"Je souhaite..."

[raven]

I seem to have been designated official scribe, so as my worthy and beloved friends make the long, bewildering, public-transport-is-evil journey home, I may as well begin...

Surreal couple of days. I went in to Liverpool yesterday morning, and met Emily (snowdrop24), Clare (osiris13) and Hannah (purplerainbow) in Waterstone's. It took me about two seconds to realise they were already in possession of hot chocolate. And after we had expressed amazement at each others' corporeal form, they gave me my birthday presents.

No-one else on earth could have given me those presents... from Clare and Emily combined, I got Kurt Cobain's journals, in beautiful hardback-book form - I've begun reading it, and the very first line in it is "Don't read my diary after I'm gone."
Clare also gave me a small model horse. I think it's to go with the model donkey I loved so much, from Greece.
From Hannah, wrapped in sparkling purple paper... an ordinary black top with hood, which I would have liked in any case... except, she'd been to the T-shirt place in Quiggins and had the word "M*A*S*H*E*D" put on it(!)

I think I immediately giggled and melted. I love my friends. That was, in fact, the recurring theme...

Some time later, wandering into Clayton Sqaure, the conversation turned to ear piercings. I don't know how and why, but within twenty minutes of this conversation, first Hannah and then Emily and Clare had all had their ears pierced. Hannah was getting second holes... but the other two were ear-piercing virgins (unlike me, coming up on five times pierced) and Clare, lovely, sweet little girl as she is, has a phobia of needles and informed me some time ago that she would never, never, have it done.

I allowed them to touch me during all of this. Clinging on to my hands is very different from hugging me, however. And it was Clare who clung on to my hands with the strongest grip. As I said at the time, the raven has no claws left.

So... surrealness there. And then we went to Quiggins, and all met people we knew slightly - the other three saw a girl wearing their school tie Avril Lavigne-style, and I saw a girl in the year below. She waved at me, which was surprising. How does everyone know who I am?
Emily, despite swearing she wouldn't buy anything else, bought one of those tops I like, with longer sleeves below shorter ones, and I bought a pair of army green pants with long hanging bits. My mother hates them and wants to know if I have the receipt. I do, but that's another story...

Hannah went to Woodstock to buy black baggies, and I got a few more badges - "Paranoid" and a pair, "User" and "Dealer." I'll put them on my bag, but they seem to have gone missing. When I find them...

I think my sandwich obsession is contagious. I managed to drag the other three with me for sandwiches. I don't think the two vegetarians enjoyed them as much as Hannah and I did. This was followed by cookies and coffee for Clare, and then we squished into an overcrowded, overheated train and arrived in the evening at Freshfield. For some reason, Hannah took this as a cue to do a Gimli impression off the bridge. I still haven't seen The Two Towers, but even I laughed. The other passengers on the platform thought we were crazy. So did I.

My parents departed around seven, and although we'd been lurking on the computer until then - yes, looking at three different sets of Livejournal friends pages - we decided to go out for pizza. We'd decided beforehand that we would have to sing on the way down. For those not familiar with it... I live on the end of a long, dark, tree-lined road with sodium yellow streetlights that light people up as dark shapes from far away. And we wandered down it, and sang.

The first song that occurred to Hannah was Konstantine, so she and I sang four minutes worth of that - up to "And Konstantine is walking down the stair..."
Next, the two of us plus Emily went on to Straw Dog. "Hey, now, there's chemicals in the clouds..."
Clare got pissed off at that point. "Can't we sing a song that I know?"
After a lot of thought, Hannah began with "Dashing through the snow..."
After two verses of that, I started... "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer..."
We'd just sung, "Fuck you, Jordan..." when we reached the pizza shop. We took it, paid for it, and Emily had the inspired idea of singing Walking By.
At this point, some people came the other way down the road and were treated to the sight of four girls and a pizza singing, "And why do you leave these questions unanswered..."
However, that wasn't our finest hour. I don't know what possessed me, but I began humming and singing, "Through early morning fog I see..."
That was the only song we all knew all the way through. Again, some people passed the other way, and in the dim yellow light, they would have seen four oddities singing in rising voices about the futility of life, holding a pizza and giggling.

I love my life.

The pizza was consumed in front of the television. I asked Emily a few days ago if she would bring an X-Files episode called "Je Souhaite." She did, and we watched it. I asked for it specifically because it's very un-X-Filesy. It's not scary or spooky, but still very clever and witty, featuring a wonderful plot - Mulder stumbled across a genie (genia, actually) wrapped up in a rug, and asks her for three wishes. His first wish is for peace on earth. The results are better seen than described.

By the point I was the only one still eating pizza, we were watching M*A*S*H, because Hannah and I wanted to watch Hawk's Nightmare again. Suddenly, it all became clear why I had "You're worried about losing your marbles..." on the little whiteboard above my computer. Em decided she must write something on it, and after I had screamed at the mention of "Sam and Jack forever" she wrote "M*A*S*H*E*D" on it, and it has four signatures below it. I'm not rubbing it out for a while.

I think, however, that the most surreal thing that happened was our watching Kerrang for an hour just to see one video.
And it did come on in the end. It did.
Jumping up and down and shrieking and falling over each other because of Punk Rock Princess was the gem of a sublime day. It's a gorgeous video, and I'm not at all biased. I loved it.

[And talking of Something Corporate, I am about to go to Ticketmaster and buy five tickets for the 8th March]

We watched Cruel Intentions. I liked it, myself... I thought it was sharp and very well acted and had a killer ending.

The random question thing came up. I love this game, in which you take it in turns to ask a random question to the rest of the group, who have to answer truthfully. My first question was based on my gay vs. straight theory, and I asked about deviations.

Hannah's was Andrew McMahon.
Mine was Liv Tyler.
The other two are hopelessly straight.

The random questions follow a curved pattern, going round until you arrive where you started. Hannah mentioned the His Dark Materials trilogy late at night, and got me thinking about daemons. We decided Clare's daemon was a chameleon, and Em's was a cat. Hannah's was a butterfly, IMHO, and mine, well...

I then wondered if those people in the books who had daemons the same sex as themselves were gay. It seemed to make sense to the others, but it was the last thought flung in the air before sleep overtook the misfits.

So. This was a very long, very dry entry... but I think I had to write about it.
Because.

And today is going to be quite, quite different...