and I'm going due south

[raven]

On the train to London yesterday, an announcement entirely bereft of context: "Could a Mr. Paisley, seated in Coach J, please return to the toilets and collect his discarded underwear and heels."

Clearly, I live in a city of transvestite lunatics.

That was possibly the sole high point of the journey, which began auspiciously with me attempting to pick up my train tickets and being informed that I'd got a ticket from Liverpool to Oxford and another ticket, also from Liverpool to Oxford. I couldn't have done that, I argued, that would've been stupid, and as the time ticked by and I wasn't any closer to getting it sorted out, I got steadily more and more panicky and Scouse until they relented. For the rest of the journey, I had no ticket but a large piece of paper with "The Holder Is Specially Authorised To Travel" on it, which possibly made me far too happy. And the fact I get Scouse in times of stress got thoroughly mocked later on, when me_ves_y_sufres and jacinthsong pointed out that I can't say the word "work" any other way. (It has an in-built whine, "weeeeeeeeeerrrk!", as in "do not want".)

Anyway, where was I? Going down to Oxford via London, which makes no sense but was what I was doomed to do. I got stuck on the Underground at Paddington and then on the world's slowest slow train and arrived in Oxford in a mood of not-very-good. Which, it must be said, dissipated, because, y'know, Oxford. I was being very indecisive about going, initially, and was keeping my mum company and thinking out loud: talking about how it's very quiet up here, and my friends are elswhere and my family always absent, and my job is unpredictable, and I'm getting introverted beyond what's normal even for me, and jumping at loud noises, and when I was done talking she looked at me warily and said, "I think you should go."

So I went. And it was a sleepy, humid afternoon, with not many tourists and less students, and I popped into Balliol to get my post and marvel at the stillness and the wealth of flowers. And it was all so lovely, and I was walking past the Bodleian when someone on a bike screeched to a halt in the middle of the road and yelled, "What the hell are you doing here?"

Maria! I love Maria so much. We had a breathless catching-up right there in the road and I moaned about the north and she moaned about her surpervisor and we ended up chatting for ages about nothing in particular, and I really have missed the joy of human company. In the end I dragged myself away and popped up to see narahttbbs, who now has a thesis sufficiently weighty to hit people with, and it was lovely to see her, too. As is usual, we got breathlessly fannish and she tried to convince me that the key relationship in The X-Files is Skinner/Scully. Some bad puns about pine trees later, I was duly scraped off the floor.

I also had coffee with chiasmata, and it was lovely to see her too. It was lovely to see everyone - I washed up in the King's Arms to meet the army of people celebrating foulds' birthday and was squealed at and fed Pimm's and generally bathed in loveliness. foulds pointed out that he was deliberately celebrating his birthday among people who squee, and he was quite right. We were wandering past Balliol and I was trying to explain to absinthe_shadow what Slings & Arrows is about - I'd got as far as "A Canadian Shakespeare festival where a guy goes crazy mid-performance of Hamlet..." - when I remembered that absinthe_shadow can make squeeing noises that are actually only audible to bats, being several megahertz beyond the range of human hearing.

I don't object to this. It was a very useful tool when she and I were happily trying to get everyone to sign up the Altered Mental States Ficathon (hawkfromhandsaw! if you haven't signed up, why not?). For some reason about which I'm not clear, foulds later proposed marriage to her in a crowded restaurant, to applause from the assembled party and bemusement from everyone else around. Other snippets I remember from dinner include someone telling me at great length about penis-shaped cakes with chocolate filling, and resultant childhood misconceptions, and also, in the second time in as many weeks, someone casually referred to me as a BNF in conversation.

In which case, I give up, I am a BNF, I oppress you all with my repressive-oppressive ways, please to be worshipping me now kthxbai.

In short, it was a lovely evening, and it dawned on me later that one of the reasons to love a city as much as I love Oxford is when it's one of the few places - maybe the only place - in the whole world - where I can turn up one afternoon without warning and know I won't be lost or homeless, that people love me enough to make sure I won't be on the street. Not a very profound observation, but important to note. Which is how I ended up at the new domicile of withiel and me_ves_y_sufres (replacing the Pit and now inevitably being known as Pitt the Younger), watching the last episode of Life On Mars.

I think I liked the ending. I think. I watched it when tired and drunk, so I should probably see it again, but I think I liked it. The interesting thing of course is that Sam is dead, has committed suicide in unambiguous fashion - I mean, 1973 still doesn't have to be real, it could still be a construct of Sam's mind, and I'm actually inclined to think so in light of the ending. A coma is one thing, but this time Sam's actually dead. Yes, I did like it - enough closure, enough ambiguity. I need to see rest of season two.

I woke up this morning and had a brief moment of where the hell am I? (answer - on a living-room floor in East Oxford, nothing to worry about) and was fed coffee and generally became human again before trekking back up north. Which took hours, and was wet and sleepy and humid all the way up, and it was almost half five by the time I ambled in to find my father unashamedly pilfering my West Wing DVDs. We ended up sitting and watching most of season one, so I think I may win at life when it comes to being utterly unproductive for three straight days, but still. I'm very glad I went.

Tomorrow, I'm planning to embroil myself in LSAT tests again. Whoop. And try and write the two ficathon fics I really need to write, and try not to just sit watching due South all day, as that seems to be becoming a more and more attractive possibility, and also makes me want to move to Canada. Sigh.

Also, someone needs to write a Slings & Arrows fic about what the BBC thought of Geoffrey's six-am-post-breakdown radio interview. Because if no one does it for me, I will, and then I'll end up not writing stories for either of my own ficathons, and that would just be fail.

Comments

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Don't know if it's anything to do with the BNF-ness, but I liked your story on Lost Luggage, particularly "suffer the little children that come unto him and suffer the Doctor too".

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you! I didn't know anyone had read it!

[insaneizzi.livejournal.com]

the key relationship in The X-Files is Skinner/Scully.

Of course it is! Duh.

what Slings & Arrows is about - I'd got as far as "A Canadian Shakespeare festival where a guy goes crazy mid-performance of Hamlet..."

Oh my goodness why haven't I seen this yet?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I DON'T KNOW. For other reasons to see it asap, see icon. :)

[pinkishmew.livejournal.com]

I thought that Sam was dead too, and happier for it. Thus my resulting freak out to see suicide so exaulted (I am sleepy, but pretty sure that's the right word to use) and my subsequent fear of traffic and its nasty grip on me. [wibbles] Stupid suicide.

Might have to go and curl up again. Ack.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Do you really think Sam's suicide was exalted? I wasn't sure... I mean, the one thing you can say about Sam is he's rational, clear-headed. And in the end, it's his choice to make - his choice of the vividness of 1973 over the bleak twenty-first century where he doesn't belong, and really, who can blame him for rationally preferring the dream or the afterlife?

I'm not sure about this question, to be honest. I do think that the right to life entails the right to die. Poor Sam, for having to make this choice.

[pinkishmew.livejournal.com]

I suppose - it just had a very bad effect on me. To the audience, and to him, the best choice was to jump off a building. I just wasn't in a frame of mind where suicide being 'the best choice' was good for me. I had to have a little curl up somewhere quiet. And then avoid traffic for a few days.

To be clearer, I think that I can't make any kind of reasonable judgments about the program itself because of how it affected me. I expect most people didn't freak out when he jumped off the building.

I think it was the right thing to do - for that character - and he was happier and all that.

[tmpe5t.livejournal.com]

"...I live in a city of transvestite lunatics" Obviously nobody told you. The latent instinct in any british male when he sees an item of womens clothing is to put it on and prance around going "yoohoo!" Experiment. Leave a bra in a room with a male drunk person in and then leave the room for a spurious reason....

Also, me and other Doctor Who guy from work came up with a theory that Sam Tyler is the Master with use of chamleon arch and unexpected trauma-related time jumping. See also our 'Joan is the Master' theory...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heh. Well, that bit I knew. I just didn't expect it on moving trains. :)

Sam as the Master - heeee. I like.

[tmpe5t.livejournal.com]

Ooh, plot bunny... Imagine that Sam IS the Master, opens the watch in 1973... And Gene Hunt et al have to save the world Who stylee...

[absinthe-shadow.livejournal.com]

When I did that in Sardinia there were actual bats. I swear. *nods*

I may have been in a cave at the time...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*grins* You see! You are a force of nature.

[osymandias.livejournal.com]

BNF? British Nuclear Fuels... ?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Big Name Fan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Name_Fan).

I always used to think it meant "British National Formulary"...