When I was a little girl, my parents took me to see E.T. at the cinema. It was a rather traumatic experience for my young self. Oh, don’t get me wrong: I LOVED the film. I mean, a little wrinkly alien as a pet/friend? What’s not to love? But after sitting, wide-eyed, through the first part of the movie, we came to THAT scene. You know the one. The one where…
… OK, I’ll whisper it just in case anyone out there hasn’t seen E.T. and doesn’t want me to spoil it for them. Read on at your peril, people…
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The scene where E.T. appears to be DEAD.
Oh. Em. Gee. I was absolutely aghast, and I was aghast for two reasons. I just couldn’t understand why:
1. Someone had decided to make a CHILDREN’S FILM, in which they spent most of the movie encouraging you to love the cute little alien dude, only to ruthlessly kill him off, like, “Haha, kids, welcome to the REAL world!” This seemed totally irresponsible to me, and I felt sure I would be psychologically damaged by it for the rest of my life. Or, I mean, I would’ve felt that if I’d actually known what it meant, obviously.
2. That my parents had suffered such a huge lapse of judgement as to bring me – ME! – to see such a film. Obviously they wanted to ruin my life. And it had worked.
So I did what any impressionable child with a flair for TEH DRAMA would have done. I screamed the place down.
“He’s DEEEEEEEAAAAAAADDDDD!!!!!!!” I wailed to my parents, and, indeed, to the rest of the cinema. “Heeeeeeeee’sssss DEEEEEEAAAAAAADDDDDD!!!! Why did you bring me to SEEEEEEEEEEE this? DEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDD! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!”
In vain, my mother tried to comfort me. I would not be consoled. They were just on the verge of removing me from the cinema, when E.T’s little red heart started to glow once more.
“HE’S ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEE!” I shrieked. And after that, I didn’t get to go to the cinema no more. Not until I’d learned how to behave, my parents told me. Readers, I haven’t been back since.
When I left the movie theatre that day, though, I left with a new obsession in my life. I wanted an E.T. of my very own – and sorry, but when I got him, I wasn’t going to be helping him “phone home” either. In fact, the absence of a small, wrinkled alien in my life was suddenly absolutely intolerable to me, and once it had been gently explained to me that the likelihood of my finding an ACTUAL alien in the woods was slim (Although, that said, where we live now, it wouldn’t be THAT surprising…), I settled upon the next best thing: I wanted a stuffed leather E.T. And I wanted it BAD.
These little stuffed toys had just come out at the time , and they were actually made from fake leather, but of course, my small self wasn’t about to split hairs on that matter. I talked about the leather E.T. incessantly. In fact, the words “LEATHER” and ”E.T.” in the same sentence still have the power to reduce my parents to quivering wrecks of people. (You’d think that particular combination of words wouldn’t come up THAT often in conversation. You would be wrong, as you’re about to discover.) That December, I asked Santa for one:
The problem with that though, was that these leather – I’m sorry, “lether” – E.T.s were not to be had for love nor money. I guess they were that year’s “must have” toy (ah, the innocence of the age! Now kids probably want an iPhone and… I don’t know, a car, maybe? A space ship? Not a stuffed toy, anyway…) and although my parents – I mean “Santa” – searched exhaustively for one, they just couldn’t find it. So Christmas came and went, and E.T. … didn’t. That was the year I stopped believing in Santa. (No, I’m joking. I still believe in Santa didn’t stop believing in Santa until he’d failed to bring the pony for 25 consecutive years. After that, you start to doubt the dude, don’t you?)
My parents resumed the search in time for my birthday the next year, and I think for a couple of years after that. It was to no avail. The leather E.T.s were gone, just like the REAL E.T. Some stupid spaceship had probably come along and beamed them all up, and I think we all know who we can blame for THAT, don’t we, ELLIOT? After a couple of years had passed, though, my parents figured I would probably move onto the next thing, and forget all about the leather E.T. But they were WRONG. I didn’t EVER forget the leather E.T. In fact, I continued to mention it at regular intervals for THE REST OF MY LIFE. Uh-huh.
The last time I mentioned it was just a few weeks ago, when my mum had unearthed the letter above. It was on this occasion that Terry heard The Sad Tale of How Amber Never Got a Leather E.T. That Time for the first one hundredth time. And finally, people – FINALLY – my luck was in. Because when I came home from walking Rubin this morning, this was the scene that was waiting for me:
It’s a stuffed E.T in OMGLEATHER. And it’s an original one: one of the very toys that eluded me throughout my childhood. Yes, he had come to me AT FREAKING LAST. Man, Santa Claus is almost as slow as Royal Fail, isn’t he?
He’s been well-loved this E.T. His “lether” is cracked, and coming off in some places, and his head has a bit of a droop to it, but this just makes me like him all the more. It also makes me OUTRAGED on his behalf, because seriously, who could sell their beloved childhood toy so heartlessly? It would be like me selling TED! Who could honestly look at this face:
And think, “Yeah, I’m going to put you on eBay, then stick you in a box and entrust your precious self to the ROYAL FAIL? So long, beloved companion of my youth!” It makes me want to cry just to think of it. (No, it ACTUALLY makes me want to cry. I can be very sentimental about things like that.)
Still, Leather E.T. has found a safe home with me, although maybe not so much with Ted, who will probably try to lead him astray at some point, just like he does all the toys. Sigh.
Anyway, there is an important lesson in all of this to children everywhere. It is this: if you really, really want something, all you have to do is whine about it incessantly, and do it FOREVER. Eventually someone will crack, and you will get your thing. Patience, my children.
And on that note: have I ever mentioned that I’d quite like a pony?
Tagged ted
I think I may have managed to conquer the packing. It took most of the day, though, because according to my Twitter, I first started to “think about” packing my suitcase just before lunch yesterday. Here’s what I had by 10pm:
 packing fail In fairness, though, that goldy/bronzey thing is my makeup bag, and it took me a LONG time to pack IT, because that’s just my travel makeup bag or The Travelling Makeup Bag, as I think I will call it from now on. THIS is my real makeup bag. I mean Big Ass Box:
 The Sephora Case o' Doom Distilling the contents of this into that was a long and arduous task, and I guess the fact that I found it hard to leave the comfort of my computer chair, where I spent many a pleasant hour yesterday reading blogs, tooling around on Twitter and doing anything, really to not have to pack, made it even harder. Like, look, this is Pinky:
 My main man, Pinky Everyone say, “Hi, Pinky!”
Haha, I made you speak to a stuffed rabbit! Hee!
Pinky is my travelling companion. Well, other than Terry and my parents, obviously, but none of them are pink, and they don’t like being squeezed when I’m scared the plane is going to crash, which is all the time. So Pinky is like a kind of stress toy. He stands in for Ted, who doesn’t vacation with us. (He’s just at that age now, where he’s all, “You guys are lame, I want to party with my friends!” He’s going to Goa this year, apparently.)
(Note: Pinky came free with a handbag I got, and didn’t actually have a name until a moment of stress somewhere high above the Atlantic one year, when he was named in a hurry. And clearly I suck at naming things under stress. Another reason never to have children - I’d probably give birth and name it “Screamy” or “Bloody” or something.)
Anyway, several hours later, I ended up with a packing win, of sorts. This is one side of the case:
 Suitcase: one side of Pretty full, no? But look! Here is the other side:
 Suitcase, other side of Lookit all that lovely space! Space which I will be able to fill up with… oh:
 "Take meeeeeeeeeee!" He’s going to stay with Terry’s mum while we’re gone. He will be treated like a small, furry Overlord there, and will eat much better than he does at home. But I will miss him, and every time I look at his little face, I want to cry. So, moving on, let’s weigh the suitcase (minus dog) with the handy gadget Terry bought for this purpose:
 The Weigh-In You can’t see from this photo, but it came in at about 14 kilos, which gives me 6 kilos of shopping to bring back with me. Yay! I win! Although not really, because GOD, shoes are heavy, and I might want to buy shoes… If I do, though, I will also have access to The Shoulder Bag With a Face:
 The Bag With a Face Seriously, it has a face, no?
 Ahhhhh! It’s drooling at the thought of all of the lovely shopping it will carry. Or maybe it’s just planning to eat my head when I go to sleep tonight, who knows?
And with the packing of TBWAF (which is actually much bigger than it looks here and is a bit like a Mary Poppins bag) I was finally done:
 Phew! Time on completion:
 whoops So it’s a good job I don’t have to get up, like, really early tomorrow or…. oh.
Now I just need to take stuff out, put it back, add more stuff, remove stuff and then, at the last minute remember that whoops, I haven’t actually packed any knickers/sweaters/bikinis/delete-as-appropriate, and we’re good to go.
Anyway, our flight is early tomorrow morning, so we’ll be staying with my parents tonight, because they live closer to the airport, and also, because it means we can mess-up someone else’s house when we get up at stupid o’clock tomorrow, rather than our own. Assuming we make it there safely, then, I’ll see you on the other side!
 "Buh-bye!" Ted is waving goodbye. Also: is clearly drunk. GOD.
Tagged packing, pinky, rubin, ted
There hasn’t been much time for blogging this week. Well, there’s been time for BLOGGING, obviously, because, well, that’s pretty much all I’ve done. But I’ve done so much of it here, here and here that there just hasn’t been time to do any of it, er, here. Sorry. I’d say that all work and no play makes Amber a dull blogger but I guess you already knew that. So!
Other than the almighty blogathon that has been my week so far, nothing has happened. I mean, AT ALL. I haven’t yet succumbed to swine flu, which has surprised me, really, because normally if there’s a flu going around, I will get it. Sometimes twice. I’m guessing Swine Flu is probably waiting until I go on holiday next month before it gets me, because, you know, no point in ruining an ordinary working week when you can ruin a much-anticipated holiday instead, is there?
(Did I mention I’m going on holiday next month? I am going on holiday next month. Yes, I am going to Florida. I cannot. wait.)
Anyway, where was I? I’m sure there was a point to this entry, but dammed if I know what it was. Look, here is a picture of my dog!
And we can only really guess at the ways in which this incident traumatised Ted, because here is what I found him wearing when I walked into the bedroom yesterday:
You see what I have to put up with?
Tagged rubin, ted
Sometime last year, I was obsessively perusing the Topshop website when I stumbled upon a pair of shoes known as ‘Sereno’. I loved them, but I knew they would never be mine because, meh, money.
“Resist them, I will!” I cackled. “Buy them I shall not!” Because, yes, when I talk to myself out loud, I totally do it in the style of Yoda. Doesn’t everyone?
So I didn’t buy the shoes, and almost instantly they sold out, thus confirming that I had been right to conjecture that they would never be mine.
Then we went to Loch Lomond. And as Terry and I rounded the corner of the visitor centre there, we saw a girl sitting outside wearing what I instantly recognised as THE SHOES. So ridiculously high of heel and huge of platform were these shoes that even Terry commented on them. It was then I knew I’d made a mistake with the whole “not buying” thing. Until then, you see, I hadn’t actually seen the shoes in the flesh, so to speak. They were but images on my computer screen, and those images did not do them justice. In real life, the Sereno platforms were surely the most ridiculous things I’d ever seen, and let me tell you, I am ALL ABOUT the ridiculous shoes.
So I waited until the girl got up and then I ran over, wrenched them off her feet and made off with them, laughing a manic laugh as I went.
No, I’m just kidding. But this sighting of THE SHOES in their natural habitat did bring them to the forefront of my mind, so the next day I had a little look for them on eBay. Just in case. And lo! There they were!
And lo! Two days later, and thanks to a generous contribution of funds from my husband, here they are!
Which just goes to show, kids, if you just wish hard enough, nag your husband for long enough, and are willing to dedicate hours of your time to searching eBay for a pair of shoes that may or may not fit you, dreams can come true! (I didn’t even have to pay more than the original price for them, which is really unusual for me and eBay. AND they were brand new, still with the labels on and everything.)
Don’t you just love a happy ending? Ted certainly does:
He is SO having a mid-life crisis, isn’t he?
Tagged Outfits, shoes, ted
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