And now for 'The Adventures of Plum in the Big City'...
I woke up at half 5 in the morning, grumbling and growling every step of the way, and after scrambling around for things like shoes, clothes and money I headed out of the door towards the Castle. I yawned and moaned every step of the way, my ankles were killing me, but I digress...
My fellow passengers and I left at 6.30am and arrived in London three hours later. I read Tom Holt the whole way. No sleeping on the bus for me. When I got into Victoria I wasn't sure where to go first, so I consulted a friendly looking bloke in a fluorescent jacket with a sign saying that the Victoria line was closed for the day. He suggested I went to Covent Garden first, so off I toddled. Oddly enough the tube is much more fun when I can choose where exactly I get on and off, and I don't have to run if I don't want to (and I can go and visit Mornington Crescent for no reason other than 'I want to'). But when I got to Covent Garden and had a wander around (grinning like a lunatic all the way) everything was closed, and it wasn't until I'd been a-wandering for a while before I realised that no one was open yet, because apparently no one in London wakes up on a Sunday before 11.30. Cardiff is a lot like London at 10am on a Sunday...
So I went to the park to feed ducks with my bread (and spot spies, but that was another matter entirely). Unfortunately when I got there there were no ducks (but there were plenty of spies) because Boris is clearing the silt out of the lake, and all the ducks have buggered off to Regents park instead. So I fed some pigeons and read some more of my book. I may have snoozed a little bit in the warm sun. Then I got a text from bloodrunner666 asking where I was.
I went to meet her in Covent Garden (back again!) and she and her friend Hannah and I wandered around the, by now, bustling Marketspace staring at stalls and poking into shops etc. Then someone had the bright idea of going to Camden Market. I'd never been before, so obviously I was entranced by shiny things, and looked extensively for the Nabootique, which I could not find anywhere. Then they buggered off on the bus to go and watch John Barrowman doing something-or-other. Camden tube station closes over lunch for no good reason, so I walked to Mornington Crescent (I might-have nearly hugged the sign when I saw it) and got the tube back to Covent Garden again, this time to look at the shops I'd wanted to go into before. I spent plenty of time in david and goliath and didn't buy anything of course. Cute designs, but way too expensive, and too small except the boys ones. On the other hand when Mogs is old enough I'm taking her shopping in London to get her the MLP - 'Daddy, buy me a pony?' t-shirt, and to take her to Camden for the shinies obviously. (For those of you who are unaware, 'Mogs' is my 10-month-old Goddaughter, Morgan Faye. Her parents are pagans, and she wasn't Christened exactly, but I'm her Godmummy, nonetheless, and I will spoil her rotten. And yes, I am aware of the irony involved in calling her Morgan Faye. Her parents are big geeky people. That's probably why I love them so much!)
Then I spent some time watching the cool street theatre acts in the main square of CGM and only slightly fell in love with the patter of the nice fella named Mark who was juggling a chainsaw and threatening to chop up a small child in front of us, while we cheered. He said we were sick and twisted. I agree. He did not in fact chop up the small child, he did in fact give the kid a fiver and get everyone to clap for him. He also stripped down to only a tiny pair of pink pants before climbing onto a unicycle and juggling knives, then he came back down and juggled the chainsaw, an unlit flaming-stick poi and a small yellow rubber ball. I must say I wasn't in the least bit displeased with having a 'rear view' of his performance for most of it. He certainly wasn't objectionable looking...
After that there was quite a dull bloke, so i decided to bugger off back to Piccadilly and see if I could find the Comedy Club so I knew where I was headed, and then go get some food. As it happened, I swung by the tiny Tesco and got food, and then went to find the Comedy Club, where I joined the queue, which even though it was 5.45, had still formed, so I sat and ate cheap Tesco sandwiches while waiting for 6.30 to roll around so they'd let us in. It was then that I realised I'd forgotten to tweet any of my adventures, so I got right on to it, I would say sorry for the spammage, but since I got back to nearly 250 tweets on my feed I can't say I'm all that sorry for you busy little lot!
6.30 rolled around and I tweeted madly while waiting on the front row, right in front of Richard Vranch's keyboard and mic, and twitching wildly waiting for the insanity to begin.
I cannot possibly describe with any accuracy the amount of hilarity involved in the performances. The players in that night were Phill Jupitus, Lee Simpson, Andy Smart, Neil Mullarkey, Steve Frost and of course the lovely Richard Vranch. Before I start in with my one-track-mind, they were all stupendously fantastic, and I loved the whole thing. I was in stitches, crying with laughter in bits.
Here are the things I can remember -
1. The first game was 'Die!' and Richard won, successfully continuing to tell the story of the Fairy Godmother and the Carrot.
2. Freeze-tag was fantastic, they were all (in quick succession) very gay at one another for a few minutes, and I realised during the games that Lee Simpson, whilst he looked worryingly like Nicholas Lyndhurst as a young man, now looks much better and honestly while I wouldn't have touched him with a barge-pole in the 'Aladdin' years, I would now do dirty things to him. Very dirty things.
3. Neil had to guess his job, which was that he was 'The bloke who paints the knob, which is called the Baksheesh, on the top of the flagpole belonging to the Sudoku Scouts, with the scrapings from a Guinness vat from Uzbekistan.' Yeah... They love to make it long winded...
...4. While trying to get suggestions for the 'Weird Job' game Richard got into an argument with someone in the audience over whether Neil was a bloke or not. It was swiftly concluded when Richard replied "I know he's a bloke, I've seen his cock." I flailed, obviously.
5. Phill and Lee did film and theatre styles and Phill had to teach a 'Spanish dancing' class with Lee as his pupil. The 'pantomime' style made me have flashbacks to Aladdin, whilst the 'porn musical' had me in complete stitches, along with everyone else apart from Lee and Phill who spent a few minutes glaring at the girl in the second row who'd suggested it.
6. While Steve Frost has no singing voice to speak of, Andy Smart is entirely tone deaf. Painfully so. Not quite Jeremy Hardy, but with the same stuttering attempts at tunefulness as Stephen Fry... But with less reluctance.
7. They did a Musical, a Biblical Epic, with Richard narrating and playing piano or guitar as needed, and with Lee as the Devil. The Welsh Devil. Who sang. In a Welsh accent... While the others tried to sing in Yorkshire accents. At least I think it was Yorkshire, they were definitely very Northern. Phill was especially good at the accent, and since the Devil gave the weary travellers porn and lemon squash in exchange for ridding their village from the terrible rabbit plague, Phill spent much of the sketch wandering about pretending to have wanked himself blind. The boys aren't exactly subtle by the way.
8. The last sketch they did was one word interview, and had Andy interviewing Neil, Lee and Richard on the subject of 'Teaching Swordfish to Bobsleigh'. They mentioned Twitter (My fault, I sent Phill a note with 'This is a Virtual Twitter-Bump, since you're not sticking around after the show for me to give you the real thing.' written on it, at half time, which he showed to the others.) and Oh My Gods, I have never laughed so much in my life as when the three of them, one after another, started making 'your Mum' jokes at Andy, with innuendo about Swordfish. There are hand gestures that go with the comments, but I can't possibly do them any justice in descriptive form, ask me to show you some time. Phill and Steve were in the little roped off bit to the side, where they sit when not on the stage, and they were absolutely pissing themselves laughing.
Those are obviously just the highlights, since the show went on for two whole hours, but it was fantastically good, and as you can probably tell, I had a great time.
My feelings for Richard can be summed up by the following exchange between oz_the_bobble and myself.
Me (to twitter): On a sidenote to the flailsquee my phone currently only has signal if I put it on my crotch... I'll leave you to make the dirty jokes.
Oz: I expect a full update from your crotch about Richard's crotch.
Me: You shall have one. As soon as it gets out here. Show doesn't start til 8. I suspect my ovaries might explode at first glance... All I'll be able to think is 'I've written porn about you...'
Then the first half happened, and during the interval that followed -
Me: Richard's all unshaven and messy... I still would. He looks like Alan Alda MASH series 10.
Just in case you didn't get that - Richard Vranch is goddamn hot, and I don't give a flying fuck how old he is, how most people would disagree with me over the hotness, or indeed the fact that my mind, no matter how many times I have to tell it that he's straight, insists that he is and always has been shagging Tony, I would still do incredibly dirty things to that man, which I cannot write down here because I'd manage to eliminate most of my flist in one fell swoop.
After all that excitement I was bouncing and walking along talking to myself, and possibly freaking out the inhabitants of London, though I doubt it, nutters like me are, I suspect, ten-a-penny in London, and headed straight for Waterloo Station where I got the train to Surbiton and met up with requiem2adream and culf who I've never met before IRL, and hardly met online, but have seen around in plenty of comms (TGS for a start, lifein1973 for another) and I really should add to my flist, because she is goddamn awesome. We geeked about stuff all the way back to Lauren's tiny box, where we watched the rest of The Faculty, which they had been watching when they got my text saying that I was en route. Then culf went home and Lauren and I got ready for beddybyes. I read my book for a bit and Lauren was shattered so she dozed off. I learned that I can only sleep on Lauren's floor on my right side, not my left. I have no idea why this should be, but if I try to sleep on that floor on my left I end up rolling back over onto my back. Oh, and while Lauren's tiny box room is indeed tiny, and a box, it does have some compensations like a built-in wall lamp, a tv-stand, and being next to the kitchen.
When morning dawned I blearily rubbed the sleep from my eyes and tried to remove the floor from my spine (mostly successfully) and then I got walked to the station, where a tearful goodbye was shared (kidding, it was goodbye, but not tearful, I'm not as bad as Izzy afterall) and I headed for London Victoria, where I caught my bus and read Tom Holt followed by Thraxas, all the way home.
And so here I am, no pictures of my adventure, because my camera battery is completely fucked, and nothing save a warm fuzzy glow, and a signed ticket remains of my full, rich day.
I'd quite like you to read all of my post, and tell me what you think (suggestions for next time, geeking out over various stupidly geeky things I did this time, good comicbook store locations, you know, the works) but it's a long post with no pretty pictures to break the flow, so I understand if you don't read it all.
But please do read the show bit, because it was fucking amazing, and I want you guys to see it. I wish you'd been there too!
flail and love to ya all,
plum xxxxxxxxxx.
My fellow passengers and I left at 6.30am and arrived in London three hours later. I read Tom Holt the whole way. No sleeping on the bus for me. When I got into Victoria I wasn't sure where to go first, so I consulted a friendly looking bloke in a fluorescent jacket with a sign saying that the Victoria line was closed for the day. He suggested I went to Covent Garden first, so off I toddled. Oddly enough the tube is much more fun when I can choose where exactly I get on and off, and I don't have to run if I don't want to (and I can go and visit Mornington Crescent for no reason other than 'I want to'). But when I got to Covent Garden and had a wander around (grinning like a lunatic all the way) everything was closed, and it wasn't until I'd been a-wandering for a while before I realised that no one was open yet, because apparently no one in London wakes up on a Sunday before 11.30. Cardiff is a lot like London at 10am on a Sunday...
So I went to the park to feed ducks with my bread (and spot spies, but that was another matter entirely). Unfortunately when I got there there were no ducks (but there were plenty of spies) because Boris is clearing the silt out of the lake, and all the ducks have buggered off to Regents park instead. So I fed some pigeons and read some more of my book. I may have snoozed a little bit in the warm sun. Then I got a text from bloodrunner666 asking where I was.
I went to meet her in Covent Garden (back again!) and she and her friend Hannah and I wandered around the, by now, bustling Marketspace staring at stalls and poking into shops etc. Then someone had the bright idea of going to Camden Market. I'd never been before, so obviously I was entranced by shiny things, and looked extensively for the Nabootique, which I could not find anywhere. Then they buggered off on the bus to go and watch John Barrowman doing something-or-other. Camden tube station closes over lunch for no good reason, so I walked to Mornington Crescent (I might-have nearly hugged the sign when I saw it) and got the tube back to Covent Garden again, this time to look at the shops I'd wanted to go into before. I spent plenty of time in david and goliath and didn't buy anything of course. Cute designs, but way too expensive, and too small except the boys ones. On the other hand when Mogs is old enough I'm taking her shopping in London to get her the MLP - 'Daddy, buy me a pony?' t-shirt, and to take her to Camden for the shinies obviously. (For those of you who are unaware, 'Mogs' is my 10-month-old Goddaughter, Morgan Faye. Her parents are pagans, and she wasn't Christened exactly, but I'm her Godmummy, nonetheless, and I will spoil her rotten. And yes, I am aware of the irony involved in calling her Morgan Faye. Her parents are big geeky people. That's probably why I love them so much!)
Then I spent some time watching the cool street theatre acts in the main square of CGM and only slightly fell in love with the patter of the nice fella named Mark who was juggling a chainsaw and threatening to chop up a small child in front of us, while we cheered. He said we were sick and twisted. I agree. He did not in fact chop up the small child, he did in fact give the kid a fiver and get everyone to clap for him. He also stripped down to only a tiny pair of pink pants before climbing onto a unicycle and juggling knives, then he came back down and juggled the chainsaw, an unlit flaming-stick poi and a small yellow rubber ball. I must say I wasn't in the least bit displeased with having a 'rear view' of his performance for most of it. He certainly wasn't objectionable looking...
After that there was quite a dull bloke, so i decided to bugger off back to Piccadilly and see if I could find the Comedy Club so I knew where I was headed, and then go get some food. As it happened, I swung by the tiny Tesco and got food, and then went to find the Comedy Club, where I joined the queue, which even though it was 5.45, had still formed, so I sat and ate cheap Tesco sandwiches while waiting for 6.30 to roll around so they'd let us in. It was then that I realised I'd forgotten to tweet any of my adventures, so I got right on to it, I would say sorry for the spammage, but since I got back to nearly 250 tweets on my feed I can't say I'm all that sorry for you busy little lot!
6.30 rolled around and I tweeted madly while waiting on the front row, right in front of Richard Vranch's keyboard and mic, and twitching wildly waiting for the insanity to begin.
I cannot possibly describe with any accuracy the amount of hilarity involved in the performances. The players in that night were Phill Jupitus, Lee Simpson, Andy Smart, Neil Mullarkey, Steve Frost and of course the lovely Richard Vranch. Before I start in with my one-track-mind, they were all stupendously fantastic, and I loved the whole thing. I was in stitches, crying with laughter in bits.
Here are the things I can remember -
1. The first game was 'Die!' and Richard won, successfully continuing to tell the story of the Fairy Godmother and the Carrot.
2. Freeze-tag was fantastic, they were all (in quick succession) very gay at one another for a few minutes, and I realised during the games that Lee Simpson, whilst he looked worryingly like Nicholas Lyndhurst as a young man, now looks much better and honestly while I wouldn't have touched him with a barge-pole in the 'Aladdin' years, I would now do dirty things to him. Very dirty things.
3. Neil had to guess his job, which was that he was 'The bloke who paints the knob, which is called the Baksheesh, on the top of the flagpole belonging to the Sudoku Scouts, with the scrapings from a Guinness vat from Uzbekistan.' Yeah... They love to make it long winded...
...4. While trying to get suggestions for the 'Weird Job' game Richard got into an argument with someone in the audience over whether Neil was a bloke or not. It was swiftly concluded when Richard replied "I know he's a bloke, I've seen his cock." I flailed, obviously.
5. Phill and Lee did film and theatre styles and Phill had to teach a 'Spanish dancing' class with Lee as his pupil. The 'pantomime' style made me have flashbacks to Aladdin, whilst the 'porn musical' had me in complete stitches, along with everyone else apart from Lee and Phill who spent a few minutes glaring at the girl in the second row who'd suggested it.
6. While Steve Frost has no singing voice to speak of, Andy Smart is entirely tone deaf. Painfully so. Not quite Jeremy Hardy, but with the same stuttering attempts at tunefulness as Stephen Fry... But with less reluctance.
7. They did a Musical, a Biblical Epic, with Richard narrating and playing piano or guitar as needed, and with Lee as the Devil. The Welsh Devil. Who sang. In a Welsh accent... While the others tried to sing in Yorkshire accents. At least I think it was Yorkshire, they were definitely very Northern. Phill was especially good at the accent, and since the Devil gave the weary travellers porn and lemon squash in exchange for ridding their village from the terrible rabbit plague, Phill spent much of the sketch wandering about pretending to have wanked himself blind. The boys aren't exactly subtle by the way.
8. The last sketch they did was one word interview, and had Andy interviewing Neil, Lee and Richard on the subject of 'Teaching Swordfish to Bobsleigh'. They mentioned Twitter (My fault, I sent Phill a note with 'This is a Virtual Twitter-Bump, since you're not sticking around after the show for me to give you the real thing.' written on it, at half time, which he showed to the others.) and Oh My Gods, I have never laughed so much in my life as when the three of them, one after another, started making 'your Mum' jokes at Andy, with innuendo about Swordfish. There are hand gestures that go with the comments, but I can't possibly do them any justice in descriptive form, ask me to show you some time. Phill and Steve were in the little roped off bit to the side, where they sit when not on the stage, and they were absolutely pissing themselves laughing.
Those are obviously just the highlights, since the show went on for two whole hours, but it was fantastically good, and as you can probably tell, I had a great time.
My feelings for Richard can be summed up by the following exchange between oz_the_bobble and myself.
Me (to twitter): On a sidenote to the flailsquee my phone currently only has signal if I put it on my crotch... I'll leave you to make the dirty jokes.
Oz: I expect a full update from your crotch about Richard's crotch.
Me: You shall have one. As soon as it gets out here. Show doesn't start til 8. I suspect my ovaries might explode at first glance... All I'll be able to think is 'I've written porn about you...'
Then the first half happened, and during the interval that followed -
Me: Richard's all unshaven and messy... I still would. He looks like Alan Alda MASH series 10.
Just in case you didn't get that - Richard Vranch is goddamn hot, and I don't give a flying fuck how old he is, how most people would disagree with me over the hotness, or indeed the fact that my mind, no matter how many times I have to tell it that he's straight, insists that he is and always has been shagging Tony, I would still do incredibly dirty things to that man, which I cannot write down here because I'd manage to eliminate most of my flist in one fell swoop.
After all that excitement I was bouncing and walking along talking to myself, and possibly freaking out the inhabitants of London, though I doubt it, nutters like me are, I suspect, ten-a-penny in London, and headed straight for Waterloo Station where I got the train to Surbiton and met up with requiem2adream and culf who I've never met before IRL, and hardly met online, but have seen around in plenty of comms (TGS for a start, lifein1973 for another) and I really should add to my flist, because she is goddamn awesome. We geeked about stuff all the way back to Lauren's tiny box, where we watched the rest of The Faculty, which they had been watching when they got my text saying that I was en route. Then culf went home and Lauren and I got ready for beddybyes. I read my book for a bit and Lauren was shattered so she dozed off. I learned that I can only sleep on Lauren's floor on my right side, not my left. I have no idea why this should be, but if I try to sleep on that floor on my left I end up rolling back over onto my back. Oh, and while Lauren's tiny box room is indeed tiny, and a box, it does have some compensations like a built-in wall lamp, a tv-stand, and being next to the kitchen.
When morning dawned I blearily rubbed the sleep from my eyes and tried to remove the floor from my spine (mostly successfully) and then I got walked to the station, where a tearful goodbye was shared (kidding, it was goodbye, but not tearful, I'm not as bad as Izzy afterall) and I headed for London Victoria, where I caught my bus and read Tom Holt followed by Thraxas, all the way home.
And so here I am, no pictures of my adventure, because my camera battery is completely fucked, and nothing save a warm fuzzy glow, and a signed ticket remains of my full, rich day.
I'd quite like you to read all of my post, and tell me what you think (suggestions for next time, geeking out over various stupidly geeky things I did this time, good comicbook store locations, you know, the works) but it's a long post with no pretty pictures to break the flow, so I understand if you don't read it all.
But please do read the show bit, because it was fucking amazing, and I want you guys to see it. I wish you'd been there too!
flail and love to ya all,
plum xxxxxxxxxx.