Crazy, Crazy Nights

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellows,

There appear to be two sorts of people in the world. Those people who actually OWN a "dressing up box" and the rest of us. 

Tiger belongs to the former category. Loulou gave a sigh of feigned resignation, but you could tell she loves it really. She has been an Oompah-Loompah TWICE now. So she's not fooling anyone. 

And there WAS something fun about being handed a pot of white face-paint and a sponge and being told to get onto it. So the four of us "whited" ourselves and then Caro (who, it turns out has a knack for such things) applied the designs for The Star Child, The Spaceman and The Cat on herself, me and Loulou, respectively. Tiger did "The Demon" on himself. 

And Joshua showed up in a cape. We were not expecting him. He has been having a very hard time of it lately. Over the past couple of months he has:

- Fallen into a crevasse and did his knee in
- Herniated himself
- Got rear-ended and his car written off
- Caught shingles

That last one we found out about only this week. But he manfully dragged himself out of his sick bed to be with us. It was a nice gesture, for which Loulou painted blood on his chin so that people could tell he was supposed to be a scary vampire and not just some bloke in a cape.

Tiger's mates J&R also arrived and (eventually) we set off to get our bikes for the winery tour. 

I say "tour". We made it to one winery. But then again, you should have seen the state of us. Tiger, Joshua, Caro and me were riding the 4-person "crocodile bike" and really we shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the road. We hadn't even had any drinks but were already hysterical with laughter as we barreled along the street with Tiger theoretically steering, as Caro played "I Was Made For Loving You" on her phone and people pointing and waving at us. 

One lady even stuck out her tongue at us! And she had a genuine "Gene Simmons" tongue!

I wonder if she has been waiting her whole life for a group of idiot KISS impersonators, for just this opportunity?

"BRAKE! BRAKE! BRAKE! BRAKE!" I would occasionally scream because I'm a killjoy like that.

"Aw yeah, that's me isn't it?" replied Tiger, applying the break just in time to avoid taking out a pedestrian.

Fortunately we were not on the road for long. 

"DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOOOOOOOO!!!" we caterwauled as we got to the thankfully nearby winery. 

The other patrons were remarkably understanding. 

I should emphasise; no drinks drunken at this point.

So the winery does "natural" wines. So no chemicals and they basically just let the sediment settle. They also do a range of "orange" wines which are white grapes but with the skin left on so they taste a bit more like reds.

"Yuck!" we all agreed. 

There was just one nice wine out of the half-dozen they gave us. This is probably just as well because we stayed there for at least two hours eating a large serving platter and drinking that one nice bottle. 

We then tried to cycle to another winery to find they were all now closed, but we had lots of fun waving to children and other passers-by. Everyone seemed to LOVE us and wanted to have selfies taken with us. I played The Banana Splits Theme by The Dickies as we cycled back to the pub.

Tiger had already scoped out a Mexican bar where they had a band playing and a Halloween themed evening. It was great in there, and as you can see, the waitresses were spooky "The Shining" twins. Again, the fact that Tiger had made us all put in a bit of an effort meant we got special treatment all night, including special attention from the band and tequila shots from the waitresses. 

Maybe Tiger isn't as ABSOLUTELY BONKERS as it at first appears!

The evening ended with us back at the Airbnb to watch "What Lies Beneath" projected onto the living room wall. It was a suitably spooky end to Halloween and gave us all the chance to sober up. 

Caro also cleaned off my Spaceman*. She scared me by looking concerned and informing me that I might have to learn to live with it for a week or so. 

You will be glad to hear that, after a good bit of scrubbing. I have finally been de-Spacemanned. 

Although, there is part of me that is a bit sad about this. I'm not sure if children would have continued to wave at me, and people would have continued to buy me drinks as I went through daily life as Ace Frehley, but it might have been fun to find out. 

S.

* Not a euphemism.