Simple Pleasures

This evening, I rediscovered two pleasures that were denied me while in Australia: the joy of jumping in puddles while wearing wellington boots (this will definitely be going on the booty list), and the pleasure of Murder Mystery Evenings.

On the first: I have not actually owned a pair of Wellingtons since I was, I believe, ten, when I started wearing them to school after playing in my garden of a morning, tracking mud into the carpets of Coalbrookdale Primary and was eventually forcibly divested of them. However, my adoring mother offered to buy me one practical birthday present (after Daphne*, my laptop, pretty much used up my birthday/christmas presents for the next two years), and I decided on Wellington Boots, having used up my being-mistaken-for-a-hobo-quota during Amadeus which means my normal bags-upon-my-feet plan cannot be deployed.

The wellies in question, next to the bag they replaced.

There was only one very rainy day that I can remember in Australia, which means this most infantile of activities was not available, but I think, even if the weather had been wetter, my steadfast refusal to purchase sensible footwear there would have stumped me.
I had forgotten the catharsis of jumping into a puddle and not getting wet feet- I especially like that I can feel the water through my wellingtons, so it's kind of like paddling but without having to dry my feet afterwards or risk Wheeler's disease, which is the closest candidate for the Best of Both Worlds I've ever encountered. So, I danced through the rain all the way home, singing a rather predictable song to myself and feeling quite ecstatic.

And now to the Murder Mystery: I didn't know anyone there. Like, anyone. And I arrived in character and maintained it pretty much the entire evening (there was one fit of giggles, but I managed to cover it up, I think), so as far as these people were aware, I was Alexander Bernadov, russian-orphan-turned-mafia-hitman-turned-Edinburgh-student.
This reminded me slightly of my time travelling alone in Australia and New Zealand, when I would routinely give fake names and backstories to anyone who would listen- and some who wouldn't- simply to try out being some one else.
The mystery itself was also majorly enjoyable, and properly Casimovian in its incest-related twists. It was good to be doing improv again, having not tried it since the Amadeus rehearsal bootcamp. I arrived, met new people, pretended to be someone else for a couple of hours and then left- it was my court date all over again!