raven | and I would be the one / to hold you down

So, up until now, I've been saying that Due South is the television equivalent of a nice cuddly blanket and a mug of dark hot chocolate. It's just... comforting. It's so sweet, and gentle, and not much happens, and they take a break from murder cases to do weird interludes involving ghosts and curling and the geography of Canada, not necessarily at the same time, and I love Diefenbaker a whole lot, because I did, at one point, own a mute German Shepherd with a passion for junk food. (He was a lovely dog; fiercely loyal, and tended to growl at people who looked at me funny, but otherwise mute.) And Fraser and both versions of Ray are just a delight. So, yes, hot chocolate, and I've been downloading random episodes and keeping them for term-time, when I usually am in my greatest need of televisual security blankets.

But then, watching random episodes, I got to "Victoria's Secret" and couldn't. stop. crying. Argh. It's... argh. The snow, the candles, the music - Sarah McLachlan! just go ahead and slay me! - and the poetry, and against this terribly romantic background they rip each apart, don't they, they fuck and fight and betray, and it's beautifully done and not only do I cry watching it, I cry when listening to Sarah McLachlan. Basically I spend a lot of time crying. And if I weren't quite dead enough, the canon has what canon never has, a fanficcish epilogue - a whole episode where they acknowledge they fucked their characters' heads around, and make them deal. And oh, I do like it - I love it's done realistically, how Fraser is tired and desperately unhappy, and relying on painkillers (!!! holy angst, Batman!), and as well as that, he's cruel, too. Much love for characterisation.

And I am reliably informed that absolutely everyone, upon watching it, needs to write their very own fic to, I don't know, get their ya-yas out. (And there's a turn of phrase I've never used before. Wow.) So maybe I have to go and do that, once this ficathon craziness is over. I just read

troyswann's lovely fic, Dysmas, and.... ahhhhh. So painful, but so beautifully done.

And I'm sort of glad I saw Slings & Arrows first - otherwise I get the feeling I'd have found bits of it, especially the bit in season one where Geoffrey says, breathily, "It was like having sex in public", very traumatising.

Talking of Slings & Arrows (when I am not, lately? I am a fangirl), I had a weird moment this week, reading the Daily Mail (er, there were extenuating circumstances and please not to be killing me now) and more specifically, their TV pages. They were talking about Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and being, naturally, rude about Aaron Sorkin (they're the Daily Mail, of course they hate Aaron Sorkin) and about how there's an episode on this week that was written by, of all people, Mark McKinney. And then it goes on to suggest the show would've been better if all of it had been written by McKinney, based on the evidence of - wait for it! - Slings & Arrows.

Er, what? Someone in the UK apart from me and the flist is watching it, despite the fact it's not on television and/or Region 2 DVD? And that someone writes for the Daily Mail? I find this deeply, deeply weird.

Anyway! I babble. I always babble. I am still in a bouncy, happy, life-is-kinda-chaotic-but-I-have-passed-my-DRIVING-TEST sort of way. God, it's so freeing. Today I took great pleasure in throwing out my L-plates and driving through the rain, listening to Sarah McLachlan, hitting national speed limit amid the hayricks all the way up to Ormskirk. (I would've dropped unexpectedly in on

hathy_col, but she's in Venice!) But, yeah, freedom! It's not my car, but, never mind, I don't care. Just the thought that I could actually get myself a car someday is sort of freeing.

And my driving test was an exercise in comedy, too, not that I thought so at the time. First of all it was at ridiculous o'clock in the morning, and all the way there it was raining in that horrible, intermittent way that made me think about windscreen wipers in a vaguely freaked-out way, but just as I got to the test centre, it brightened up. I cheered up with it, and managed to stay calm as they went through bonnet checks and an incredibly casual eyesight test, and even stayed calm when I got in the car and got asked immediately to do a reverse park. I very nearly fucked it up, but didn't, was a tiny bit rattled, set off and stalled on the very first junction I got to.

Okay, I thought, I've failed. And that's a very calming thought, isn't it? So I drove merrily through the town and along the coast road with the sea breeze buffeting in from the west, and it's a straight road, knock the volume up and hit the horizon kind of thing, and I was calm, calm. And then we got to the little roads again and he asked me to reverse around a corner into a side-road. I can do this, I thought. So I did. I got halfway round when a car came into the junction, so I stopped and waited for it to come round me. And waited. And waited.

And waited. And he didn't move, and I didn't move, and in the end I turned to the examiner and said desperately, "I'm gonna hit him. I don't wanna hit him."

The examiner said, "Put the car in neutral and put the handbrake on." And I did, but you know, they say the moment the examiner intervenes, tells you to do something, you've failed. So I moped on the steering wheel for a moment, and then sat up all at once as my wing mirrors revealed my examiner and the man in the stopped car having some sort of wildly-gesticulated slanging match. After a moment he came back, yelling, thickly Irish, "She's on her TEST! And you could get a BUS through there! Drive on, dear."

So I did. Feeling quite depressed, I did, we got back to the test centre seemingly five minutes later and he said, "I'm pleased to tell you you've passed."

I said, "You're KIDDING, right?"

"Sign here."

I signed. I had eight faults. And now I have a pink driving license and can legally drive in twenty-five countries and I'm feeling very good about life. My parents are pleased and somewhat peeved, because neither of them passed first time. (Pedar claims he would've done had his examiner not had a heart attack mid-test - he gave him first aid, drove him to the hospital, by all accounts saved his life, and still failed.)

Tomorrow I'm going to Formby Library, because my life is just that exciting, and taking out their entire selection of books on feminism, which is three books. I miss the Bodleian.

G'night, all.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: Formby Point, Merseyside
Current Music: Sarah McLachlan; Fumblng Towards Ecstacy