The Beacon Visits the Mad House

While we were in Cologne, the Beacon and I decided that he simply had to make a trip to visit me in merry old England. So last weekend he stayed in my grotty student house in Exeter with my insane housemates. Because clearly that's how to impress a man. And what with Kirsty and the Beacon bickering over Northern Ireland, my determination to impress him with my culinary skills (that don't actually exist), and a near death experience, it's safe to say there's plenty to write about.

I went to meet the Beacon at the airport. I did the whole walk, train, bus thing and got all the way to Bristol without my hair going flat, which led me to believe things could only go well. But I attract unfortunate situations the way my friend Hayleigh attracts creepy stalkers. So I stood at arrivals, innocently thinking nothing could possibly go wrong in the few short minutes before the Beacon walked through the automatic doors, trying to work out where the best place to stand was.

Then it happened. The doors opened, I looked up expecting to see a tall blond American, and there, as if my life were suddenly an episode of One Tree Hill, was 'The Ex'. In the time it took my brain to register that I wasn't delirious and that there, in real life, by some freak coincidence, he was, not in the Netherlands where he was meant to be, but at Bristol Airport arrivals, I'd lost sight of him in the crowd. He didn't see me. We wouldn't have to make awkward, polite conversation/valley holler insults at each other (depending on his frame of mind at the time), which was a blessing. But when the Beacon walked through the doors seconds later the voluminousness of my hair wasn't enough to cover the unattractive look of confusion and horror spread across my face.

"I introduced the American to the sights of Exeter..."

The train naturally took twice as long as usual and stopped at every single station so we didn't get into Exeter until the early hours. The Beacon had been stuck in Turkey right up until the night before his visit because there was something wrong with his plane so he'd flown through the night from Turkey to Germany, before doing the whole Germany to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Bristol journey. Nevertheless, I was the one who slept all the way home.

On Saturday I introduced the American to the sights of Exeter, which as it turns out, are very few when it's raining. But we went to Mango's on the quay, where I had the world's best hot chocolate, complete with marshmallows, whipped cream, biscuit, and a chocolate flake! Then we headed to Exeter's Underground Passages, the highlight of which was watching all 6 foot of the Beacon crawl on his hands and knees through a space that even the kids in front of us had struggled to get through. And that night, in true British student fashion, we sat with my housemates, drank alcohol, and watched The Valleys. And the Beacon secured the love of everyone by ordering in pizzas. Because the way to a student's heart is always through Dominos.

The next day I bravely set out to make a full English breakfast, complete with sausages, bacon, scrambled eggs, fried bread, toast, hashbrowns and grilled mushrooms. Considering I had to quietly take Kirsty to one side to ask her what making scrambled eggs actually entailed, it went quite well. There was that moment when I knocked over the entire tray of fat, but we can skip over that.

"The air was just full of thick smoke
and cries of terror."

That evening we celebrated our own belated Guy Fawkes Night. Sophie, Andy and the Beacon were in charge of fireworks, which in itself was somewhat scary, especially considering we had already started drinking again at that point. We stood in the garden as the rain came down in sheets, watching them trying to light rockets out of empty wine bottles. It went surprisingly well until one of the fireworks fell over and started shooting out towards us, one fireball after another as we all screamed and ran for cover. Even some random people who happened to be walking past our garden at the time started screaming. The air was just full of thick smoke and cries of terror. That was not a high point of the evening.

 And now the Beacon is back in Germany and while I can't say in all honesty that I miss him waking me up at 7am, I might be just a little excited to see him again next month.