O brave new world...

Just finished watching The Wish. Dark, dark episode of Buffy, that one. So dark although vamp!Willow is teh pretteh. I particularly liked the attention to detail; Willow and Xander are themselves but not, although Angel is still blandly Angel. I would accept that he is the love of Buffy's life if he had a, y'know, personality. Moving on. Yes - Giles, Oz and the van made me giggle. They made such an incredibly cute, bumbling save-the-universe team. And not!Watcher!Giles is an incredibly dark character all by himself; he's his usual almost-parental self, but really seems that bit closer to the edge. The interaction between him and Buffy is good, too; Buffy is uncaring, Giles is beyond caring, and there's none of the whole Slayer/Watcher dynamic. The end is beautifully done - the way the world ends, almost, with everyone, even Buffy, dying, and Giles left with his belief that anything is better than this.

I want Wishverse fic. Someone, give me Wishverse fic. I may have to write it otherwise, and believe me we don't want that.

So, I have been quiet lately. amchau just gave me a list of possibilities of things that may possibly have happened to me, and the answer is is "all of the above" with the exception of the hatred and the Marmite.

Backtrack, then. Two days ago, me at the Crosby Herald, beavering away as you do. The office is smaller than the Southport Visiter office, and there are only four people there apart from me, although I'm assured the boss is away. This boss, whose name is Peter, has dominated most of the time I've been there without actually being present. On Tuesday, someone came running in. "Where's Peter?"

"Here," said the acting editor, whose name is also Peter. "Oh - Euro Disney."

Even I knew that. The world knows that Peter has gone to Euro Disney.

"His house has fallen down."

"What?"

It's true. It put the other Peter in a very difficult position. For as he explained to me, there's not much we can do besides contact him, and we don't want to spoil his holiday, but equally we don't want to be seen to not be doing anything. Work on the paper ceased while all his relatives were contacted.

Yay for surreal.

That evening, someone asked how it was going. "Good, good," said Peter. "I got some features through just now. At this rate we'll be finished by... oh, November."

Yay.

That evening, I walked home through drizzle, and just missed my train. The rain intensified. I was in a tank top with that lock-and-key chain round my neck. The rain got heavier. I got wetter. The next train was cancelled. I swore. The next train after that was packed to its non-existent rafters. By the time I got home, the kids were watching Buffy and I was completely drenched.

And it rained.

The weather has been hot, I should say. So hot that I haven't slept. I can't sit in my room as I generally do, because I'll wake Nupur, so I've taken to pacing the house like some sort of wraith, doing my best not to disturb the cascade of relatives and chasing the breeze from window to window. I don't do heat.

And it rained.

By about six, the rain was filling the gutters and overflowing, making small waterfalls below my windowsill, and outside the drains were blocking and the flagstones were covered in ankle-deep water.

At seven, I decided to watch the Sky Mix repeat of Band Candy. It's still light until late, so none of my electric lights were on. The kids and I were perched on my bed watching the telly. The room was getting much too dim, dark and hot. It reminded me of something, and I said so. The kids told me to shush, so I did, but I remembered it reminded me of India when the electricity goes: no light, no noise, just silence and heat. And monsoon rain.

At twenty-five past seven, it was the good bit of the episode - namely, Joyce and Ripper - when suddenly the rain got even heavier. Just at the precise moment where Ripper and Joyce are leaning backwards on the hood of the police car (cue fade out!) I saw the lightning. What I find fascinating about it is that you can't help but see it, whichever direction you look in, whether you blink or not, and as it happened, there was a pleasant fizzing noise and the Sky dish went out. At the same time, my modem decided to give up the ghost.

And then came the thunder. I couldn't help but stand at the window and watch the rain, and feel better. Less claustrophobia and heat and avoiding everything I hold dear - just rain.

Later, I made a paper boat and Nupur dared the rain to set it on the rising puddles. "It's going to America!" she said. And even later, after she'd gone to bed, I opened all the windows and fell asleep because of the rain.

On Wednesday morning, we discovered not all of Peter's house has fallen down. Only bits of it. Work on the paper duly resumed, and I got to write an actual article instead of a press release. I rang up some bloke in Crosby who's made his restaurant non-smoking, quizzed him on it, scribbled down his answers, got quotes and bashed out 300 words on the subject. On the cutting-edge of modern journalism, me. Nothing actually happens in Crosby. Some guy brought in some blurry pictures of squirrels. "Can you use these?"

General consensus - "What for?"

That afternoon, I went to see Jane, and also Michael as it turned out. I was quite horrifically early, for which I apologise, and we spent an afternoon giggling about everything under the sun. Including bricks. "Ooh, terracotta!"

Guess you had to be there. For that, and the bits with the Hampton Court lance and our discussion about Freud's philosophy. "All dreams are about sex. Except the ones about sex, which are... not."

"All dreams are about flying, spiders and nudity. And sex."

"Flying spiders?"

"Flying, comma, spiders."

"Flying commas and spiders?"

Sometimes a lance is only a lance.

The trains were cancelled again on my way home, and it was too hot.

Today, it's been grey, literally and figuratively. The paper went to bed last night, with one of my bylines in it - the rest come next week, hopefully - and left the office much too quiet and boring. Peter went out to the pub, the office doors were locked and I slipped out at lunchtime for a pasty and dropped in at Pritchards on my way back. I was glad I did - Becca was there, and I hadn't seen her since the party I was dreading weeks ago. We ignored customers in the bookshop and gossiped, and eventually went out to post a letter. I got to meet one of Becca's colleagues, who reminded me of a stoned version of Patrick.

Home to the kids, who met me at the door yelling, "It's here! It's here!"

"What is?"

"The parcel!"

I got in, threw off my boots with them bouncing round me, and walked through into the kitchen and got the parcel. You see, I've been browsing through eBay over the last few days. Pedar sighed and caved and let me use PayPal. In about a week, I'm going to try and pay him the money I owe, and he's going to give me a look and shove it right back. For this reason, I don't use eBay much. But it'd been a while, and something like fifteen quid for the season four boxset, which I now own and squee over.

(When I was unwrapping it, I noticed two layers of sellotape. "Joshua, did you already open this?"

Silence.)

And thus finishes the big roundup. I'm very tired, but I've wanted to write this for days.

And yes. Wishverse fic, people!