merlin pub meet
Oh, today was awesome :)
I was up all night watching the audio commentaries on the Merlin dvd, along with the special features for, oh, the millionth time, and eventually went to bed around 5:30am (sorry for the ridiculously early text, Sian!). This obviously made me slightly worried that I’d end up oversleeping and miss the Merlin meet altogether (perish the thought!), but luckily the thought of Merlining proved enough to drag me from my bed - and to be fair, I imagine Merliney prospects would prove enough encouragement for anyone.
Anyway, ended up meeting freedomdarkness at Waterloo and she proved to be just as lovely in person as online :) we then made our way along the river to Doggett’s, where we found a whole brilliant bunch of fellow Merliners at a table. After some dilly-dallying, we bought ourselves some lemonade (hardcore! :P) and thisissirius set about finding us some chairs, helped by freedomdarkness while I just pansied about at the table.
OMG was there epic discussion.
We owned that pub for the few hours we were there XD
There was much squeeing, note-taking and general greeting, along with Merlin/Arthur loveage. It was all everything you’d expect it to be and then some.
I’ve undoubtedly forgotten some of the names, but those I talked to most were
freedomdarkness, phantomjam, krazykipper, white_riot5, shepsangel and takadainmate... the table ended up sort of split because discussion in such large groups always proves difficult, and I know schizojuc, xrysomou and xaritomene were also there, along with a whole host of others whose names aren’t springing immediately to mind (I’m sorry - please just let me know who you were and I’ll add you to this list!).
At some point, I lost my nametag thingy (which was basically a sheet of paper with drjenny88 written on it, but w/e) and in the attempt to find my name, it emerged that many people misheard this as “I’ve lost my gay!”, which proved very amusing :D
Thisissirius wrote me a brilliant Merlin/Arthur-in-the-face-of-past!Merlin/Will ficlet on the tube, which was awesome of her :) I love it, thank you!
Other moments of brilliance from the day included a great Freudian slip wherein Anthony Head was referred to as ‘Anthony’s head’, wanking chickens and the emergence of a full vegetable list for the main cast:
Colin - squash
Bradley - butternut squash
ASH - orange
Richard Wilson - avocado
Angel - starfruit
Katie - cucumber
John Hurt - dragonfruit
At some stage, a (bad) drawing to represent lisson17 joined the one I already had of flamestone, so they could both be part of the day despite a lack of actually being there :P These pictures were subsequently passed around the table to be defaced and brilliantly graffitiied, much like every other piece of paper we had with us (seriously, takadainmate, scan that Merlin poster!) and the menu, which transformed from ‘the seasonal menu’ to ‘the Merlin menu’.
The table itself was even defaced, as PWN was written in salt on it, and subsequently cemented on when freedomdarkness’s gold marker pen broke in half… the pen ended up in my drink with a whole bundle of Mingles wrappers, necessitating an apology note, which was actually quite remarkable, if I do say so myself. I also left 50p to make up for the destruction of the glass :P
On our way back to Waterloo station, freedomdarkness and I narrowly avoided being hit by a rock and ran into some gorillas campaigning for AIDS. I donated 50p (about all I had left by that point) and we were given a red ribbon each and a leaflet about AIDS (which had a banana on the back of it, rather amusingly). I also got a high five from Dave the Gorilla, which was AWESOME.
All in all, a brilliant day, and now there’s Merlin to look forward to!
When my scanner’s working, I’ll scan all the random pieces of paper that spawned from today and add them to this post :)
thisissirius, j_apollo,