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Tales of Public Inappropriateness Without Shame or Censorship
This weekend Nat and I went to that there Londontown to catch up with old friends aplenty. There was a concerning few days midweek when the snow got so bad that I got sent home from work and sat in the car with a co-worker (my favourite co-worker and not just because she agreed to drive me most of the way home) and we couldn't see anything beyond the front of the car bonnet. Which was a little alarming, to say the least!
So we drove down as far as Luton and stayed in a Travelodge. It was not exactly the most glamorous night of our lives.
On Saturday we made it safely to Belle's house in the Tropics (if by the tropics you mean Middlesex and I do) where there no snow. No snow at all! Our tiny minds were blown... Then we all ventured into London to sample the delights of the food market on the South Bank. We shamelessly exploited all the free samples on offer. It appears that student living leaves its mark. The plan had been to wander the German Market but we spent a lot of time mocking the extremely poor "Snow Globe Experience" and then it rained a lot so what we actually did was go to (HUT THING) and drink very sweet mulled wine. I was meeting my other two housemates from university, Sal and Wren, and their boyfriends, and it was great. I miss my girls a lot.
Then we planned to go to Covent Garden but it was raining and we got distracted by the giant ship in a bottle on the Forth Plinth, so what we actually did was go to the pub. Are you noticing a pattern here? We were forced into having extremely grown up conversations about our jobs (Belle teaches English as a second language, Wren works for the Historical Royal Palaces Society and Sal for a children's charity. My friends are vastly more impressive than me) and our housing situation and the cost of travel and the weather.
Then when we were done with that we got talking about books, which always happens and had about a half hour discussion about YA and how The Book Thief is amazing and made me and Sal bawl our eyes out. Apparently telling people this does not make them want to read the book. But you should! Because it's really good! We were standing in the corner of the pub and the whole thing became kind of animated because we all care a lot about books and the Australians sitting at the table next to us clearly thought that we were all crazy and/or some kind of in pub entertainment.
Me: But once you get past the genocide! It's actually very uplifting!
Belle: The whole thing made me want to ring my brother and yell at him and then *makes sweeping gesture* I don't know, tell him he's awesome.
Sal: Where was all this teen literature when I was a teenager? 14 year old me is PISSED OFF.
Me: Oh, you know Nat doesn't read fiction.
Wren: (Her boyfriend) neither.
The four of us: *turn as one and tut at the boyfriends*
We went out for dinner and while we were in the bar waiting I got a text update from twitter in which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moleskinned quoted some fic and I got these terrible snorting giggles.
Everyone: What, Lal, what?
Me: Er. You wouldn't, it's a, never mind. Internet joke.
Wren: It's going to be about porn, isn't it?
Belle and Sal: *nod sagely*
Sal's boyfriend who has not spent a lot of time with us as a group: *gives Sal a 'they seemed like such nice girls' look*
Sunday was a particularly lovely day that we spent on the canal boat that Wren lives on with her boyfriend. It's like a real house all condensed down into a teeny tiny floating space, which Wren has also managed to make stylish and lovely with cushions and baubles and plants. We were talking about how Wren is very good at growing things.
Wren's Boyfriend: I won the longest chilli competition at work.
Me: *tries not to laugh*
Sal: *starts to giggle*
Me: *catches Sal's eye*
Me, Sal, Belle and Wren: *all laugh at once*
All the boys: *look confused*
Then we took the boat out down the Thames. It was a gorgeous day and we made it to Hampton Court Palace. AKA Wren's office. Like I said, vastly cooler than me.
Wren gave us her tour and I added ridiculous but nonetheless true facts about the Tudors and may have suggested that Henry VIII was kind of foxy. You know. In his day.
Then we drove the boat back and made mulled wine. It's very important that you get those steps in the right order.
The next day I went to meet the extremely marvelloushanelissar and altogetherisi for mooching and Harry Potter watching. While Hannah and I were waiting in Waterloo for Isi we went to WH Smith and rearranged their children and young adult section so that all the copies of Hush, Hush and Crescendo were covered by other books.
We bought our tickets and I neatly pretended to be a student for great win and savings so this time we didn't have to co-opt any tourists into making a group with us to save money.
We spent a long time wandering up and down the South Bank trying to decide what we wanted for lunch. Well, we mostly walked to see if we could find a Starbucks. Because it was cold. We got as far as Westminster.
Me: So there's this door at the bottom of the statue on Westminster Bridge that I am fairly sure if is the real entrance to the Ministry of Magic.
Isi: Maybe it's a secret passage from the House of Commons! There are meant to be loads of secret passages and it's just across the river.
Me: *looks across the river* Er. Guys. Are the Houses of Parliament on fire?
Lal,Han,Isi: *look at the smoke pouring out of the top of Westminster*
Han: If David Cameron comes out of that door...
We tried and tried to find a Starbucks but failed. Isi was so sure that she had been to one nearby that she'd been to but in the end we couldn't remember, so we went for lunch and I told them about my Yuletide assignment.
Me: It's pretty much karmic justice for signing up to Yuletide drunk...
Han, Isi: *fall about laughing*
And THEN we went to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow which I have already seen but it's always worth a second go and also I hadn't seen it with proper fandom people.
It was just as great as I remembered!
Malfoys: *appear on screen*
Han, Lal, Isi: *clutch heart*
Ron: THE HORCRUXES
Isi: What's foreshadowing?
Han: Remember, a horcrux can be anything!
Malfoys: *appear on screen*
Han, Lal, Isi: *clutch heart*
Hermione and Harry: *dance*
Me: I'm just not sure what to do with my face, you know?
Isi: AWKWARD
Anyway, the movie going experience was most delightful and I think we only pissed off the people around us a very little bit.
Me: *looks up Starbucks address* Wait, isn't that right by we went to see Adam Lambert. WAIT, isn't that the Starbucks that we went to THAT TIME?
Isi: Um. Yes.
Hannah: *facepalm*
So we went to said Starbucks and ended up sitting at exactly the same table. The talk turned, as it inevitably does, to RPF and how being friends with me ends up with people googling fanfiction about people in television talent contests.
Han: So it turns out that there is loads of X Factor slash fiction.
Me: I would just like to point out that though it may seem like my fault that you both ended up finding this out, it WAS NOT.
Isi: It was.
Me: Not entirely
Han: Nono! I think my one LJ friend invented a whole ship.
Isi and Lal: *are extremely impressed*
Isi: It's all fine. They're all legal! Although, as Lal said, if you have to check...
Then I imparted the scandalous gossip I heard about one of the members of the boyband.
Me: *comes to her compelling conclusion* YOU CAN JUST THINK OF HIM AS SEXUALLY ADVENTUROUS.
Guys on the table next to us: *regard us with a kind of intrigued bafflement*
Me, Isi, Hannah: *fall about laughing*
Me: To be honest, apart from Zayn, I am confused as to who the other ones are.
Me: It is worse that we can't remember or that we care?
Hannah: Well, is it worse that I should remember because of all the fic I've read about them? I will text my friend. She has written enough slash fiction about that that she should know.
Isi: You are failing at objectifying them.
Me: Look, I am just going to google it. *finds out that his name is Niall*
Hannah: Ah, my friend has texted back. She says she likes Niall a lot because the badficcers always make him a rapist (dear Hannah's friend, I have never met you but I think I love you)
Guy At The Next Table: *turns to his friend* Seriously, I could sit here all night *sneaks another horrified/mesmerised glance at us*
Hannah: And to think, 6 months ago I though RPF was creepy and not for me.
Me: It's a ballpit!
Everyone in Starbucks: O_O
Isi: This always happens when we sit at this table.
Me: I don't think that we can blame the table. That isn't fair.
Frankly, I think we enriched the whole of Starbucks. Or. Expanded their horizons or something.
Eventually I had to get my coach home so I took my giant cookie the size of Isi's face and we went to Victoria. Only then my coach was delayed for an hour so we went to a pub. Again, the pattern.
So we had a discussion about having feminist rage and nothing to do with it and how to reconcile porn with the non objectification of women.
Nope, couldn't love them more.
I ran to get my delayed coach and there were in fact two, but everyone else had crammed onto the first one so I had the second coach all to myself!
The whole thing has left me in a far superior mood for the whole week. Clearly all I needed was to spend some time with people who I can be myself with. Which seems to mostly involve making all bystanders stop in their conversations, but that's practically a tradition in my family.
Have you all had good weeks/weekends? Ready for Christmas (ahahahaha I am so not, before you ask)
So we drove down as far as Luton and stayed in a Travelodge. It was not exactly the most glamorous night of our lives.
On Saturday we made it safely to Belle's house in the Tropics (if by the tropics you mean Middlesex and I do) where there no snow. No snow at all! Our tiny minds were blown... Then we all ventured into London to sample the delights of the food market on the South Bank. We shamelessly exploited all the free samples on offer. It appears that student living leaves its mark. The plan had been to wander the German Market but we spent a lot of time mocking the extremely poor "Snow Globe Experience" and then it rained a lot so what we actually did was go to (HUT THING) and drink very sweet mulled wine. I was meeting my other two housemates from university, Sal and Wren, and their boyfriends, and it was great. I miss my girls a lot.
Then we planned to go to Covent Garden but it was raining and we got distracted by the giant ship in a bottle on the Forth Plinth, so what we actually did was go to the pub. Are you noticing a pattern here? We were forced into having extremely grown up conversations about our jobs (Belle teaches English as a second language, Wren works for the Historical Royal Palaces Society and Sal for a children's charity. My friends are vastly more impressive than me) and our housing situation and the cost of travel and the weather.
Then when we were done with that we got talking about books, which always happens and had about a half hour discussion about YA and how The Book Thief is amazing and made me and Sal bawl our eyes out. Apparently telling people this does not make them want to read the book. But you should! Because it's really good! We were standing in the corner of the pub and the whole thing became kind of animated because we all care a lot about books and the Australians sitting at the table next to us clearly thought that we were all crazy and/or some kind of in pub entertainment.
Me: But once you get past the genocide! It's actually very uplifting!
Belle: The whole thing made me want to ring my brother and yell at him and then *makes sweeping gesture* I don't know, tell him he's awesome.
Sal: Where was all this teen literature when I was a teenager? 14 year old me is PISSED OFF.
Me: Oh, you know Nat doesn't read fiction.
Wren: (Her boyfriend) neither.
The four of us: *turn as one and tut at the boyfriends*
We went out for dinner and while we were in the bar waiting I got a text update from twitter in which
moleskinned quoted some fic and I got these terrible snorting giggles.Everyone: What, Lal, what?
Me: Er. You wouldn't, it's a, never mind. Internet joke.
Wren: It's going to be about porn, isn't it?
Belle and Sal: *nod sagely*
Sal's boyfriend who has not spent a lot of time with us as a group: *gives Sal a 'they seemed like such nice girls' look*
Sunday was a particularly lovely day that we spent on the canal boat that Wren lives on with her boyfriend. It's like a real house all condensed down into a teeny tiny floating space, which Wren has also managed to make stylish and lovely with cushions and baubles and plants. We were talking about how Wren is very good at growing things.
Wren's Boyfriend: I won the longest chilli competition at work.
Me: *tries not to laugh*
Sal: *starts to giggle*
Me: *catches Sal's eye*
Me, Sal, Belle and Wren: *all laugh at once*
All the boys: *look confused*
Then we took the boat out down the Thames. It was a gorgeous day and we made it to Hampton Court Palace. AKA Wren's office. Like I said, vastly cooler than me.
Wren gave us her tour and I added ridiculous but nonetheless true facts about the Tudors and may have suggested that Henry VIII was kind of foxy. You know. In his day.
Then we drove the boat back and made mulled wine. It's very important that you get those steps in the right order.
The next day I went to meet the extremely marvellous
hanelissar and altogetherisi for mooching and Harry Potter watching. While Hannah and I were waiting in Waterloo for Isi we went to WH Smith and rearranged their children and young adult section so that all the copies of Hush, Hush and Crescendo were covered by other books. We bought our tickets and I neatly pretended to be a student for great win and savings so this time we didn't have to co-opt any tourists into making a group with us to save money.
We spent a long time wandering up and down the South Bank trying to decide what we wanted for lunch. Well, we mostly walked to see if we could find a Starbucks. Because it was cold. We got as far as Westminster.
Me: So there's this door at the bottom of the statue on Westminster Bridge that I am fairly sure if is the real entrance to the Ministry of Magic.
Isi: Maybe it's a secret passage from the House of Commons! There are meant to be loads of secret passages and it's just across the river.
Me: *looks across the river* Er. Guys. Are the Houses of Parliament on fire?
Lal,Han,Isi: *look at the smoke pouring out of the top of Westminster*
Han: If David Cameron comes out of that door...
We tried and tried to find a Starbucks but failed. Isi was so sure that she had been to one nearby that she'd been to but in the end we couldn't remember, so we went for lunch and I told them about my Yuletide assignment.
Me: It's pretty much karmic justice for signing up to Yuletide drunk...
Han, Isi: *fall about laughing*
And THEN we went to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow which I have already seen but it's always worth a second go and also I hadn't seen it with proper fandom people.
It was just as great as I remembered!
Malfoys: *appear on screen*
Han, Lal, Isi: *clutch heart*
Ron: THE HORCRUXES
Isi: What's foreshadowing?
Han: Remember, a horcrux can be anything!
Malfoys: *appear on screen*
Han, Lal, Isi: *clutch heart*
Hermione and Harry: *dance*
Me: I'm just not sure what to do with my face, you know?
Isi: AWKWARD
Anyway, the movie going experience was most delightful and I think we only pissed off the people around us a very little bit.
Me: *looks up Starbucks address* Wait, isn't that right by we went to see Adam Lambert. WAIT, isn't that the Starbucks that we went to THAT TIME?
Isi: Um. Yes.
Hannah: *facepalm*
So we went to said Starbucks and ended up sitting at exactly the same table. The talk turned, as it inevitably does, to RPF and how being friends with me ends up with people googling fanfiction about people in television talent contests.
Han: So it turns out that there is loads of X Factor slash fiction.
Me: I would just like to point out that though it may seem like my fault that you both ended up finding this out, it WAS NOT.
Isi: It was.
Me: Not entirely
Han: Nono! I think my one LJ friend invented a whole ship.
Isi and Lal: *are extremely impressed*
Isi: It's all fine. They're all legal! Although, as Lal said, if you have to check...
Then I imparted the scandalous gossip I heard about one of the members of the boyband.
Me: *comes to her compelling conclusion* YOU CAN JUST THINK OF HIM AS SEXUALLY ADVENTUROUS.
Guys on the table next to us: *regard us with a kind of intrigued bafflement*
Me, Isi, Hannah: *fall about laughing*
Me: To be honest, apart from Zayn, I am confused as to who the other ones are.
Me: It is worse that we can't remember or that we care?
Hannah: Well, is it worse that I should remember because of all the fic I've read about them? I will text my friend. She has written enough slash fiction about that that she should know.
Isi: You are failing at objectifying them.
Me: Look, I am just going to google it. *finds out that his name is Niall*
Hannah: Ah, my friend has texted back. She says she likes Niall a lot because the badficcers always make him a rapist (dear Hannah's friend, I have never met you but I think I love you)
Guy At The Next Table: *turns to his friend* Seriously, I could sit here all night *sneaks another horrified/mesmerised glance at us*
Hannah: And to think, 6 months ago I though RPF was creepy and not for me.
Me: It's a ballpit!
Everyone in Starbucks: O_O
Isi: This always happens when we sit at this table.
Me: I don't think that we can blame the table. That isn't fair.
Frankly, I think we enriched the whole of Starbucks. Or. Expanded their horizons or something.
Eventually I had to get my coach home so I took my giant cookie the size of Isi's face and we went to Victoria. Only then my coach was delayed for an hour so we went to a pub. Again, the pattern.
So we had a discussion about having feminist rage and nothing to do with it and how to reconcile porn with the non objectification of women.
Nope, couldn't love them more.
I ran to get my delayed coach and there were in fact two, but everyone else had crammed onto the first one so I had the second coach all to myself!
The whole thing has left me in a far superior mood for the whole week. Clearly all I needed was to spend some time with people who I can be myself with. Which seems to mostly involve making all bystanders stop in their conversations, but that's practically a tradition in my family.
Have you all had good weeks/weekends? Ready for Christmas (ahahahaha I am so not, before you ask)
no subject
Being nerdy is fabulous, because it means you get to excited and passionate about things all the time, and if you have found people to share that with, well then, that's even better! AHAHA, that is amazing, nerd boys FTW.
I will PM you my address, sorry it's so late, I've been miserable ill (well, still am but less paralysingly so) and so have been mostly lying on my couch and refusing to move or asleep.
On a similar theme, happy birthday! I am putting together a birthday/Christmas package for you so you might have to wait but I hope that you had a wonderful day and I'm sorry that this too is late...
YEsss, read The Book Thief. It's SO GOOD. The MC is awesome and the narrator. Well. It's unusual to say the least.
YAY for a fantastic week, that does sound good. I've heard mixed reports about Tangled (beautiful but poor songs?) did you enjoy it? I've still not seen How To Train Your Dragon which is a source of constant sadness to me. You know how I feel about dragons. Also, A+ use of the word conniption!
I am so not prepared this year. We did buy a tree at the weekend, though, and decorate it! All the snow has melted here. I'm almost pleased D:
no subject
And thanks for the b-day wishes! The week-long birthday festivities are finally coming to an end tonight, actually, as we are having my family celebration at last. This may be the longest birthday anyone has ever had.
I will indeed check out The Book Thief... just as soon as I get through the new Bartimaeus novel which I am SO EXCITED TO READ. I read four pages and nearly died of happiness. It was ridiculous.
I LOVED TANGLED. AND ITS SONGS. Who told you it had poor songs? Because they are terribly incorrect, based on the fact that I basically spent my last weeks of school listening to the soundtrack on repeat. I mean, yes, Mandy Moore can't really sing (she can hold a tune, but past that... mmm), but once you get past that, the songs themselves are really quite fabulous. (Also, Mandy Moore's subpar singing is totally made up for by the amazing Donna Murphy and Zachary Levi.) Currently I'm dying to get my hands on some piano sheet music, but so far I have been unsuccessful, woe. But anyway, the film itself is utterly gorgeous and both Rapunzel and Flynn are fantastic characters with plenty of depth and personality. RECOMMENDED.
OMG YOU NEED TO SEE HTTYD. I finally had time to watch it yesterday and I just died, THAT MOVIE IS SO AMAZING. It's like everything that makes me happy in one fantastic place. Nerdy/weedy/sarcastic boys! Adorable animals that are strangely just like my own pet cat! Beautiful soundtrack! Gorgeous flight sequences! A credits song by Jonsi! I mean, it's surprising I didn't just keel over on the spot the first time I watched it, considering I fail to see how any other movie I watch could ever be as perfect.
Our family Christmas is tomorrow (as we are leaving to go to Wisconsin on Tuesday) and we have yet to actually decorate the house... so that's what I'll be doing as soon as I hit "post reply," obviously.