girlofprey

I had quite a lovely night tonight. Last year my local castle was holding a Proms-type event, but by the time I'd decided I wanted to go the tickets were all sold out. Then last night I found out it was on again, but today, so I assumed it would be sold out again. But my mum took my ON to the castle today, and found out they were still selling tickets, so she got one for me and one for herself, and we went down. It didn't start until 7.30, so the weather had cooled down from what it was like earlier today, and it managed to hold off from raining, and the place was packed. So we just spent a rather lovely evening sat on the grass with a few hundred other people, listening to our local symphony orchestra. I didn't even know we had one. Highlight of the evening: hearing one theme tune and racking our brains trying to think of what it was, humming it to ourselves, only for me to remember while mum was in the toilet that it was the theme to the Magnificent Seven. LITERALLY ALL I COULD REMEMBER WAS THAT THE SIMPSONS MAY HAVE DONE A PARODY OF IT ONCE USING THE THEME TUNE, AND IT MAY HAVE INVOLVED HORSES AND LASSOS. A close runner-up was the orchestra playing the can-can, and a bunch of people in the audience getting up and can-canning to it. And then at the end of the night we had a fireworks display. It was an incredibly decent night out for £5.

In family news, things aren't really any better. ( Talking about our dog, cut for mention of animal death )

And in general family news, I generally ask not to be involved in or hear about news to do with my sister anymore. But despite this, I have heard or overheard this week that she and her partner had a massive row on Wednesday night which ended with her sleeping separately from him, that having been moved from Disability Allowance to ESA recently she's now being asked to attend assessment interviews, and after an unfortunate incident on Thursday while my mum was looking after my YN, I seriously suggested to her that maybe she just shouldn't take so much on, if she genuinely can't cope with it. So it sort of feels like things might be changing in the near future, and possibly not for the better. Maybe they won't though, I might just be worrying too much about these things.

In other news:

• I honestly can't believe there isn't a Starkid kinkmeme in existence. I found a TFLN tumbr, and even they for some reason miss out Holy Musical B@man! in their posts. YOU SHOULD ALL WATCH TEAM STARKID PRODUCTIONS. And write me fic.



• You know how a while back I was talking about the video games I played in my youth, and mentioned the Great Giana Sisters?
  
  - I just spent literally about an hour looking for it, and while I remember posting about it, I can't find it. But anyway. Whereas I had assumed the Great Giana Sisters was a one-off 'homage' to the Super Mario Bros, it turns out it's actually an ongoing property. And there's a new game that just came out. I bought that. I'm going to play the hell out of it.



• I saw (most of) an amazing documentary about a lioness today, that ended up being basically a slash fic between her and a rival lioness. It was amazing. Then it ended on the note that there were 450,000 wild lions 50 years ago, and now there are 20,000. Which was a bit of a downer. I didn't even realised lions were in trouble. Still, it was an amazing documentary though. It was called The Last Lions, and it's apparently available on DVD, even though it's only about an hour long. Also, it was narrated by Jeremy Irons - I c what u did there, documentary makers.

In other news, I'm playing Fallout 3 again, and I've just gotten to the parts in the game that make me really angry. Or kind of angry. I feel like I want to go somewhere and discuss at length the differing moralities of the characters in the Wasteland - and why I think they're genuinely good choices by Bethesda, even if they didn't quite write them as well as they could have done. But either no-one is having/had those conversations, or I'm missing them. Or they're on the type of game websites that I don't like to frequent, in case they're a little more hostile than the sites I usually go on. Oh well.

Hello! I went out to see Northern Ballet's Cleopatra tonight. God I love ballet. Anyway, it was really good, it was a bit weird that given that it was called Cleopatra, we didn't really see her do much ruling or anything much outside of her rivalry with her brother/husband, her affair with Caesar, and then her affair with Mark Anthony. If they wanted to remake Anthony and Cleopatra, they could at least have let people know by calling it that. Also, between the history they gave us in the programme, the story they actually told in the ballet and the things I have learned from Horrible Histories, I am left just really confused about the story of Cleopatra, Caesar and Mark Anthony. But it was good, and then main ballerina was amazing. I thoroughly recommend it though, if it's on anywhere near you and you like ballet and have the money and stuff.

I had a bit of a trial getting there and back though. Yesterday, just to check, I went online and looked at the train times coming back. It turned out that the last train/s back from Leeds to my home town are now 35 minutes earlier than they were before, or 25 minutes earlier and I have to wait over at a different station for 35 minutes at half past ten at night. So my parents and I made a plan that I would try for the earlier one, and if I had to get the one with the big stopover my dad would come and pick me up from that station. Then today, I was all set to go get the train at the usual time to go to Leeds, but when I checked it just in case just before I went out, it turns out trains are all different on Saturdays, and I'd just missed one train and the next one would get me to Leeds train station at 7.20 when I needed to be at Leeds Grand Theatre/in my seat at 7.30. I took a taxi from the station in the end, and managed to get there in time. I bought a programme before I went in, which was too big for my bag, so when I went to the bathroom during the interval and didn't want to fiddle with my bag too much with wet hands, while juggling it about while trying to wash them and get tissue out to dry them, my programme ended up falling out onto the (slightly wet) bathroom floor. Then after I got out of the theatre, happily a little bit early, I had to peg it down to the station, to the point where my legs went really stiff, but I managed to get the first train. Then just as we were pulling into my home station, a man sat across from me looked over and asked if I had any tissues, and I realised he'd thrown up in his lap. Or his friend had done it, but frankly, his friend didn't look apologetic enough to have done it himself. But anyway. I got home alright. Hurrah!

Also, the back of my programme had all of the shows Northern Ballet are planning to do this year. They all look so lovely. But also expensive. Hmph.

I have come back from my weekend in London with cakesy. Over the weekend, I:

• Went to see Love and War by the Mark Bruce Company, which I loved, with K. It was a little bit nerve racking at first because K and I didn't really agree on a place to meet up, specifically, we just said at King's Cross at about 6.30. Then she called me at 6.25 when I was on a train, just about to pull in, to say her phone was really low on battery, but that she was there, and she said she'd wait at the tube station, opposite where the ticket-buying place was. It turns out there's quite a few tube station entrances near to where you can buy tickets. And her phone was off when I tried to call again. I basically couldn't find her, and ended up having to go to the theatre to pick up our tickets, and I didn't know exactly where the theatre was, just that it was close by. It ended up being easy to find, thankfully, but K wasn't there, and she didn't turn up while I was waiting for her outside. Eventually I went inside, and the show was a bit delayed, and as I was sat there waiting for it to begin K suddenly walked over and asked for her ticket so she could give it to the nice ticketman who'd let her come in to find me. She'd been considering giving up, but then just went to an internet cafe, found out where the theatre was and come to find me. It turned out she didn't know there was a ticket buying place in King's Cross King's Cross, and had been waiting at the one in St Pancras. But anyway. She made it, and we had a great time, and the show was good, yay!



• I had found out just before I came to London that Luke Rattigan was in a play, over the weekend, in London. And it was basically right next to where me and cakesy were already going to see a comedy show later that night. And she is kind and said yes, of course we can go, Rachael. So we went to see Luke Rattigan in a play. And it was very good, and he was good, and it was about gay people and gay rights in the last few decades, and when he was in the audience pretending to be a protester at an anti-gay show thing, he made out with another actor about two rows down from me. It was quite good. And the play was good. And he was good.



• And then later on that night, as I said, we went to a comedy thing, which cakesy had agreed to, once again, because it was Tom Stade, and he was on in London the weekend I was in London, and I kind of love him. And he was great, and he didn't tell any jokes playing on the word 'faggot', hurrah, and he kept picking on a guy in the front row who he informed us all was called 'Heroin Jim'. Oh the things he and Heroin Jim had been up to. He was brilliant. I love him. Except for that one joke. And THEN a man came on doing comedy and magic tricks, and THEN Paul Sinha came on, and he was pretty funny too. Hurrah.

And in between all of that, cakesy and I watched Blades of Glory, and about 2 and a third seasons of The Office (US). Ryan is my favourite, he is young and smart and kind of amoral, but also I love Dwight, and I love Toby, and I love Oscar, and I love Angela, and I love Phyllis, and I love Stanley, and I love Pam sometimes, and I love Michael sometimes. AND OH. Pam was in Blades of Glory too, it turned out. That was quite suprising and special. Hurrah. So all in all, I had a good weekend.

Things I have decided there should be:

• A website place, sort of like imdb, where you can check to find out if actors you like are on stage any time soon. Finding out just afterwards, sometimes, is not really good enough in my opinion.


• A Disney kink meme. I cannot be the only one who thinks this, right? I mean, I probably could be, but I would prefer not to be. DISNEY KINK. COME ON.


• Office AUs. The ones I came up with so far are:
  
  • Desert island
  
  
  • Michael is a pimp and the rest of the office are his hos.
  
  
  • Crime syndicate
  And probably a bunch of others I can't remember now.

And, ( Coronation Street tonight )

Some other things:

• Gray O'Brien, who plays Tony Gordon on Coronation Street, is in a panto in Manchester. Starting Saturday. Wearing eyeliner, if the website is any indication. Starting next week. WITH - Chris Fountain, from Hollyoaks and Dancing On Ice! !! I could go see that panto. There are trains from Nottingham direct to Manchester. According to the website they only cost £12.00 with a railcard on the day. I COULD MAGIC UP SOME MONEY AND IT WOULD BE POSSIBLE TO GO SEE IT. ONSTAGE. WITH EYELINER. Maybe.



• Ahem. I love Adam and Joe. I love them most weeks I hear them, I loved them this week and I loved them the other week. Last week I missed the show when it was on so I had to listen to it on Listen Again, and I always end up doing other things and not hearing all of it when I do that, but I probably would have loved them a lot if I had. Anyway, I had a difficult time listening to their show at first, just because I hardly ever listen to the radio, and I'm not really used to listening to music I don't know and haven't picked out myself. However, I know that most of the music is picked out by the BBC 6 Music team and not by Adam and Joe, but generally speaking, I almost always hear a song on the Adam and Joe show every week that I like, and for the last few weeks they've been playing Cornerstone by the Artic Monkeys. I resisted and had no interest in the Arctic Monkeys for a long time, but I think this one is really, really lovely. So I wanted to mention it, and the Youtube link is here :)



• I'm up to date with Looking For Group! Which means that now I can read all that slash fic there isn't! Hmph.



• It's December tomorrow. That sort of snuck up on me. As per usual, now I have a bit of money I'm mostly thinking about a bunch of things I don't really need and can't really afford in most cases. But I'm going to have to start saving up for Christmas presents really. I've got a few ideas for things for nephews already though, and I'm guessing my mum, dad and sister won't be expecting much, given the state of my finances. Still, I'm going to have to start looking soon.



• On the plus side, I can start thinking about some seasonal watching before Christmas. I might watch the 10th Kingdom again. I started watching it last Christmas, watched just enough to remember how much I'd loved it and how great it was, and then stopped and forgot to watch the rest. Or I could rewatch the Hogfather at some point. Or Fred Claus, which is not a great film, but I still quite love. It's all very pleasing, really :)

I'm aware that my post last night about Casualty was pretty much just a rant. Yes.

HOWEVER - I will say that if I did get a ticket for Shades, it's looks like I would be actively shunning the play belonging to whatho's least favourite person. I think. I'm not quite sure.

I'm back at my flat in Nottingham now. It's verey, very cold. Just so you know. But they have fixed my toilet seat. Hurrah.

I LOVE YOU TOBY DE SILVA, I LOVE YOU.

I'd heard that he did some things that were less than socially great this week, and I thought they might be a bit awful, but I didn't expect it to be BRILLIANTLY AWFUL, HILARIOUSLY GREAT. I thought that he might try to kiss Jordan, and wasn't sure how that would go, but no, they settled for brilliant interaction instead. It was all a bit good.

I made an executive decision not to come back to my parents' on Friday last Friday, and went to see Twilight (also a bit brilliant but more awful) instead, and tried to get my Christmas cards done and pack instead. I did not get my Christmas cards done, sorry about that. I came home on Saturday instead, and started my period on the train. Thankfully I had Mefanemic acid tablets in my bag, but I did pretty much spend the rest of the day on the couch. On Sunday, my mum had some friends over who live in Majorca and she hasn't seen in a few years, and over the course of the conversation you could hear her voice going, and I felt like I had a bit of a tickle in mine. The next day I woke up with a sore throat and a cough. But, we were going to see the Snow Queen in Leeds that night, and I had to do a bit of Christmas shopping still so I was going early. Except that I didn't go early, and you had to go into town to get the bus now, and I had to go to the cashpoint to get money, and then the next bus was twenty minutes late. So in the end I only had about an hour to do my shopping, and they had closed down or apparently ripped out a lot of the places I knew in Leeds or wanted to go to. But I got my nephews' presents and went to see the Snow Queen, which was good. And Laurel from Emmerdale was there, which was good as well.

On Tuesday, my mum said she was going into town and then maybe to Junction 32, a nearby outlet village afterwards, did I want to come? And there were a few things I wanted still, so I said yes. But town was packed, half the stuff mum wanted wasn't there, being outside did nothing for my cough so I kept spluttering up and down the aisles (and sometimes she did too), and having to stop off to buy big bottles poof water, and then in Tesco's I had to wait with the trolley while she went to put another ticket on the car, and then when we finally got to the checkout, the gammon she'd got instead of one of the £28 ones from Marks and Spencer’s, had lost the seal on it's film lid, and she and the checkout got covered in honey glaze and possibly gammon juices. When I went back to get another, four of the five left had had the seal on their lids broken, and I too got a bit coated in honey glaze. But after we packed the stuff and got disinfected and the checkout was cleaned, we managed to get home. But by this point my cough and the headache it had caused and probably the five hours of sleep I'd had were making me feel quite ill, so I laid on the couch under my coat with the fire turned up for about an hour. We decided not to go to Junction 32.

Wednesday was fine. I wanted a bath in the evening, but my mum needed to go to my sister's to take my nephews' presents (from my sister and her partner) round, and I went with her ad helped her deliver some cards, then had to stay up wrapping presents. I still had a cough, but it was okay.

Then it was Christmas! My mother got me up, and I cam down and we exchanged gifts. I have a digital radio which informs me it is a Rock digital radio, mainly for Rock, and some DVDs and a Radley purse, and a CD and a book of photography. It's all very good. We watched films about Santa, and then just as dinner was about ready, my sister called and said she and the boys and her partner were ready. They came round, and Jack and Ryan had their presents from my parents and me, and then we had dinner, and then we played with the toys as a family, and hurray, Christmas. Still a bit of a relief when they all left though.

They came back yesterday for Boxing Day, and it was a bit more fraught, but it was fine. We played with Jack's new scalextric, and he took some pleasure in switching cars when people were beating him or his car went off the track.

But it was fun, and we did have a good time, and we've certainly had worse Christmases. I had to go off every bow and then to cough and try to breathe a bit better, but it's mostly gone now. But other than that, it was all pretty good.

I hope the rest of you had great Christmases, and holiday seasons generally. I grope the food was good and the presents were great and the company was similarly great. Merry Christmas!

If I was running Yuletide, there would be way more Emmerdale and Casualty and Green Wing fic than there is. But I'm not.

Also, I love David Morrissey. I hate Doctor Who. Hurrah.

I was going to do a little fannish review bit at the end of the entry last night, but didn't have enough time. However, some things are just to lovely to let go past.

( Barefoot moments )

People are also doing Resolutions. My Resolutions for 2008 are:

• To get a permanent job.


• To take more pictures, which now I've got some not-actually-that-expensive batteries for my digital camera should be easier.


• To go see War and Peace at the Nottingham Playhouse. Because a day full of theatre seems quite win. Also to see James, Son of James at some point.

Once again, Happy New Year!