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The first thing I can clearly remember from today is a wake-up call from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
balthaser, who more or less told me to get out of bed and put my head under the cold tap. I didn't, but I got out of bed. When I was standing in the bathroom, I had the distinct impression that something else had happened. Something. Something.
By the time Clare called with wake-up call number three, it was becoming to come back to me. I later asked Hannah about it, and yes, she did call me at half eight, and apparently I sounded sleepy (“Cute!”) but lucid. She asked me four times seven and the capital of Peru, both of which I got right despite unconsciousness, and she also asked me, “Who’s the lead singer of Keane?”
A word on Keane – they’re an up-and-coming band whose debut, Hopes and Fears, is currently number three in the UK album chart, and the lead singer has the kind of gorgeous, melodramatic, almost tearful vocals that are faintly reminiscent of Matt Bellamy, and his name is...
“Tim Rice-Oxley,” I groaned, and threatened to go back to sleep. Yes, that is Rice-Oxley as in Rice-Oxley, and it wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t suddenly in love with the band. My parents are hopefully bringing back the album for me, but I digress.
After the third wake-up call, I wandered around the house getting dressed in a daze, gathering up the things to take with me, as an afterthought, grabbing a green boonie from the radiator. I was wearing it because a) bad, bad hair day and b) it’s sunny.
Well, supposed to be. In a twist of cosmic irony, the weather turned stormy today. It has been gorgeously sunny while we’ve all been sat at home revising, and today, our day out, it decides to turn nasty. The hat proved useful to keep off the rain.
I met Enid (now known asbalthaser) at Blundellsands, and we were only five minutes late when we got to Liverpool. Once there had been some squeeage, and Clare had arrived, we went up to Waterstone’s to have coffee, hot chocolate, that sort of thing, and generally get re-acquainted. There was much talk of bothering Snape, for some reason, and Hannah kept on starting all her sentences with “I am Snape, the Potions Master, and I don’t know, someone else, probably Hannah again, talking about David Thewlis as Remus Lupin and the scary child-molester moustache.
Yeah. Colleen’s sister Megan was also in town today, with her own (“vastly inferior”) version of resident lunatics, so we decided to go down to the station and bother her, but we missed them. Thus, the recommended course of action was going to Quiggins, which we duly did.
Now, because there are so many of us, we can’t exactly all walk side-by-side on the pavement, so we naturally split up and pair off and suchlike. And it was raining, so Clare and Emily were sharing an umbrella, Colleen and I had a hood and hat respectively, and Enid was content to get wet. Hannah’s hat (the mad purple one) kept appearing and disappearing as Enid stole it.
Anyway, there we are, walking down the pavement, when I make a perfectly innocuous comment about how cute Clemily (inseparable in name as in nature) look under their umbrella. And I then quite clearly hear either Hannah or Colleen say, “Real-person-slash is wrong.”
I said, “Has anyone got a camera?”
( Enid did. )
And yes – that was what the whispering was about. Sorry. Really.
Moving on, Quiggins, where we didn’t get the opportunity to bother Megan because we didn’t find her, but we ended up in Grin as always and debated about whether or not to buy things. Emily bought an uncharacteristically colourful skirt (much debate over that) and I bought jeans! Yes, finally. They’re not very very baggy, but they’re fun and comfortable and have velcro-y bits at the ends so I won’t even have to turn them up. They’re perfect. While I was trying them on (and Hannah was making incredibly rude comments which I will not reproduce here), I was listening to the conversation going on outside. Apparently Colleen and I are still betrothed. This is good. We’re all getting married at some point – I think! – and I’m Hannah’s date for the leavers’ do. Which I am actually quite looking forward to.
I bought the jeans. I was quite proud. And when we went to the Bead Shop, Hannah and I reached a snap decision, having had one of those I-saw-this-and-thought-of-you moments. We bought one of those Emily Strange stickers (it had cats on it!) and presented it to our own Emily, who was amused. Following which I bought myself a pink pen (for drawing curly arrows and lone pairs in organic mechanisms, naturally) and we went off to the other Bead Shop.
Because there is another one. It may well be because Quiggins is closing (boo, hiss) but my mother was telling me about it. A new shop at Whitechapel which she really liked, which is blatant hypocrisy because she hates the current Bead Shop simply because it’s in Quiggins. Never mind, we went off to Whitechapel and somehow got lost. We had to ask someone, which made us look like (very wet) tourists. A very nice man helped us, gave us directions, and we got there eventually.
It’s very nice. Much bigger than the current Bead Shop, and contains a lot of, well, normal people. I get the feeling we may spend more time there than we do in the Quiggins Bead Shop. Stuff was bought. For some reason, we all seemed to be buying things, I don’t know why.
In a vaguely surreal twist, we went to H & M, an incredibly mainstream shop, for a variety of reasons. I wanted a plain white top (mine went into the washing machine with a red sock), Emily wanted a pair of shorts, Enid wanted a dress and Colleen wanted a dress she could wear with jeans. This proved a fairly amusing quest. When they had all acquired bits and bobs (I didn’t bother, in the end), I went and did the supporting-friend thing in the fitting rooms. Enid was successful, to begin with. The dress she picked up was very pretty and faintly army-style – I tossed her the boonie to wear with it – and she eventually decided to buy it.
Colleen… had problems. In the end I apologised in advance for inadvertent groping, and helped out. Later, we discovered the dress had a zip in it. Cue embarrassment. Emily and Clare didn’t make idiots of themselves; nevertheless, the staff chased us all out in the end.
Sandwiches were had at various times; also, Hannah provided the quote for the day (“Why’s it called Gatecon... oh.”) and I got back my copy of Good Omens from Emily. And cookies made their scheduled appearance, by way of some clever maths intended to work out who paid for what when we paid four pounds for thirteen cookies, but by three o’clock in the afternoon, we were sitting in Starbucks with more coffee, ready to kill an hour. We got the squishy couches. This was a good development.
And Enid took pictures, ( as she always does. )
Em had to leave at four (orienteering) and so did Colleen (Homebase), and once they'd departed, Enid, Hannah, Clare and me decided to amble down into the city again. We got free samples from Whittard's, sang along to Keane in Virgin, and when we were in Claire's, Hannah started telling me about a dream she'd had. "And you had a dream, too," she said. "About sand, and deserts and beaches."
I was really scared for a minute. Possibly because I was plotting out a Fic That Shall Not Be Named last night, I did indeed dream about sand, deserts and beaches below endless skies. "How did you know?"
"You told me! Probably when you were still having the dream. You use very long words when asleep."
Well, I must have done. How else would she have known? But I am beginning to worry slightly about the fact we had a conversation that she can remember and I can't.
Anyway. We went home eventually, and as further irony, the weather brightened up. By five thirty, when I was walking home, it was gorgeously sunny and bright, and I didn't really want to come home.
My parents are in San Francisco tonight. Life is strange.
balthaser, who more or less told me to get out of bed and put my head under the cold tap. I didn't, but I got out of bed. When I was standing in the bathroom, I had the distinct impression that something else had happened. Something. Something.By the time Clare called with wake-up call number three, it was becoming to come back to me. I later asked Hannah about it, and yes, she did call me at half eight, and apparently I sounded sleepy (“Cute!”) but lucid. She asked me four times seven and the capital of Peru, both of which I got right despite unconsciousness, and she also asked me, “Who’s the lead singer of Keane?”
A word on Keane – they’re an up-and-coming band whose debut, Hopes and Fears, is currently number three in the UK album chart, and the lead singer has the kind of gorgeous, melodramatic, almost tearful vocals that are faintly reminiscent of Matt Bellamy, and his name is...
“Tim Rice-Oxley,” I groaned, and threatened to go back to sleep. Yes, that is Rice-Oxley as in Rice-Oxley, and it wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t suddenly in love with the band. My parents are hopefully bringing back the album for me, but I digress.
After the third wake-up call, I wandered around the house getting dressed in a daze, gathering up the things to take with me, as an afterthought, grabbing a green boonie from the radiator. I was wearing it because a) bad, bad hair day and b) it’s sunny.
Well, supposed to be. In a twist of cosmic irony, the weather turned stormy today. It has been gorgeously sunny while we’ve all been sat at home revising, and today, our day out, it decides to turn nasty. The hat proved useful to keep off the rain.
I met Enid (now known as
balthaser) at Blundellsands, and we were only five minutes late when we got to Liverpool. Once there had been some squeeage, and Clare had arrived, we went up to Waterstone’s to have coffee, hot chocolate, that sort of thing, and generally get re-acquainted. There was much talk of bothering Snape, for some reason, and Hannah kept on starting all her sentences with “I am Snape, the Potions Master, and I don’t know, someone else, probably Hannah again, talking about David Thewlis as Remus Lupin and the scary child-molester moustache.Yeah. Colleen’s sister Megan was also in town today, with her own (“vastly inferior”) version of resident lunatics, so we decided to go down to the station and bother her, but we missed them. Thus, the recommended course of action was going to Quiggins, which we duly did.
Now, because there are so many of us, we can’t exactly all walk side-by-side on the pavement, so we naturally split up and pair off and suchlike. And it was raining, so Clare and Emily were sharing an umbrella, Colleen and I had a hood and hat respectively, and Enid was content to get wet. Hannah’s hat (the mad purple one) kept appearing and disappearing as Enid stole it.
Anyway, there we are, walking down the pavement, when I make a perfectly innocuous comment about how cute Clemily (inseparable in name as in nature) look under their umbrella. And I then quite clearly hear either Hannah or Colleen say, “Real-person-slash is wrong.”
I said, “Has anyone got a camera?”
( Enid did. )
And yes – that was what the whispering was about. Sorry. Really.
Moving on, Quiggins, where we didn’t get the opportunity to bother Megan because we didn’t find her, but we ended up in Grin as always and debated about whether or not to buy things. Emily bought an uncharacteristically colourful skirt (much debate over that) and I bought jeans! Yes, finally. They’re not very very baggy, but they’re fun and comfortable and have velcro-y bits at the ends so I won’t even have to turn them up. They’re perfect. While I was trying them on (and Hannah was making incredibly rude comments which I will not reproduce here), I was listening to the conversation going on outside. Apparently Colleen and I are still betrothed. This is good. We’re all getting married at some point – I think! – and I’m Hannah’s date for the leavers’ do. Which I am actually quite looking forward to.
I bought the jeans. I was quite proud. And when we went to the Bead Shop, Hannah and I reached a snap decision, having had one of those I-saw-this-and-thought-of-you moments. We bought one of those Emily Strange stickers (it had cats on it!) and presented it to our own Emily, who was amused. Following which I bought myself a pink pen (for drawing curly arrows and lone pairs in organic mechanisms, naturally) and we went off to the other Bead Shop.
Because there is another one. It may well be because Quiggins is closing (boo, hiss) but my mother was telling me about it. A new shop at Whitechapel which she really liked, which is blatant hypocrisy because she hates the current Bead Shop simply because it’s in Quiggins. Never mind, we went off to Whitechapel and somehow got lost. We had to ask someone, which made us look like (very wet) tourists. A very nice man helped us, gave us directions, and we got there eventually.
It’s very nice. Much bigger than the current Bead Shop, and contains a lot of, well, normal people. I get the feeling we may spend more time there than we do in the Quiggins Bead Shop. Stuff was bought. For some reason, we all seemed to be buying things, I don’t know why.
In a vaguely surreal twist, we went to H & M, an incredibly mainstream shop, for a variety of reasons. I wanted a plain white top (mine went into the washing machine with a red sock), Emily wanted a pair of shorts, Enid wanted a dress and Colleen wanted a dress she could wear with jeans. This proved a fairly amusing quest. When they had all acquired bits and bobs (I didn’t bother, in the end), I went and did the supporting-friend thing in the fitting rooms. Enid was successful, to begin with. The dress she picked up was very pretty and faintly army-style – I tossed her the boonie to wear with it – and she eventually decided to buy it.
Colleen… had problems. In the end I apologised in advance for inadvertent groping, and helped out. Later, we discovered the dress had a zip in it. Cue embarrassment. Emily and Clare didn’t make idiots of themselves; nevertheless, the staff chased us all out in the end.
Sandwiches were had at various times; also, Hannah provided the quote for the day (“Why’s it called Gatecon... oh.”) and I got back my copy of Good Omens from Emily. And cookies made their scheduled appearance, by way of some clever maths intended to work out who paid for what when we paid four pounds for thirteen cookies, but by three o’clock in the afternoon, we were sitting in Starbucks with more coffee, ready to kill an hour. We got the squishy couches. This was a good development.
And Enid took pictures, ( as she always does. )
Em had to leave at four (orienteering) and so did Colleen (Homebase), and once they'd departed, Enid, Hannah, Clare and me decided to amble down into the city again. We got free samples from Whittard's, sang along to Keane in Virgin, and when we were in Claire's, Hannah started telling me about a dream she'd had. "And you had a dream, too," she said. "About sand, and deserts and beaches."
I was really scared for a minute. Possibly because I was plotting out a Fic That Shall Not Be Named last night, I did indeed dream about sand, deserts and beaches below endless skies. "How did you know?"
"You told me! Probably when you were still having the dream. You use very long words when asleep."
Well, I must have done. How else would she have known? But I am beginning to worry slightly about the fact we had a conversation that she can remember and I can't.
Anyway. We went home eventually, and as further irony, the weather brightened up. By five thirty, when I was walking home, it was gorgeously sunny and bright, and I didn't really want to come home.
My parents are in San Francisco tonight. Life is strange.
