Stargate Monday

Yes. Well.

I am a sad, strange, frightening person, but I am now going to regale you all with the events of the last couple of days. Get out while you can, etc. Em and I decided we absolutely must have a fannish evening. There were complications. This is what transpired.

I did drag myself out of bed in the end. It was about nine in the morning, which meant I wasn't at my best, but in the pursuit of life, love and fandom, I managed to get outside and on my way to the station in time. The weather was beautiful; cold, bright, sunny, as perfect as it could possibly have been. And I caught the train, and I started reading Moving Pictures and everything was fine.

At Central, I noticed a familiar face somewhere in the crowd, and by the time I'd reached the escalator, I was sure. Which was how I emerged onto the station concourse straight into the arms of purplerainbow, gathered myself together, and yelled, "Patrick!"

He hadn't seen me, and Hannah seemed rather amused by proceedings. I was rather afraid she was going to scare him to death, but she didn't, merely subjecting him to intense scrutiny, and when he'd gone, she told me the list of things she wanted to ask him. I was afraid. And suddenly thankful for small mercies, I rang Becca. She was apologetic, having overslept and missed three trains, and when I informed her whom she'd missed, she was somewhat aggrieved. I rather think that Becca and Hannah together would probably have scared Patrick to death. As things stood, Hannah and I went off into the city to wander round and wait for Becca.

Who arrived some time later looking flustered. We went down to Central again to retrieve her, and then ambled off to Quiggins. I'd bought a bag for customisation purposes, and wanted patches for it. We went to Grin first and delivered a few blows to the jukebox before going up to Woodstock. In the tin of badges by the counter we discovered a small Something Corporate badge like the ones we got at the gig last March. Hannah remembered that Emily (shipperkitten) hadn't got one, and so Clare (osiris13) had handed over hers. Therefore, we resolved to buy this badge and put right an old wrong, so to speak. Sadly, none of us had thirty pence in change and so we had to donate all our coppers. Following that, I got my patches for the bag. I have one large red sequinned star, one medium silver one and a small gold one. Becca and Hannah were no help at all. I also got a small rainbow for the purpose of subtlety.

I suppose it was inevitable that we should end up in Subway, sitting in the front bit looking out at the people. We were playing some sort of a game in which we were trying to tell who, out of all the people going past, were happy. There was surprisingly small amount of actually happy people. They all looked bored or depressed; maybe half a dozen people were smiling and only a very few were actually laughing. We tried cheering people up by swivelling around on the chairs and following them as they went past, and as we did startle a few people into laughter, I would say some good deeds were committed. Then came the eternal question: if we'd seen ourselves going past, would we think we were happy?

Colleen (hathy_col) could have answered the question, I suppose. She came past the glass and came in to meet us at about half past three. At which point we all realised how late we were and hurriedly departed for Central. Once there, Becca was going in a different direction, so hugs (touching or otherwise) were exchanged and then I went down with Hannah and Colleen to the other platform.

I was really surprised that we weren't late. Well, we were, but all of three minutes late as opposed to about an hour late which was how I imagined it. Clare had given the ticket people the slip and come down to the platform to meet us. In the lift on the way up, I gave her the badge, which may have amused her, and then Hannah deserted us in favour of yoga. Not that I blame her, considering subsequent events, but at any rate more goodbyes had to be exchanged, and then there was, as Colleen put it a few days ago, an influx of public transport. I don't do buses, which is why Clare had to come and pick us up in the first place. We would have got horribly lost otherwise. It'll be worse for her when she passes her test - then we'll probably all badger her to come and get us in Dick Turpin, which is the name of the car. I later asked her what colour the car was. "Maroon," quoth she, cue laughter and a suggestion from Colleen to call it Ron, Ron Weasley or Foul Ole Ron depending on mood.

But I digress. We were going to sing at Em when she opened the door, but she didn't actually open the door. Besides, we couldn't actually think of anything to sing beyond "It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere..."

Talking of which, I actually got birthday presents, believe it or not. Em gave me two of the Red Dwarf books - Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers and Better Than Life - and Clare, who can be remarkably self-effacing, gave me one of the Discworld maps - Death's Domain. I have yet to open it, but when I do it's going up above my desk.

That was a nice surprise in addition to everything else. In case I hadn't said so before, this was above all a gathering for the express purpose of a fannish Stargate Monday. I would like to point out that it was Monday, but even if it hadn't been, I'd still have called it Stargate Monday. The term is borrowed from gamesiplay and her younger sister, to give credit where it's due.

We were all exchanging emails over last week, arguing over which episodes to watch - which I dolefully predicted right at the beginning in my potted history of my life in fandom - and although we did reach some kind of an agreement, it's impossible to watch fourteen episodes of one television programme without your brain imploding, fangirls or not.

We didn't watch fourteen episodes. We watched ten. How we did it, I don't know.

( Heroes parts I and II (spoilers, natch) )

Em didn’t cook this time. Instead, there was the usual conversation over pasta (which I liked very much, for the record) and pie (similar). We did get into something of a debate over BNF-age. I don’t like the idea of BNF-age, myself. I like small fandoms – M*A*S*H comes to mind – where the BNFs are incidental, for lack of a better word. They don’t attract the sort of worship that annoys me so much.

Having eaten pie, we went on.

( The Fifth Race; Fragile Balance; Fallen; Homecoming; There But For The Grace of God; Urgo; Paradise Lost; Death Knell )

I eventually fell asleep on top of Colleen, which is hardly surprising as we were sharing the (single) bed, which led to all kinds of unintentional double entendres. It seems that even in the aeons-deep somnambulistic haze we are both capable of achieving, a civilised friendship was maintained and no-one fell out of bed. We were planning to set an alarm. My alarm was set for nine, but that was only because I’d forgotten about it. Em said she’d set an alarm for half ten, but Colleen wanted midday. I said there was no way in hell we’d sleep until midday.

I was right. We slept until ten to twelve. I was absolutely astonished. Even more astonished, Colleen and I immediately started to have a sensible conversation in which smiling was involved. It seemed that for once, we had both slept enough to be cheerful and happy morning people. Having said that, it wasn’t morning. It was afternoon, and a bright sunny afternoon at that.

We departed shortly after and went to Liverpool; Colleen and me, that is. She bought a book, I bought a bottle of apple sparkling water (an event in my life) and we eventually parted at Central. I went home and have spent most of the afternoon writing this. I have a headache. Maybe because I watch so much television.

Seriously, I am glad we arranged for this. We hadn’t done it in years and never do have enough time to devote to fandom like this. I think that possibly, if I saw myself passing the glass in front of me, I’d think I was happy.