Thursday 12 March 2009

The Rat King's Birthday


Its been a month of birthday parties in London, these are the seventy rat-shaped biscuits I made for my friend Lawrence's 25th last week. They're supposed to look like a rat king, all tied together at the tail, but it didn't quite go as planned. I had to take them to school, which was embarrassing, and I ended up being mobbed by academic staff stuffing their pockets with chocolate rats for their kids at home. One university cleaner was so pleased he took me into his little cupboard and showed me his wall of cat photos. Its amazing how many friends you can make when you carry sugar. Lawrence was less thrilled, I've never seen anyone go quite so red.

This month I also:
1) Tore my skirt up to the waist at a crazy Scottish Ceilidh dance for my housemates birthday, at which the dancing was so violent we all had huge black bruises on our upper arms and went home drenched in sweat.
2) Went to Norwich for three days and experimented with a diet of straight whisky and mushy peas (delicious in the short term, disastrous by the fourth day). I went with a friend for an opening at Outpost gallery, where he used to work, and we ended up on an epic drinking and op-shopping binge from which I still don't think I've quite recovered. It was an educational trip really; I learnt that if you put mint sauce on mushy peas they congeal like snot, the best topping for hot chips is apparently a combination of mayonnaise and peanut butter, and if you steal a security guard's walkie talkie and throw it into a canal at 4am it will make a noise like a dying whale.
3) Tried to steal a variety of other people's pets, and learnt that cats (also) enjoy peanut butter, but not olives. This is me trying to lure a neighbours dog into my bedroom. Shortly after this photo was taken it peed on my floor, yawned, and made a wise dash for freedom.
I also went to my friend Sharma's birthday, for which I made her this hat, which is entirely collaged from pictures of rainbow synthesizers. Other than this I have been doing nothing except procrastinating over schoolwork (classes end in two weeks!) and going to conferences. Tomorrow is the beginning of a three day mega-conference with Alain Badiou, Jaques Ranciere, Nicolas Bourriaud, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Slavoj Zizek, which I'm pretty psyched about. I'm debating whether or not to wear the hat, I think it makes me look more academic.

3 comments:

'' said...

I oh miss you sweet mushy pea!

The rat biscuits are AMAZING and I would show you my cat photo wall too!

You are too popular with all your birthdays and I can't wait to see you and hog you all to myself. I will let you know asap when I book my flights and Michael is going to be in London too so we'll have a big ole jamboree.

YAH XXXXX

Chloe Gordon said...

this ratking just made my day. much more edible than the original.

Oliver Cashman said...

viva le rat king, grand usurper of the potato waffle houses