Gossip from inside my head

If you like your theatre to be POWERFUL, ENIGMATIC and just to be a plain SURREAL experience, then get out to Wapping to see the punchdrunk performance of Goethe’s FAUST. I went with the always delightful squirmelia, wintrmute and Ramesh last night to see this experience (plus we bumped into verlaine and companion there) and it’s certainly the strangest thing I’ve seen all year, and that’s saying something. *boggles*

( Being immersed in something that's a cross between a labyrinth, an art gallery and a haunted house, and then the play itself is like trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together when you're missing most of the pieces )

That infamous pub The Prospect of Whitby is found just around the corner in Wapping. There was then an succession of pubs and bars, a lot of alcohol, no sleep, and drinking way past the sunrise. Drank an evil Kahlua based concoction for breakfast. Don't do this at home, kids. Never again! (well, maybe ...) We somehow ended up at a house In I-don’t-know-where-somewhere-North-London, and it’s only at about 8AM when wintrmute‘s housemate stumbled upon us still drinking in the lounge there did I realise whose house I was in. For said housemate turned out to be romauld (and why hadn't anyone told me this earlier?), so we stayed up even later chatting until I was even more of a zombie. Small world, big scary hangover of DOOM.

Inevitably after all that fun today was a write-off, no way I was going ANYWHERE, not even the shops, and Cambridge was right out. Stayed in to recover with much needed me-time. Agree with libellum that hermiting with Sugar Rush DVDs is a very good thing. Mmmmmm teenage lesbians. Why would I need or want anything more than that?

For New Year’s Eve all the fab people are headed to The Pembury to see in 2007. See lots of you there?

Saturday we had lots and lots of fun reading Rose Rage, an adaption of Shakespeare’s Henry VI (all 3 parts mashed together). I thought I just had some nice relaxing small parts, mainly with silly french accents, but minutes before we started the_alchemist decided that I’d also be Henry VI. Meeep! Somehow that all worked out, and while we had no roses, we did have a box of Cadbury’s Roses, which made do as convenient and very edible props. The War of the Roses make a lot more sense to me if I think about it in terms of chocolates. Chocolate is worth fighting for!

Real roses are not so edible. Try telling that to goths, and they won’t listen. Whitby 2003 saw some people handing out roses to goths, and filming what happened next. Roses bring Sunshine appeared on YouTube a few days back, and many of you are in that video, so do take a look. Just ignore that posing fairy about 80 seconds from the start, PLEASE. Why can’t I remember this, and WHAT AM I THINKING? AAARGH!

( seasonal memeage )

Walked back home this evening, kicking lots of leaves about, and got to the front doorstep. There I spotted something most unusual.There is a bra on our front doorstep. Nobody living here admits to it being their bra, so it’s a mystery bra. So I'm all confused!! I’ve tried to construct a reasonable explanation as to just WHY there is a BRA on our DOORSTEP, but have totally failed. So, please, I ask all you lovely readers to enlighten me with stories, outrageous or perfectly sensible, as to why I’ve got a bra on the doorstep!! *confused*

Last weekend was angelcamp (or whatever you want to call it!), spent in a lovely old barn in Kent, consisting of lots of thespiness, very little sleep, many lovely people, and lots of silly costumes. mostly_a_cat wielded a camera, and so some really scary photos of me can now be found here. Truth be told, I actually spent much of the weekend smartly wearing a suit, which is more than I’ve done in years.

I love autumn, I really do. the air is so crisp and fresh, the colours are just right, and the trees have now dumped enough leaves on the ground to kick around in big piles. So much fun!

The gods have been very cheeky already this Samhain. There I was, opening a bottle of wine, and it unexpectedly fell over just as the cork was removed, spilling a larger libation than I was intending all over the floor. Bad gods! Still it was very nice wine indeed, so I can’t blame them. I may let them have more later as I’m feeling generous. *dances around in circles*

My lack of recent updates is correlated with me being frightfully busy, in some of the best possible ways. I’ve made dinner at home to lovely invited guests, discovering that I can still cook really yummy food, and have an eye for good wine (not just the stuff with pretty butterflies on the label *girlynoises*). I’ve fallen ill, gotten better, then suddenly caught something far worse and had to spend all Sunday wrapped in a duvet feeling all woeful about missing October Plenty. But I have been getting out lots - I‘ve been to the Tate Modern for lots of sliding joy and art-mockery, drank in hoibbity pubs and introduced 791point43 and strongtrousers to the bouncey joy that is Feeling Gloomy. I’ve played both good Bridge and bad Bridge, and fear I have fully traumatised both doseybat and blanche_carte from ever playing Oware again. I’ve drank absinthe and then still found the energy for reading Vogon Poetry the next day. I’ve spent a fortune on amazon, and then got mugged by a half-prince Ghibli anime sale at Forbidden Planet. I’ve been on far more nightbuses than I can shake a stick at, and fallen in and out of love even more times than than that. I’ve come to the conclusion that for my sanity that maybe I should have more friends that I don’t fancy the pants off. Not that I’ve anything to complain about. Is being single always like this? *confuzzlednoises*

*squeeeeeeeee* because I’m seeing the Dresden Dolls play on Friday. To top even that, I’ve heard that RazorBladeKisses are playing next at Whitby in April, so I’m going to have to do the goth thing again, assuming I can find people to stay with *pleadingnoises*

Of course the only question that really matters - would it be horribly bad of me to wear a miniskirt to the Oakdale Arms on Saturday? *lalala*

I couldn’t resist it. I took a detour to the Tate Modern and went on the GIANT SLIDES on the way into work today. Wheeeeeee! They are fab, twisty and very very shiny. You go zooooooooom down the twisty tube and emerge with a huge smile. It’s fun. The smallest slide you don’t even need a free ticket, you just turn up and slide. The others are all free too, but you need to get a timed ticket. I really wanted to go on the huge one, but even first thing this morning there was already a 3 hour wait for it, and that would have been silly. So I got on one of the other ones which was still long and shiny. Wheeeeeee!

Anyway, I want to go back on Sunday, and I want to slide down the the huge slide. Who’s up for this? Plan would be to arrive morning, grab timed tickets, and assuming its a long wait, do something else in the meantime, like Sunday Lunch. Also want to see bad_faery‘s play at 2pm on Sunday, so it’ll have to be before or possibly *around* that. Or something.

Where did my week suddenly get eaten up? Cooking dinner for doseybat tomorrow, bridge on Thursday, Ceilidh at Cecil Sharp House on Friday, and fixing happygoff’s computer on Saturday. Meeep! it was so much easier being a hermit. wah!

It's a good idea that works very well indeed. That is, find a large and pretty manor house in some distant rural location that's available for hire. Then fill it with wonderful and interesting people, organise a few events and activities for everyone, or see what spontaneous happenings occur. And the result is always a very happy one. *smallsmile*

Last weekend saw a large group of us taking over Llanerchydol Hall, an amazing 18th Century Gothic Revival mansion hidden on a hill above Welshpool. The event was the_alchemist's birthday. Breathtaking gardens surround the mansion, and inside it's a total museum of antiques, moulded and beamed ceilings, wood burning stoves, oil paintings, all decorated with fresh flowers. A few photos of the Hall and gardens are now online, but others took better pictures, I think. Travelling there I was collected from Welwyn Garden City by megamole and we picked up the_alchemist's father along the way. I'd met neither of them before so the car journey rovided a good way of getting to know each other. We were first to arrive and were greeted by a charming and eccentric lady. She told us all sorts of silly and irrational rules, claimed the place was definitely haunted, and name-dropped a long list of all the famous people who'd previously hired the place. Still as all of the rooms looked like they were so antique that they should be roped off from public access to prevent damage, it may have made sense. The drawing room in particular had a bust of Apollo precariously perched on a tall thin plinth which wobbled anytime anyone went near it, which was more than a little nerve-wracking. *eeek*

The friday evening, after a most unfortunate attempt at playing darts with robert_jones and a very late arrival of, well, most people, saw a champagne celebration at the very stroke of midnight (the_alchemist has a very interesting story about the circumstances of her birth) and an even later dinner. strongtrousers cooked up something delightful and elise baked a cake, and it was more than worth the wait. *licks lips*

Saturday started with a ride on a choo choo train! A charming steam railway runs from Welshpool to Llanfair. So we rode on it and back again, and that was fun. Later there was exploding frozen champagne, and Bridge-on-a-tiny-table, which was a little on the silly side. The evening's big event and highlight was the Pirate role-playing game, which was lots and lots of fun. Arrrrrrrrrrr! (and yes, it is Talk Like a Pirate Day today) It was a murder-mystery freeform role-play where we all dressed up as pirates/natives/spaniards/whatever, hoisted the jib and set sail to a volcanic island. The volcano was lactose intolerent, apparently. I was cast as Tom the pirate cabin boy, but secretly I was Meg the governor's runaway younger daughter, and it took a very long time for anyone to find me out. Of course this may have led to at least two people reckoning on me being the murderer, which amused me no end. :) The game involved much chaotic back-stabbing as we all tried to save ourselves from being sacrificed in the volcano, find the buried treasure and escape the island. And so much fun. And yes, we drank lots of rum whilst doing all this. Arrrrrrrrr! *piratical noises*

Sunday there was a spontaneous trip to a nearby stone circle (Mitchell's Fold, actually just over the border in England), which was an adventure in itself in getting strongtrousers' large car up a very narrow road which quickly reduced to an unpaved track and got even narrower and narrower and doom! We stopped and strolled up the hill instead. All this before breakfast, and before coffee even! Meeep! We eventually found the circle, and it was a very good stone circle. Yay for stone circles! Then we spotted there was a carpark right nearby, which somehow we'd missed. We felt very silly! We headed back to the Hall for a proper big breakfast and then a readthrough. We couldn't resist doing Under Milk Wood, us being in Wales, complete with Welsh accents (well, I can't do the Welsh accent, but other people did). I discovered that peeling shallots is a fine cure for my current lack-of-crying (and I still think they should be called minions, but then I didn't want to peel myself!) In the evening we dressed up all proper and formal for a lovely dinner cooked by the_alchemist. This was preceded by madrigals sang very well by megamole, mirabehn, robert_jones, leonato and emperor, and followed by games and a lot of gin and snuff and other silliness.

Overall, a very good weekend - I got to see lots of good friends for a whole weekend, meet interesting new people, like megamole, get to know people I'd met elsewhere briefly like shreena and also deepened my friendship with mirabehn a lot. All good things. Yay! :)

That was a wedding I’m not going to forget. ( lots of gushing about pretties )

Nefext moforning, myfy brafain wafas feefeeling vefery spafaced afand Ifi spofoke vefery cufutely lifike thifis. Efelly rofoused afa vefery zofonky mefe wifith cofoffee wifith lofots ofof sufugar, afand ofopend hefer bifirthday prefesents. Nifick drofove ufus tofo sufussex whefere wefe hafad afa lofovely pufub lufunch. Thefen Cafastle! Bofodiam Cafastle ifis vefery prefetty indeefeedy! *boufounce* Wefe hafad lofots ofof quefests, lifike thefe quefest fofor thefe hofoly mafarcus, afand nifick afackting thefe dofoctor. Afafter, wefe mefet mafarcus’s mufum afand gofot fefed yufummy chofocolate cafake afand teafe. *yafay*

Later I dropped home for more coffee, which finally perked me out of my trance, and headed for Feeling Gloomy with doseybat and Meg, closely followed by verlaine. beingjdc plagued us with miserable songs all night long, so we spent lots of time bouncing long merrily on the dancefloor having far too much fun. I so love that club, it’s so absurd. *happy nods*

Yesterday I felt small and antisocial, so curled up on the sofa and watched all and every episode of Firefly, which was a splendid plan. Today started very differently, when our lovely lebanese guest (who escaped from Beirut last month and I’ve not mentioned here before) got back from clubbing at 10AM and dragged me out of bed into the back garden for a beer. In the morning. My head is now a very special place. *slightly fuzzy noises*

Just watched the film Glastonbury.

I’m in it. *boggles*

About 20 minutes in. There’s a druidic ritual at the stone circle and there I am, taking part and everything. Most definitely it’s me. Must have been shot 4 years ago, but I don't recall the cameras there.

Why did nobody tell me this?

*dies of heat* Can I go back to Norway now? Please? It was a nice 21C there and it was pretty too plus there was snow! Far far too hot and smelly here in London. I just bought a summer sleeping bag for the camping this weekend as my usual 4-seasons sleeping bag of uber-warmness will be an oven. Plus I got a shiny new mat with a fairy on it *squeeeee*. Really looking forward to Trowbridge, it's going to be so much fun! Yay! :)

cassielalone needs urgent computer help. Just days before she was about to copy everything off her computer, the hard disk died. She's in a real panic as she's got lots and lots of data on there she really wants to keep, poor thing. The BIOS auto-detects the drive fine, but then reports "Primary Master HDD Error" and won't boot from any device. Deactiviting the drive in the BIOS allowed me to boot via an ubuntu live CD (which I stole off some friendly geeks nearby), which also finds the /dev/hda device fine, but then only to find the partition table of the drive is unreadable and unwritable. This isn't looking good. Does anyone have any experience or tools for recovering data off really dead hard disks? Help! *hopefulsmile*

Late saturday evening I sat by the fountain in Trinity, watching the stars. You see, I have my favourite spot (all mine, I tell you) where I used to sit there many years back. It's the best place ever to see stars, as theres lots of darkness and the only noise is just the quiet trickle of the fountain. Its so calm and peaceful and makes me happy. I love simple pleasures like that. *nod* *nod* Of course, sunday we went to cinema to see the pirates film, which was also lots of silly fun.

*waves* Am in Turku at isobell's nice place, drinking gorgeous banana smoothie while dinner is being prepared by her pretty husband. Life is very good at the minute. Is very sunny and very warm but not too hot here. There have been many adventures, including lots of goth clubbing, a party on a boat sailing around a large lake, pretty mucha art museum and a very nice castle indeed *happy bounces*

Tomorrow morning I hop onto the ferry to Sweden.