neadods: (tired)
[personal profile] neadods
All hail [livejournal.com profile] __kali__, who is the one who organized the meetup. Were it not for her hard work, there wouldn't have been that temptation for me to go, and then I wouldn't have tempted Seti, and… well, there were about 16 of us at the play, and it's all thanks to her that we got there and had such a great time. Thank you, Kali!

And hail to [livejournal.com profile] steviesun who did a certain amount of organizing re: meeting us at the bus stop (thank you!) and arranging Seti's room share, etc. My inner sheepdog bows to your inner border collie.

It's like the setup to some strange joke – An American and a German walk into a bus station… I had quietly resolved to keep an eye on Seti. I'm old enough to be her mother, I know she was nervous about the trip… and instead, she spent a fair amount of her time quietly reminding me that I was about to do Very Stupid Things, like wandering off to talk to that group of what looked like Whovians waiting for us at the bus stop instead of, oh, something boring and sensible like remembering to get my suitcase! *blushes* Thank you, Seti!

(Seti has her own trip report up too. So does Kali. They both have pictures.)

There's nothing exciting to say about the bus trip because it was uneventful. Stevie and two of her friends met us at the station (I'm not sure of all the LJ names or if I'm allowed to use real ones here) and walked us to the "con hotel," The Big Sleep. If Ikea designed a hotel, that would be it – all modular and brightly colored and blocky. Also quiet, roomy, clean, and comfortable, and the best couple of nights sleep I would have over there, so go Big Sleep! May your chain multiply and be fruitful.

The weather continued cold and rainy (it had gotten wet the night before), but fortunately the map I had turned out to exaggerate distances. Things that I thought would be a mile or more away were just about 10 minutes walk. Nice to know when we were getting drenched.

First thing I was off to the museum to see the Impressionist exhibit, which was lovely. Then a little shopping (their Forbidden Planet had the one thing from my shopping list I hadn't scored at Borders – Doctor Who and the Ghosts of N-Space) and it was fun to see the assorted filming sites in real life. The Queens Arcade windows had no shop dummies at all, so only the curving stairs would remind you of Rose. Howell's (Hendricks from Rose and quite a few other episodes) was about as exciting inside as a Hechts and had many of the same international brands, so I didn't buy anything in there. The Victorian market was part flea market, part meat market, but I still found the occasional gift there, and I went totally tourist at one shop and bought black socks with Welsh dragons on them because I was tired of rinsing out and wearing the same damn socks of my own!

And then, in a moment I immortalized in all caps in my notebook, I discovered that Waterstones had some of the back catalog of Big Finish audios. At 3-for-2. The flagstaff store on Picadilly promptly rocketed to the top of my to do list on Sunday!

Seti, in the meantime, had gone off on the geek tour. They went down to the bay and got to see the playground with Bad Wolf on it and everything.

But y'all don't care about that, I know. You want to hear about the panto!

The plan had been to meet up at Henrys Wine Bar across the street an hour and a half before the play. I was there. Nobody else was. So I finally decided to kill a little time and cross the street to the theater, not only picking up my ticket, but checking out the location of the stage door.

Hmmm, I wonder if the stage door was where all those people were crowding? And if they were crowded around then…

There he was. John Barrowman, in glasses, obviously tired, but being a gent all the same. He picked as many little kids out of the crowd as he could see and made sure they got the pictures/autographs they wanted before he had to put his foot down and go get his dinner between performances. He was driven off in a small SUV-ish type car, with one of his spaniels in the back.

Back to Henrys. No people. I ordered dinner. No people. Eventually a crowd now 16+ people strong came in and we all moved to a table in the front. Eventually my dinner caught up with me (service was crap there; for quite some time I was thinking I wouldn't get dinner at all!) and I ate while watching MiniTen have some rather bizarre adventures at the other end of the table and everyone talked, signed the congratulations card to John and Scott, and took pictures.

My seat was up in the balcony; fantastic view, but it was remote, as if I was watching TV, and I was surrounded by octagenarians. They were having the time of their lives, but it was just… odd. So I snuck down during intermission and took one of the seats in the main meetup group that had been left empty when the ticketholder had to back out. [livejournal.com profile] steviesun is right – it just isn't fun unless you're among friends!

As for the performance… Oh, MY! I've always wondered what it would be like to see a show where all the actors were mainly trying to upstage and crack each other up… and now I know. What a wild ride! It's a completely interactive experience, what with the actors trying to elicit reactions from the audience, the audience yelling advice, and the actors trying to both muddle through and mess each other up.

John played Jack Trot, older brother to Simple Simon (whose role was mostly to tell bad vaudeville jokes and be the traditional guy who comes out and yells "OGGIE, OGGIE, OGGIE!" so the audience can yell "OI, OI, OI!" right back. Don't ask me why, I don't know. It's a mystery.) The boys were the sons of Dame Trot, played by Tony Wright in drag, as such dames always are.

Jack was introduced like this:
FAIRY DAFFODIL: We need a hero to kill the giant! Where is your brother?
SIMPLE SIMON: We don't know, he went off to see the doctor months ago.
DAFFODIL: Which doctor?
SIMON: Don't be silly, he wasn't a witch doctor!
DAFFODIL: What was his name?
SIMON: His name was… um, I can't remember it, it was…
DAFFODIL: Doctor who?
SIMON: Yeah, that was it!

(As one of the actors said when a joke fell flat early on, "You'll just have to join in, it doesn't get any better than this!")

Dame Trot on femininity (and remember, this is a middle-aged guy wearing more makeup than Tammy Fae Baker): When a woman is in her 20s, she's like Africa – fresh and unspoiled. When she's in her 40s, she's like America – rich and luxurious. When she's 50, she's like Newport. Everybody knows what it looks like and nobody wants to go there!

Jack Trot finally arrives on a motor cycle, handing out Doctor Who presents. Simon got a dalek. "Darn, I was hoping for Billie Piper!" From offstage, the giant bellowed "Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum – I smell the blood of an American!"

(It was soon after this that John blurted onstage "I've just forgotten my next line, but that's okay!" He would blow his lines at least three times… that he admitted to…)

During the cow selling scene, the villain Fleshcreep (played by Martin Marquez) used a thick pirate-type accent. "Why you be talkin' like that?" John asked, imitating him. "I be actin'" was the reply. After the perfect pause Martin added, "You should try it."

John glared at him, but seconds later, Martin realized that he'd come out without the prop gold with which to buy the cow, and John laughed so hard he doubled over. "That's twice! he shouted as Martin fled for his prop. "Who needs acting lessons?"

There was a scene where the Dame is putting her sons to bed. "Jack," she asked earnestly, "Would you like me to give you a strip wash?" John stared at her, boggled for a moment as the audience screamed approval, and said, "No, really, just had one." "How about a rubdown?" "Uh, no."

Dame Trot turned to the audience. "I'm sorry, I'm doing my best for you girls."

"They can buy the calendar," John laughed.

At the end Andy Jones (Simon) and John read out birthdays in the audience, including "Stanley… who's 14 and all embarrassed now!" and "Annette Pierce, 81. Again!" (Cheers from the section I'd left in the balcony. I'm thinking Annette was the woman a couple seats down from me who was just delighted with her pink maribou light-up wand.) They led the audience in singing Happy Birthday part in English and part in Welsh, then they brought some kids up on stage. John went to his knees next to the first boy and asked "What did you get for Christmas?"

"A cyberman helmet!"

"Captain Jack doll?"

The boy thought hard. "…no…"

"Tell your parents you really want one!"

Next up was a very articulate little girl in a pink princess dress who'd gotten a chemistry set. John didn't quite know what to do with that; I wanted to give her a standing ovation.

There was another mob in front of the stage door. John, bless him, was still obviously tired, but he also made sure that everyone got an autograph and then everyone got a picture who wanted one. At first he said he'd only sign things with a face ("Pieces of paper just get lost") so I asked if the Torchwood Another Life book was face enough. And now the flyleaf reads "Love, John Barrowman, Captain Jack, 2007."

autograph

The group, now reduced, headed to a pub to talk about things. It was fun, but I couldn't last long. Had I known how much of an opportunity I'd have to catch up on my sleep the next day, I would have stayed longer!

In a maneuver right up there with telling [livejournal.com profile] maureen_the_mad in 2000 during her first trip to NYC, "We don't need to see the World Trade Center, it'll always be there," I had insisted to Seti that we take the train back to London because it was more comfortable and faster. That was before we got on the wrong train, had to get off at the next station, and wait 30 minutes, no 45, no almost an hour for the right train… which went very slowly… before stopping… before announcing that we would all have to get off at Swindon to get a bus to take us to Reading to take a different train to London Paddington…

In the end, the "short" 2-hour train trip took 5 hours. We were well into the limited shopping time left on Sunday by the time we arrived, so we split up so we could do more damage. I went to Fortnum and Mason, discovering that only the food hall is open on a Sunday. Then a quick dash to Virgin to pick up the CD that I forgot to pick up at HMV in Cardiff, and back to the big Waterstones, where I found a motherlode of Big Finish audios and the other Dorothy Sayers and Terry Pratchett audios that I'd been looking for.

Last thing we did was go hear Big Ben strike the hour. My trip started and ended with Big Ben, and that made for a wonderful sense of peace and closure.

We spent the night at a Generator Hostel which had the advantage of being inexpensive, although I think Seti was right – I think it had been a prison in a previous life. Now it was somewhere between hotel and nightclub, with a demographic that skewed fairly young… although the only people we talked to were a couple who were older than I was and somewhat jaundiced about the place, where they'd been staying for a week. They should maybe have checked out the Holiday Inn a block away. The area is a nice one to stay, though – close to the heart of London and on the Piccadilly line, which is the cheap way to get back to Heathrow. (Heathrow express takes 15 minutes, costs 15 pounds, and ends in Paddington. Russell Square to Heathrow took a little over an hour, but only cost 4 pounds.)

We both set out early, parting halfway down the line so Seti could head south to her bus and I could continue on to Heathrow. I must say, if you must kill half a day in an airport, the Departures side of Heathrow Terminal 4 is the way to go. It's quite the mall, with half a dozen Harrods kiosks, so even though I didn't get to the store, I still got my taste of Harrods! There were bookstores too, although there is no truth to the rumor that I bought yet more books at the Borders 3-for-2 table. None whatsoever.

It was a long trip home – the plane ride took 9 hours for reasons I'm not sure about – but that at least gave me time to draft up a Captain Jack fic. But that will have to wait for another day to be edited and printed.

I've been asked, and it doesn't take a lot for me to start listing my stuff. Below are the things I bought for myself. Not the gifts, just my toys:

LOOT!
Books
- Torchwood: Slow Decay
- Torchwood: Border Princes
- Torchwood: Another Life
- The Worst Jobs in History
- Growing Pains
- The Middle Class: A History
CDs, music
- Billie Piper: Honey to the B
- Billie Piper: Walk of Life
- Girls Aloud: Sound of the Underground
- Pendragon: The Window of Life okay, I know nothing about them. I just had a feeling…
- Hanels' Masterpieces
- Musick For Elizabeth
- Music for the Six Wives of Henry VIII
- Christmas Carols of the Westminster Abbey Choir
- Doctor Who, Collector's Limited Edition
CDs, audiobooks
Doctor Who
- - Doctor Who at the BBC, Volume 2
- - Doctor Who at the BBC, Volume 3
- - The Stone Rose
- - The Celestial Toymaker
- - Blood of the Daleks, Part 1
- - The Ghosts of N-Space
- - The Pestacons
- - Catch 1782
- - The Nowhere Place
- - Scardy Cat (getting it for free is about the only way I'd "pay" for it!)
- - Creed of the Kromon
- - The Settling
Dorothy Sayers (all BBC radio dramas, not book readings)
- - Clouds of Witness
- - Strong Poison
- - Murder Must Advertise
- - Gaudy Night
- - Busman's Honeymoon
Terry Pratchett
- - Guards! Guards!
- - Reaper Man
- - Witches Abroad
- - Lords and Ladies
- - Small Gods
- - Night Watch
Globe Theater/Lit
- - Readings from Poet's Corner
- - Celebrating Shakespeare: This World's Globe
- - The Essential Shakespeare Live
Misc
- - Lady Windermere's Fan
- - The Two Ronnies
- - Northanger Abbey
Other
- Welsh dragon socks
- 2 LED sonic screwdriver flashlights
- Welsh dragon ornament
- magazines - Glamour, DWM, Cult Times

Date: 2007-01-10 01:46 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hildy.livejournal.com
Sounds like you had a great time. Envious about the shopping.

(I still recall with great fondness being in Annapolis with a bunch of McCaffrey fans and spotting a bookstore in the distance and we all went in mass... only to discover that they were doing inventory that day. The horrors! As we said later, do they realize how much money they could have made off our group?)

The 5 hour trip back to London didn't sound too great, but the Thursday Next fan in me is a little amused at the stop-over in Swindon. No dodos, I imagine?

Date: 2007-01-10 02:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com
Nary a dodo in sight, and not a single "plock" to be heard.

I'm wiped... but then, the body clock hasn't entirely reset. So it's off to shower - with water pressure and space and privacy! - and then to bed.

Date: 2007-01-10 01:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] acroyear70.livejournal.com
That version of Pendragon is mainstream-progressive rock. Lots of typical prog-cliches (long guitar solos, cliched-filled lyrics, occasional references to classical or other rock music tucked inside). Window of Life and The World are their two best.

btw, do you have Dr. Who at the BBC vol 1? We got a spare copy from the Tower closings (faireraven didn't know i already had it, having picked it up on our trip in 2005).

btw, when you get back into a Shakespeare mood, I have this I can loan you. Taming done in a "comedia" style, FAR FAR better than the Elizabeth Taylor version. My 12th grade english teacher showed this in class (off an old 2" tape box from the 70s) and i just about died.

of course, that'll have to wait until after WE see it, and we've got a HUGE backlog of dvds to catch up on. we only JUST started B.G. season 2.0 (not even at 2.5 yet) and still need to catch up on about 6 torchwoods (the one with the cannibals kinda made me lose my appetite for the show for a bit, pun intended) and the sarah jane pilot.

on the other hand, we finally saw Barrowman as lead tenor in Springtime for Hitler! :)

Date: 2007-01-10 02:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com
For Pendragon, I have to confess I did the musical version of buying a book for its cover. Sounds like I might like it, which will be a relief, considering! :>

btw, do you have Dr. Who at the BBC vol 1?

No, if you want me to take yours off your hands, I think I could oblige. Maybe a trade? Will give you a list at some point.

Would love to see that Taming sometime!

Save Sarah for last. Sad to say, SJ and her jr. league are five times more effective than the Torchwood team, and I say this as a fan of Torchwood!

Date: 2007-01-10 02:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] redstarrobot.livejournal.com
The Ghosts of N-Space

I'm so sorry.

However, on the plus side, when you're done, there's that classic bit of NA-era Who fanfic by [livejournal.com profile] axonite, A Few More Ghosts For N-Space (http://axonite.freeshell.org/ghosts.html).

Date: 2007-01-10 05:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com
That bad, huh? Well, I've listened to Minuet in Hell - it couldn't POSSIBLY be worse!

Date: 2007-01-10 06:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] redstarrobot.livejournal.com
Oh, my poor sheltered dear... if only that were true.

Date: 2007-01-10 06:26 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com
Now you're getting me all curious!

Date: 2007-01-10 06:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] redstarrobot.livejournal.com
Infamous... infamous, I tell you, with the suck of a thousand black holes.

Date: 2007-01-10 06:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com
I seem to recall hearing something to that effect on the Comm That Must Not Be Named. But honestly - Big Finish has set the suckitude bar so low sometimes that surely it couldn't be worse?

Okay, I am SO curious now! I'm going to put it in the car to start tomorrow instead of Northanger Abbey. (And how pathological is it of me to have bought so many CDs and all I can think now is "Why didn't I get Emma too?")

Date: 2007-01-10 06:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] redstarrobot.livejournal.com
To quote one reviewer, "I was intrigued how bad it was compared to the Big Finish Productions we are now used to." (Barry Letts is also the guy who wrote the abysmal Blakes 7 audios of about the same era.) As low as BF's suckitude bar is... well, there's lots of room at the bottom.

I'm curious now, too, since I haven't heard any BF after "Winter for the Adept". You listen to this for comparison, and report back. :)

Date: 2007-01-10 07:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com
I've listened to about 95% of the Big Finishes at this point; one of the things I was hoping to do in England was fill in the gaps of my collection. I think I'm going to have to resort to ebay at this point.

If the accents don't make me want to spork my eardrums out, then N-Space will have won over Minuet in Hell on a technicality.

Date: 2007-01-10 07:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] redstarrobot.livejournal.com
N-Space has an American gangster, and the Brigadier's Italian uncle Mario. That's all I'm sayin'.

Date: 2007-01-10 07:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com
The gangster I can live with.. the idea of "Uncle Mario" admittedly has me taking a deep breath and going "It's not canon, it's not canon, it's not canon..."

Date: 2007-01-12 02:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com
You listen to this for comparison, and report back. :)

I'm in the middle of the second CD. So far:
Seriously camp plot: check
OTT acting: check
Silly accents from the supporting actors: check

But it's so very over-the-top that it's inadvertently funny. Stupid, yes, bad, yes, but major suckage? It's nowhere near the gravity well that is Minuet in Hell!

Date: 2007-01-12 02:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] redstarrobot.livejournal.com
Saved by the god of B-movies! :)

Date: 2007-01-12 02:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com
Pretty much! :> It's like watching an old Sampson movie or something - makes you long for Joel & the 'bots, but Clonus or Manus Hand of Fate or Plan 9 bad it ain't.

Date: 2007-01-10 06:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dune-drd.livejournal.com
Hooray for me being helpful :) You forgot to mention the creepy pictures of John Malkovich staring at you now in the Big Sleep

Date: 2007-01-10 06:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com
You were very helpful, and I was very embarrassed to need the help!

There were creepy pictures of John Malkovich? I totally missed them. I was just so happy to not have to climb a billion stairs to get to the room!

Date: 2007-01-11 06:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] --kali--.livejournal.com
And you got sll that in your case? *is really impressed*

Thank you so much for coming along. :)

Date: 2007-01-11 06:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com
I had to buy a new suitcase to hold it all - but *so* very worth it!

I had a wonderful, wonderful time. Thank you for arranging it; I'd've never gone if there wasn't a group to meet.

Profile

neadods: (Default)
neadods

February 2023

S M T W T F S
   1234
567891011
121314 15161718
19202122232425
262728    

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 8th, 2025 11:36 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios