Food fight - the prep.

After lining the front room with serial-killer-esqe plastic sheeting, the fun, making part could begin. It was a bit of a military operation really. Jelly was made on a strict schedule, pasta boiled every eight minutes, and the cake - my god, the cake - it started pretty good, but got better and better as we went on.

Filling balloons with hundreds and thousands...

Then hanging them from the ceiling (I came armed a pin on a stick...yessss)

Food colouring and mash = genius.

Piping the giant cake - which a later leapt out of to start the shenanigans.

Adding sweets and sandwiches. So amazing.

Finished! Not the party poppers (filled with hundreds and thousands) and the bowls of dark stuff at the bottom. That's jam. God bless the Cash n' Carry!

Me in my fighting whites.

The laden table - it actually got pile higher than this AND you can't see the massive buckets of pasta and tomatoes on the floor.

The room (before). Not sure if this gives a particularly good picture of it - it's one of those things that's far better when etched into your memory than seen in photos, but anyway....

Food Fight!!!!!

Yes. That's right. Count those exclamation marks. They're there for a good reason - we're having a party soon for my 30th. And it's the party I've been dreaming of for years - a food fight party!(!!!!)

More details/pics will be up soon. But until then, here's the flyer. Can't wait!

Fun with googly eyes. Again.

Our organic box has been providing a rich seam of oddly-shaped vegetables lately. Which makes vege-box emptying (one of my most avoided chores into one of my all time favourites).

Visas suck

The only problem with not being born in England is trying to live here when you're a grown up. Staying for a few months is easy. But after that, you have to leap through flaming hoops for nine (yes NINE) years before you get a passport to call your own.

So in the spirit of visas sucking, two sisters (one who's just had her application rejected, and another who's finally had hers accepted) held a Visas Suck Party for the last weekend they were both going to be legal residents in London. And they asked me to help out. Which, of course, I did.

The theme was 'non EU'. So we had a Columbian drug mule, a New Zealand sheep and a bit of Russian new money floating around. Alice (the sister with the visa) and I (a bona fide passport holder) were border patrol. We spent the night interrogating all the dirty foreigners arriving at the party, then stamping their invites (custom made passports) with 'ACCEPTED' or 'REJECTED' stamps. It was awesome.


No party is complete without a bit of dance-floor accessories. So we had a giant visa, complete with mug-shot hole. One side was stamped ACCEPTED - hooray!, the other side REJECTED - boooo!

Pimp my paddle

Berlin is so great. Summer is so great. Table tennis is so great. But my table tennis game on the outdoor tables in Berlin...not so great. So I compensated by doing some quick customisation on our bats. One side with a manly, grrrrr-inducing tasch. The other side with a set of luscious lips. Then let the in-between-hits fun commence.

Art in the Attic

Last weekend, the lovely folks at ArtQuest asked me to create a stall for their annual artist jumble sale. So I set up shop offering a free valuation and restoration service to hunt out the hidden art treasures lost among the jumble. Turns out, the room was full of priceless objet d'art - all they needed was a bit of restoration. During the day, I uncovered a pencil that was actually a Jim Lambie, a few unlikely Damian Hursts and a Chapman Bros work. A humble print from a charity shop turned out to be an unsigned Chris Ofili (the dung was missing - but I restored that with some fake poo I from Preposterous Presents). I also found a rare Jeff Koons, a Yayoi Kusama, a Bruce Nauman audio recording, a raft of Christos and a long lost Banksy. After I'd restored these incredible pieces, the proud owners got a certificate of authenticity with a valuation for insurance purposes. I got to meet some lovely folks, have some fun and illicit the odd knowing guffaw. And wear a pair of cardboard comedy glasses. All of which are undoubtably good things.

Spectacular failure

We had an 11 year old down to visit over the weekend. So that meant trips to TK Maxx, expensive tickets to London's *star* attractions, teen movies and lot's of coke (a-cola). But nothing we did was as much fun for her, or us, as failing miserably at making a tyre swing out the back of our house. It was a total disaster. Getting the rope over the tree branch was a ridiculous process. Then once we'd hung the tyre, we realised it was so bald on one side that the metal reinforcing mesh was sticking out. Which punctured several fingers. Then started tearing the rope. Which, incindetally, began to stretch. The more we swung, the longer it got. So we ditched the tyre. Then tied a stick on instead. The rope got longer still. We tried another one. Even longer. Until parts of the rope were so dangerously thin we decided to get out the scissors and call it a day. It was brilliant though. The more it went wrong, the more fun it became. And all our fussing attracted neighbouring kids, who got involved too. And that earned us waves from the busloads of bemused people going past. So below is not a picture of a perfect tyre swing. But perhaps something even better.

Plastic penises at the ready

Last weekend I had the dubious honour of putting together 7 outfits for a clubnight. With zero money. The afternoon before. Eek. Anyway, the theme for the night was 'feminity, so I thew together a last minute hen-night for the occasion. The end result wasn't big, and it wasn't clever. But it was funny, and cheap (£7 each, yessss). I tell you what though, hen-night shopping is not for the faint hearted. I spent a good half-hour sifting through an elaborate array of penis-shaped tat, until settling on glittery penis deely-boppers (and heart-shaped ones for the more demure), penis balloons and a penis-whistle for a bit of piece of flair. Then scoured the market for lays, L-plates, klaxons, fake nails and net curtains to complete the...look. I must admit, dressing in a pack is actually loads of fun (go Crips!). But perhaps more fun was when the outfits disintegrated and the deely boppers started circulating around the party. They even ended up on the bar-staff at one point. Hooray!

The walls have eyes

My friend Nick gave me a completely kick-ass present for my birthday this year: a sticker sheet of cartoon eyes and mouths. Immediately I hundred different plans of things I wanted to stick them on. But a month later, they were on a dangerous trajectory to the bottom of the 'to-do' pile. So when the sun came out on Saturday, me and the boyf spent a slightly hungover afternoon giving life Hackney Wick's nooks and crannies. By definition, this was good, wholesome fun. Which is always nice. And now I've got a little army of faces cheering me on when I walk to the station. We did LOADS of them, but here are a few of my favourites.

Here comes the pain

Today my friend Beth sent and URGENT email. She's starting a Roller Derby team and needed her roller alias. Fast. Her teammate came up with 'Thigh Voltage'. Which sets the bar pretty high. But the challenge dialed up to 11 when I found out the name can't already be registered on the official Rollergirl Master Roster. Which meant High Roller (one of my favourites) was automatically disqualified. I had no choice but to press pause on my actual work and get thinking. Here were my top 5...

1. Skateastrophie
2. Betty Rage
3. HoStopper
4. Wheeler Sheila
5. B.A. BRAracus

To costumes practically design themselves. Custom knee pads, mmmmm.

High roller

We've been doing a bit of work for Rolls Royce lately. So after getting accustomed to the wonders of the Rolls 'magic carpet ride', being saddled with a Ford Focus when we hired a car for a roadie in Wales was a bit of a come down.

Luckily, we'd packed some "stretchy and sticky" fake poo (don't ask) so we fashioned our own bespoke hood ornament in tribute. Which actually remained en-hood for quite a while. Before flying off somewhere between Aberystwyth and Pontrhydygroes. Or something.




For the record, I'm not hating on Ford. Our trusty A-Ber served us well. But a 8 gears, intelligent suspension, a hand-matched leather interior and a chauffeur would have been nice.

Wig PAAAAAAAAtay

I love Paks. It's amazing. But I do find a whole shop full of things I have no idea how to use a bit intimidating. So to legitimise a shopping trip there we had a wig party. I manned the custom built salon as W'Yves St Laurent and transformed our guests into their wig uber-selves. Plus, thanks to my new friends at Paks (and Wig World in Finsbury Park - they're so fantastic) I learned how to do weaves for real. Plus if you hang out there long enough, you can catch the guys who run the shop fool around with the wigs. Believe me, seeing an old, bald Pakistani man in a blond bob is every bit as funny as it sounds. Anyway, it turned out to be one of those amazing nights where loads of people met loads of people, the dancing got mental and a good time was had by all. Here's the invite - which is actually be best photoshop work I've done in my life. (The link worked in the email - it went to here).



And selection of W'Yves' creations.


Plus other general wig shenanigans.

Let it snow!

Thanks to the fa-reezing coldness in London lately, I was able to fulfill a lifelong dream of getting snowed in and not being able to go to work. It was amazing. But where I'm from, I'd usually be lounging on the beach at this time of year. So in tribute, I appropriated our rubbish bin and used it to make snow castles. My dream was a snow-castle empire as far as the eye could see. But it got dark. Damn!

Earlier in the day the snow covered bollards were perfect for a bit of drive-by snowman making too. The learning: when it snows, carry a carrot at all times.

Then there were those big windows of opportunity between (almost) non-existent trains. He even had a copy of Metro under one arm. Awww.