Painting the world pink

Clare rang me two nights ago. I was quiet at first, but pretty soon we got into a full-blown wibblefest, and in absence of, well, most people, wibbling certainly seemed the order of the day. Net result, we planned to meet today. Colleen would have come but she was doing a Guide thing. I think. So I set off this morning after much chaos – I was set to leave at ten past eleven, and at five past my mother called and yelled, “Teach Dadu to use the microwave!” – and ambled off down the road wearing my silver guitar earrings. It looked like it would be a good day.

Clare met me at Central and off we went. We didn’t have a plan for today, not really – as I said, I wanted to buy a DVD and Clare wanted to buy clothes. One of us was much more successful than the other. Well, obviously. A brief digression – I’ve been in fandom for three years. A large proportion of this has been “classic” television show fandom, Stargate, M*A*S*H, Enterprise, etc – and yet I have never, ever bought an officially sanctioned, legal video/DVD of anything. Never. Perhaps I still subconsciously won’t admit to myself that I’m a fangirl. In any case, that was present in my mind. I wanted to actually buy a DVD. I even knew which one I wanted.

It turns out you can only get Buffy DVDs as boxsets. This annoys me more than I can say, as I only want the one with The Dark Age on it (it also has Hallowe’en, which I liked, Lie To Me, which I really liked, and Reptile Boy, which I never saw, so it was perfect) and can’t buy it. However, Clare came through on another front. It would appear that her younger sister went through a major Buffy phase and has all the boxsets. Sadly not DVDs, which I could have copied, but Clare grabbed the videos (Emma is in Majorca and can’t complain). According to Clare, she ended up playing a version of Boxset Jenga trying to get the ones I asked for.

Which were Band Candy and Once More With Feeling, for obvious reasons. Clare has succumbed to the inevitable and decided to actually watch the videos in order. I plugged The Dark Age unashamedly, and we’ve both seen Once More With Feeling. Actually, I am tempted to propose a variant of Stargate Monday for anyone who’s interested – I’m guessing definitely me, Clare, and Hannah, and Colleen and Enid only have to say the word – wherein we watch Once More With Feeling, sing along and throw popcorn at the screen. I remember Emily not being very impressed with it, so would appreciate an opinion from her direction.

Having made this discovery about the boxsets, I gave it up as a bad job and we got cookies and went to Quiggins. As you do. We went to Grin, had a proper look round and Clare bought things – she has money, I should add. Her job at Asda is generating it at a rate of knots. I am amused and a little jealous, in a good way.

We also went to the Whitechapel Bead Shop, and, well, we hatched a plan. I will say no more on that front.

In short, it was an affectionate, talky sort of day. Much with the discussion, including why I like scholarly type characters and Clare doesn’t, why ship in fandom is less and less appealing, and how we will have been friends eleven years in September and how disturbing this is. A good day.

Also, I got a Christmas present! Clare does maintain I won’t be getting anything in December, but right now I’m rather floopy with surprise. It’s an Emily Strange top, but the good bit is the slogan: “Forget Prince Charming, I’d prefer the wolf.”

Hee. Just, hee.

One more thing – Gmail is down. No outgoing emails from me tonight.