top half is turning blue if you keep it above water for too long, you know you’re in a batshit place.

The Blue Lagoon was incredibly relaxing, once I got over the initial novelty. If ever your plane has a layover at Kevlavik airport, giving you a few hours to kill, visit the Blue Lagoon. It’s 20 minutes away by coach and you will never want to leave. Although I recommend not wearing glasses while in there. They kept steaming up something awful. If anyone has developed miniature windscreen wipers for specs, please to let me know. I don’t understand why they’re not commonplace for the visually-bereft.

Talk to you guys soon! <3

- Becky
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Iceland: Day 2 (NYE)

On New Year’s Eve, I fell asleep to fireworks. Six hours later, on New Year’s Day, I woke up to fireworks. Reykjavik knows how to party.

After getting out of bed at a time far later and embarrassing than we intended, Alex and I pulled on our thermal gear and wandered around the city. We were determined to make the most of the four hours of sunlight that Iceland kindly gave to us. Most of the shops were shut; all of them were lit up and gorgeous. We ate in a crowded cafe, during which I took pleasure in gently informing Alex that no, he was not supposed to eat both the innards AND the shell of his lobster tails.

That evening was dedicated to RAUCOUS JOY and FUN and HAPPINESS (though not before Alex and I took advantage of our hotel’s spa facilities, sitting in a heated pool until our skin started to crease like clingfilm). We – along with other excitable holiday makers, including a guy from Brentwood who insisted that Alex and I visited the Sugar Hut nightclub that he ‘owned’ – were driven to a gala dinner taking place in the Hilton. It was as posh as it sounds: there were Icelandic men serenading us/providing comedy; people were dressed to the nines and there was a buffet. A sumptuous, never-ending buffet.

Naturally, Alex and I had to try the most extravagant dishes they had to offer. I sampled reindeer paté (like corn beef, except more consistent), caviar (I love seafood, so this was a highlight) and goose (oddly chewy). After much obnoxious blowing of party blowers – not a euphemism – and alcohol consumption, it was back on the coach, to find our vantage point for the fireworks.

We set up our turf in the shadow of a giant church, at the centre of the city; really, there were enough fireworks exploding at any one time that we could’ve stood ten miles OUTSIDE of the gorram town and still had an excellent view. I was told repeatedly that Icelanders knew how to PARTAY and 2012 was no exception. Firework after firework exploding in the sky, continuously hammering away at my sound and sight, and I loved every second of it.

I can’t go without mentioning the unadulterated joy I felt at pretending I was casting spells at passers-by with my sparkler. I’M A CHILD AT HEART WHAT LEAVE ME ALONE.

What has been the best fireworks display you’ve ever witnessed, guys? <3

On a completely unrelated note, I’ve been getting back into using my Formspring. If you’re at all interested in hearing my STUPID opinions and RUBBISH advice – and why wouldn’t you be?!!? – don’t hesitate to click and ask! I may even answer!

- Becky
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Iceland: Day 1

Standing on a pitch-black beach at 11:30pm, breathing salty air, snow seeping through unaccustomed boots and staring up at a green-tinged sky might sound like a standard bad acid trip for a lot of you guys, but I experienced it for the first time during my adventure in Reykjavik.

‘It’ being Aurora Borealis. Not acid.

From the comments on my newest sarcaschicks video*, I know that a fair share of my online audience (all ten of you, including my mum. Hi, mum! Get a pot of rosy lee brewing, would you?) resides in Iceland. Your country (the small portion I saw of it, at least) is beautiful. We drove through a couple of Reykjavik’s neighbouring towns in our pursuit of the northern lights and I was struck by how much Iceland’s houses resemble film set houses. In a good way: they’re clean, beautiful pale pinks or blues or greys, with Christmas lights bordering their door frames and the edges of their roofs. I am in awe, dear Icelanders, of your ability to make an abundance of Christmas decorations look cute and warm, as opposed to gaudy. This is a talent us Britons will never be able to perfect.

The city was covered in snow – the most snow the country had seen for the best part of 25 years – so we were in a literal Iceland. Hah hah. No, but seriously, it was gorgeous. My thermal clothes kept me warm and snug in a below-freezing wind. I didn’t start to really feel the chill until we stood outside the coach for an hour and a half, staring at the northern lights, but … fuck the cold. We were staring at the fucking northern lights. And – at one point – the moving light from the nearby lighthouse, thinking IT was the northern lights. Rookie mistake.

I travelled to Iceland with Alex, which made the trip twice as fun. We didn’t get back to the hotel until around 2 in the morning, at which point I can only recall stumbling around in an exhausted haze until I fell onto the bed. We wrapped ourselves up in the blankets (plural, yes. We had a double bed with separate, single-sized blankets. The hotel also specified that guests were not allowed to stay past 11:30pm. We opined that the hotel should just put bluntly put it out there that it has a staunch ‘no sex’ rule and leave it at that) and slept. We had our first Iceland sleeps!

More updates on my cheeky Iceland trip will be coming up soon. I have missed this blog Hello, WordPress, my old friend. I’ve come to write in you again.

Hope you’ve all been well. Leave me a comment about how you spent your New Year! <3

- Becky
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*Video link: CLICK HERE GO WATCH WHEEYY

The white plight.

Someone on Facebook just liked this status:

‘Being proud of your race is ok, unless your [sic] white, then it’s racist.’

Yeah, I know, right? Being white is HARD. *sigh*

As to why I find this status so problematic (and, to be frank, fucking stupid), please read this: White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.

For a TL;DR summary of my issue: There is no need for white pride because we’re not systematically and institutionally told every waking minute NOT to be proud of our race.

There will be better blog entries in the future; right now, I just wanted to throw that out into the world, outside the confines of my brain. I feel marginally better for doing so.

Sick and inept. Sinept.

It’s 10am on a Monday morning. I’m sitting on a leather sofa, wrapped up in a dressing gown and drinking a hot cup of tea.

No, I’m not Hugh Hefner. I’m sick.

Sickness inspires all manner of clumsiness in me. In the two hours since I woke up, I’ve managed to spill cough syrup and some tea, almost fall over in the bathroom and misspell the word ‘manner’ a ridiculous number of times. It just doesn’t look like a real word any more. The second ‘n’, the ‘er’ that sounds more like it should be ‘ur’ when you say it out loud … none of it makes sense to my fatigued, medicine-addled brain.

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It’s now 12:39. I decided that I was sick of feeling sick. I got washed and dressed (to a certain extent. I’m still wearing the cosy dressing gown and pyjama bottoms under my dress) and have spent the last twenty minutes online, looking at small music venues in London. I signed up to become an event organiser for Oxjam and received a neat toolkit in the post the other day to help me plan said event (basically a booklet with checklists and pre-arranged calendars and omg organisational skillz). I’ve never put on an event before; needless to say, I’m pretty excited to get things started! The festival itself takes place in October, which gives me five months to prepare. I’ll try to chronicle my experiences here.

If anyone reading this has any experience with putting on a live music event, or with event organising in general, any tidbits of advice would be greatly appreciated. :)

Right. Back to rubbing my TIRED SICK EYES and nursing my SORE THROAT. Illness transforms me into a drama queen, it seems.

Talk to you guys soon. <3