17th August 2013 – Beth’s 21st Birthday

Celebration: Beth’s 21st Birthday

Mission: Feel very old

Status: Complete

Notes: Beth was born in Wales on this day in 1992. 1st daughter of my wife’s sister, Beth is living proof these days that people born in the 1990s are technically adults. Proof that I am very old is that I use phrases like “these days”. I remember going to Beth’s 6th birthday party in 1998. I remember, probably Christmas ’97 or ’98, a 5- or 6-year old Beth telling me that she was a spider and when I pointed out that she only had four limbs she replied that half of them had been amputated. I was a teenager at the time… and the little kid that I was talking to then is now a proper fully fledged adult.

Meanwhile… today I went to Lollibop – a festival for pre-schoolers. I’m about three decades over the target audience.

But tonight I am watching some Battlestar Galactica episodes that were originally broadcast in April 1979 – while I was still in utero. These episodes may appear naïve and dated, but they’re thoroughly enjoyable. Hopefully, the same could be said about myself!? In any case – my haircut is pretty much the same as Starbuck’s…

12th July 2013 – Erik Per Sullivan’s Birthday

Celebration: Erik Per Sullivan’s Birthday

Mission: Watch an episode of “Malcolm in the Middle”

Status: Failed

Notes: Erik Per Sullivan was born in Massachusetts on this day in 1991. He played Malcolm’s little brother Dewey in Malcolm in the Middle.

5th July 2013 – X-Day (Church of the Subgenius)

Celebration: X-Day (Church of the Subgenius)

Mission: Find out what this means

Status: Complete

Notes: Two years and a day after aliens destroyed the White House, no aliens arrived to destroy anything. X-Day had been predicted by a pretend cult known as the Church of the Subgenius in 1980.

4th July 2013 – Independence Day

Celebration: Independence Day

Mission: Have some burgers and a Bud

Status: Complete

Notes: On this day 17 years ago aliens destroyed the White House. 220 years before that, the USA declared independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

3rd June 2013 – Death of Robert Morley (1992)

Celebration: Death of Robert Morley (1992)

Mission: Watch his death scene in “Theatre of Blood”

Status: Failed

Notes: Robert Morley died aged 82 in Reading on this day in 1992. He was Meredith Merridew in Theatre of Blood, in which he is forced to eat his own dogs (his “babies”) in a re-enactment of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.

2nd June 2013 – Death of Rex Harrison (1990)

Celebration: Death of Rex Harrison (1990)

Mission: Sing/say everything

Status: Failed

Notes: Reginald “Rex” Harrison died aged 82 in New York on this day in 1990. Most famous for not quite singing in his role in My Fair Lady, he is considered the first ever rap artist.

20th May 2013 – Death of Jon Pertwee (1996)

Celebration: Death of Jon Pertwee (1996)

Mission: Watch a classic episode of Doctor Who

Status: Complete

Notes: Jon “Worzel Gummidge” Pertwee was born in Chelsea in 1919. During the early seventies he played The Doctor’s third incarnation. He died of a heart attack in Connecticut on this day in 1996, two days after the American broadcast of the Paul McGann Doctor Who TV-movie.

I watched Invasion of the Dinosaurs from Season 11, in which the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith arrive in an evacuated London that is plagued with dinosaurs brought through time by some scientists trying to create a ‘golden age’ world. Sarah Jane uncovers the conspiracy while getting kidnapped at least twice, and ends up (or does she!?) on a spaceship whose mission is not dis-similar to that of the “B Arc” from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Here is Jon being attacked by a pteradactyl:

And here is him fighting back with a mop!

25th April 2013 – Red Hat Society Day

Celebration: Red Hat Society Day

Mission: Wear a red hat

Status: Completed

Notes: The Red Hat Society is a group whose core membership is made up of ladies over the age of 50 who meet up while wearing purple clothing and red hats. Younger ladies may join the society, but are requested to wear lavender clothing and wear a pink hat until their 50th birthday. Originating from California in 1997 when Sue Ellen Cooper gave her friend Linda Murphy a red bowler hat for 55th birthday, accompanied with a poem by Jenny Joseph entitled Warning, which begins with the lines:

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple,
With a red hat that doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.

She repeated this gift to some of her other friends, and this group got together to have a tea party while wearing their hats (and purple attire) on 25th April 1998, and so began the Red Hat Society. The RHS quickly grew and there are currently over 40,000 separate chapters worldwide. Each chapter’s leader is referred to as the Queen, with Sue Ellen Cooper being the Exalted Queen Mother based at the society’s Hatquarters.

I am not a lady, nor over 50 and I don’t own a red hat… however, I tried on Roo’s red cycle helmet:

…but that just didn’t seem right. Then I found an old sun hat of Roo’s that Eva’s been wearing occasionally:

I spotted them a while back in Parliament Square. That was on the first day of this Year of Celebration, and my wife & task-master mentioned that there was an RHS mission later in the year so I snapped a photo which I present to you now:

 

17th April 2013 – Death of Linda McCartney (1998)

Celebration: Death of Linda McCartney (1998)

Mission: Eat some vegetarian sausages

Status: Failed

Notes: I had pork sausages for tea. Linda McCartney, Wings’ keyboard player & wife of Paul, died in Arizona from breast cancer on this day in 1998.

29th March 2013 – Eric Idle + John Major Born (1943)

Celebration: Eric Idle + John Major Born (1943)

Mission: Read the letter Eric sent to John in 1993

Status: Complete

Notes: Monty Python member Eric Idle was born in South Shields on this day in 1943. On the very same day 292 miles south down the A1, ’90s Conservative Prime Minister John Major was also born.