Disclaimer: I own all the characters, at least in a roundabout way... and
all the events happened, more or less. *G* Yeah sorry, it's another story
about my ongoing epics in life. Hope you like!
And the song belongs to New Model Army. Please don't sue me, I have nothing you want.
This is a two part story, basically because it ended up being far too long and I had to chop it in half. But it's all from the same weekend of fun-ness.
Rating: Suitable for all... probably...
Content: Me going to London and embarrassing myself!
Feedback: Yes please! rakie@applepastie.freeserve.co.uk
Blargh. I am shattered. This weekend I went away to London to attend the LVG Christmas party, and I can't remember the last time I've ever felt so rough. I'm writing this in a big haze of sleep-deprivation, alcohol poisoning and caffeine come-down, so please excuse the utter randomness of this story. I want to try and get it all down on paper (on screen?) before I come out of this haze and start having the world's most extreme hangover.
So, background then. This trip is almost entirely the fault of Sophie, one of Jenny’s random friends. She wanted to go to London and see a couple of bands playing, but she’s only seventeen and her parents wouldn't let her go on her own (and for once I agree with the adults – personally, I wouldn't let Sophie go to the shops on her own, let alone to London). I was originally very much against the idea of going with her as a chaperone... until I found out that the concert was the same weekend as the LVG Christmas Party. Arse. Anyway, the short and skinny of the matter is that I end up escorting Sophie to a concert, and she accompanies me to the party, and we both come away happy. That is the best laid plans of Sophie and Rakie... any bets as to how long it takes for them to go astray?
Friday, and we leave at about five in the morning to drive down to the airport. I'm already feeling a teeny bit knackered, because I've spent all week attempting to finish editing the video footage I shot in Romania and put it all onto VHS so that I can hand it out to people at the party. The final tape got finished very late on Thursday night, and went into my bag still warm. I've not even had time to check that all of them are working properly, so there's going to be a lot of crossing my fingers and hoping for the best here.
I’ve just noticed something weird about Sophie incidentally – in a lot of ways, she is just KT in a different body. She’s fussy and extremely nervous around new people, she smokes a lot (usually at the precise moment I'd like to be doing something other than standing outside in the cold), and she has absolutely no useful sense of direction. She also has a couple of unique annoyances about her – she apologises more than anyone else I've ever met (we finally break this habit by getting her to say 'fuck you' to me instead), and she keeps asking questions like, 'how long will it take us to get there?'. I can do direction, but apparently I can't do time or distance. I end up taking a lesson straight out of Disorganised Mick's book and start answering every question with 'some', 'many', or 'more', and eventually she stops asking. Oh, and the other thing is that she doesn't have any money and won't get paid until the 23rd, so everything she buys is going to be going on my credit card until then. Bloody hell, I feel like her mum.
We get into London without too many problems and head across town to meet up with Tara, who is being an absolute angel and letting us sleep in her spare room for this weekend. Since this is Sophie's first ever visit to London, I take great delight in introducing her to the Tube... although as with KT, I don't think she is quite impressed with it as I always am. Possibly because she's claustrophobic and doesn’t like crowds.
Once we've got safely to Tara's, dumped our bags and told her what an amazingly fantastic person she is, we head back out to the city centre. We've not got any solid plans for today, since most of the shopping is hopefully going to be tomorrow when we meet up with Stella, so we catch the tube down to Leicester Square and find ourselves a cinema showing Blade Trinity. The movie's ace, incidentally – obviously not as good as the first and second ones, but definitely worth seeing. Especially the bits with Triple H... God, that's so funny. I couldn't get over the fact that he keeps swearing all the time. Oh, and Ryan Reynolds is absolutely adorable and yummy. I'm less impressed with the fact that the cinema charges £8.50 for tickets... bloody London prices.
Ooooh, and just staying with movies for a moment – there was this trailer for a movie called 'Creep', and it looks amazing! It's set on the London Underground and there's zombies and evil stuff and... eeeeeeeeeeee... it just looks brilliant. It'll probably be absolutely awful when it comes out and I'll never get to see it, but never mind.
Anyway, after our fun and expensive movie experience we grab a burger and then wander along Regent Street to Hamley's. I know it's only been a couple of months since I was last there, but dammit, I love that store. It's my MOST favourite, as my friend Gill would say, so we spend a very happy hour in there. Eventually we have to leave because the crowds start freaking Sophie out, and we catch the tube back to Tara's place to get changed. Once we're all nicely dressed up, it's off out again to attend our concert.
A month ago I hadn't heard of any of the three bands that are playing tonight – Arch Enemy, The Haunted, and Dark Tranquillity. I’ve now heard of them, but I’m still less than impressed. There're all Thrash, and they're all from Sweden (but I guess we shouldn’t hold that against them). Sophie likes The Haunted best, and I'm technically there to see Arch Enemy, because they have a very hot girly singer. But really I'm planning to stand at the back and drink hugely expensive beer all night.
Of course, if I really intended to stick to that plan, I shouldn't really have taken a load of Pro-Plus before coming out. I end up deserting the bar halfway through Dark Tranquillity (who are incidentally are surprisingly ace, and have a fantastic frontman – huge and ginger and with an accent that sounds remarkably Irish for a Swedish boy), and getting shoved around the mosh pit for a couple of songs. Fun fun fun fun fun. Then I come back and start up a conversation with a nice couple from Cardiff who complain a great deal about their hotel. There's a weird smell of burning plastic, and about half an hour later we realise that it was actually the woman's bag – someone must have caught their cigarette on it, and the bag now had a three inch charred hole in it.
There’s also an attendant in the toilets who hands out lollipops if you tip her. How pleasantly surreal.
I watch the coats while The Haunted are on, and Sophie bounces off to take a turn at the front. The band are okay, although not technically my kind of thing, but I'm full enough of caffeine that I happily dance about on my own anyway. Halfway through, the frontman tells everyone to have a minute's silence for Dimebag Darrell, and standing at the back of the room all I can see is a sea of horns as everyone in the place puts their hands in the air. I'm already feeling emotional for one reason or another this weekend, and this is just too much. I start crying, and I know I'm not the only one.
Sophie comes back at the end of The Haunted and tells me that all the expense and hassle of getting to London was absolutely worth it. Thank God for that. We stash our coats somewhere relatively safe and dive down into the crowd before Arch Enemy come on. Sophie ends up right at the front, and I end up right in the middle of the mosh pit. Standing in front of me is a shirtless guy who scarily resembles Tyson Tomko quite a lot – about 6' 6", 230 lbs, pretty much as broad across the shoulders as I am tall, and with a shaved head and massive tribal tattoo all down his back. I stand there staring at that enormous back and thinking, 'y'know, if he kicks off, I am going to get absolutely flattened here'.
Arch Enemy come on, launch into 'We Will Rise', and I get absolutely flattened. Fortunately enough, the Tomko-alike observes the first rule of mosh pits – if you flatten someone, have the damn decency to pick them back up. He picks me up and makes sure I'm okay and I do that attractive thing where I lose all power of speech and stare at the guy's bare chest. Goddammit. Oh well, hopefully he'll just think I'm drunk or concussed. Or both.
I spend the entire rest of the concert getting boshed about. It's ace fun, and I get incredibly bruised (in the morning, Sophie mistakes one of my bruises for a tattoo of a rose... cool!). I barely get to see the band or their hot girly singer, but smeeh. I'm having fun, see if I care. There's also a camera pootling about over the crowd (we think it's filming for an Arch Enemy DVD), and I spend a good few minutes waving at it like a moron. Damn, now I have to go buy the DVD just in case I'm on it...
So we head back to Tara's tired and happy. But when we get there – oh no! – Tara’s gone to a club, and left us directions and an invite to come along. Well, shucks. I guess we'll just have to get changed and head on out there.
I put my foot down and decide (slightly irrationally) that there's not enough time for Sophie to shower before we go out, so she sulks and I end up sounding even more like her mother than before. Damn. Then we walk the twenty minutes or so to the club, trying not to be freaked out by the fact that OMIGOD WE'RE IN LONDON AND IT'S DARK AND PAST MIDNIGHT AND EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.... we're such tourists sometimes. But we find the club without too much hassle, then queue for half an hour or so. I steal a cigarette off Sophie and practise looking 'studiously unimpressed' (well, that's what she calls it anyway), and then chat up a bouncer. I'm trying to teach Sophie rules about going out and stuff (she has to learn sometime), and the first rule of nightclubs is always try to chat up the bouncers. I've no idea if you get into clubs easier that way or anything, but it's always done me fine.
Incidentally, apparently the second rule of nightclubs is 'no smoking', because the nice bouncer quits being chatted up long enough to tell me to put out my cigarette. This is marginally surreal, since you can smoke perfectly happily inside... just not in the entraceway, apparently. And then by the time I get inside I can't be arsed, because I suddenly have to face the prospect of meeting a bunch of my Romania friends again.
Did I mention that this has been scaring me? Maybe not scaring me enough that I don't want to do it, but the nerves are most definitely there. Part of the fact (if I'm being utterly honest with myself) is that I now know that a lot of the guys have read my Romania diary. Now, if this doesn't sound like a big deal to you, then it must just be a personal hang-up of mine – I get terrified whenever people read stuff I've written. KT is my only exception because... well, because she's KT and she'll forgive me if I write something utterly crap that she hates. Plus I'm still not convinced I didn't accidentally leave anything in the diary that would offend or annoy people. I'm not generally known for my tactfulness.
Staying on my little self-indulgent tangent for a moment, I had another scary thought about this the other day. It dawned on me that there's a direct link from the webpage with the Romania diary to the page where all my other stories live, and that meant that some of my Romania friends might have read them. I was having a reflective day when this thought occurred to me, so I tried to decide how I would feel if that was the case. I think my final decision was that I would be a lot more terrified and possibly even panicked than I would be pleased that someone had taken the time to read my stuff. Please don't ask me to explain why, but the thought genuinely terrified me, and I reassured myself with the fact that it was highly unlikely anyone would have gone to the trouble to trawl through my random wibblings.
Anyway, back to the point we go. The club we're at, Egg (‘Egg’? Who calls a club ‘Egg’?), has the weirdest layout of any I've ever seen. You have the (no smoking) entranceway and cloakroom, and then there's an open-air bit like a large garden with a marquee over it. There's a barbecue and a load of garden furniture in it. And then past the open-air bit you go into the actual club, which has three levels with different DJs on each and is generally club-like. It's all a bit surreal.
We get about halfway through the open-air bit and then we're spotted. Since I'm mildly drunk already and not wearing my glasses, all I see is a female figure come bounding over the garden furniture going, 'Raaaaaakkkkiiieeeeeeeeee!!' and then I get jumped on my Becky. Up until that point I hadn't realised how much I'd missed these guys, and I hug Becky like there's no tomorrow. Wow, it's sooo cool to see her again.
There's a large lurking ginger shadow coming towards us, and I break out in a huge grin. Aw, Dave's here too, and he's coming to hug us! Oh no, wait, he appears to have his invisible pistols in his hands... it would appear that he’s going to friendly greet me by attempting to shoot me in the head. Bloody typical. Since I have my arms full of Becky at that precise moment I can't do anything better than lift her off her feet and scoot backwards very quickly yelling, 'Human shield! HUMAN SHIELD!!'. Once Dave gets close enough I drop Becky and jump on him in a huge hug instead. It is also VERY good to see Dave... I can't believe I'd missed these guys so much.
Sophie gets roundly ignored by me as we head back to their table (I remember my manners enough to vaguely introduce her and steer her into a seat), and we meet the other guys they're with. Bear in mind my usual crapness with names, but Becky introduces us to Joy (a very nice boy from Canada who's apparently going to be working as a photographer for the Guardian), Mike (another equally nice boy who offered to let us sleep on his floor before Tara offered instead, so I officially have to be nice and buy drinks for him and stuff) and a guy whose name I consistently fail to remember and just call 'Blondie' all night. Tara is also floating about somewhere, and I stop to say hi and stuff to her, since we didn't get a huge amount of time to talk earlier. Klif and Vix turn up later, as well as Sal, and we have a big happy reunion. It's so cool. Klif especially manages to confuse me because he's changed his hair from bleach-blond-with-a-black-stripe to black-with-a-bleach-blond-stripe. How very confusing.
I accidentally offer to get a round in (argh, damn you London pub prices!), then steal a seat and commence talking bollocks for a good length of time. I spot Darren walking past and yell over at him. 'Hey, Darren! How's it going, mate?'
He does an absolutely perfect drunken doubletake. Well, I did warn him that I would be coming to London for the party on Saturday... oh, but I guess I never mentioned I might also be out on the Friday night. Hee hee hee... his little face is a picture. I bounce out of my chair and give him a slightly over-enthusiastic hug, then drag him back to sit with us. Since there isn't a spare seat, he flops down behind me and wraps an arm around my waist. We're both drunk enough that we don't really think much of it, but I unconsciously link my fingers with his and we get a couple of odd looks. Oops. Unintentional flirting is, apparently, me.
Speaking of people curled up on seats together – Dave and Becky are sharing a seat, and not just because there's a shortage. They've finally announced that they are a couple, and I can honestly say I am very happy about that. The two of them are adorable together. I wasn't sure that I could see it before, but I can now. It's so cute, and I tell them both so at some length.
After Darren gets fed up of being crushed into a chair with me and goes instead to find the bar ('I know I put it down here somewhere...'), I end up talking to Dave about various things. The chairs are quite low, and there's a table between us that's very convenient for resting your arms on, so we sit there with chins resting on folded arms, talking across the beer-covered table.
We chat about random general things, and then he asks me how my weekend went. I'd mentioned in my last email to him that my Uni friends were coming back, so I tell him that yeah, we had a fantastic time at the weekend. He asks if all my friends got home safe and I say yes, they did.
And then he says, 'So, did Special John come home as well?'
Even as I'm answering, 'yes', I'm frowning and I'm sure you can see the little cogs inside my mind slowly turning. I am almost completely certain that I have never mentioned Special John to Dave or anyone Dave knows, either during the Romania holiday or afterwards in emails. I've got a friend at home called Kevin who used to amuse himself by knowing things that I had definitely never told him, and that sort of thing always makes me immediately suspicious.
Dave puts me out of my misery. 'I've been reading the stories on your website.'
I blink, then make a very attractive noise that sounds a bit like, 'Nnnnnnggnn'. Shit. Well, I guess I had been wondering how I'd react if any of the guys had read my stories. Now I know, and it turns out that my guess was right – it’s a fun cross somewhere between embarrassment, terror and absolute panic. 'Nnnnggnn,' I say again. 'Argh. Why?'
Dave shrugs and says several very nice things about my writing. I'm already bright red – if I get any more embarrassed they're going to have to invent a new colour. My head's full of a constant repetition of ARSEARSEARSEBOLLOCKSFUCKFUCKARSEANDFUCK, but I find room to panic about exactly which stories he might have read. Already I'm going through my mental list and thinking, well, he must have read most of the 'My Stupid Life' stories because otherwise he wouldn't know about Special John but I only told everyone about the webpage a month ago so he won't have had time to read the big long stories and oh dear God please don't let him have found the fanfics or my godawful poetry... I calm myself down and ask him which ones.
And he smiles and says, 'Everything on your webpage.'
ARSEBOLLOCKSFUCKFUCKANDARSE. 'Everything?'
'Uh-huh.'
'....nnnngnnn...' My head goes down on the table and I cover it with my arms. Oh God. Why? WHY??? I can't even really tell you how much this is weirding me out. The only thing I can really compare it to would be me saying, 'yeah, I KNOW I said I didn't mind you reading my diary, and I KNOW I left it sat on the kitchen table, and I KNOW it was open to an obviously incriminating page but...' But... but goddammit, I never actually expected anyone to go and read those bloody stories. I assumed that everyone was basically like me – hugely well-intentioned but ultimately crap when it comes to actually making good with promises and the like. I tell people all the time that I'll read stuff but ninety-nine times out of a hundred I'm a lazy bitch and never get round to it. I just assumed that everyone did the same. I guess this proves that assumption really is the mother of all fuck-ups.
'I can make it worse,' Dave says helpfully.
I look up at him from under my arms. 'How can you make this worse?' I ask in the tone of someone who is really not sure if they want to hear this or not.
'Mucky Mick has read everything too.'
'Nnnnggnnn!' Does that make it worse? Well, it sure as hell doesn't make it any better. But no, I guess it doesn't make it any worse... probably because Mick isn't actually sat opposite me, telling this to my face, and smiling pleasantly as he does so. There is something that just deeply disturbs me about the idea of Dave having read everything I've put on my website. Possibly the fact that so many of the stories feature characters called 'Dave'. I start silently cursing Batista for having such an inconvenient first name.
'Anyway,' Dave says then, 'getting back to the original point.'
I'd forgotten that there was an original point. 'Uh-huh?'
'How's things going with you and Special John then?'
Ah, an easier topic to talk about. Thank God for that. I tell Dave that we're apparently back together for the duration of the holidays, and so far so good things are going great between us. Dave grins and tells me that's good news, and he's very glad that I'm happy.
'Things are pretty good for me at the moment,' he says, reaching over and squeezing Becky's shoulder in a very cute little gesture. Becky is talking to Blondie and has completely missed most of our conversation, fortunately. 'And I'm glad that things are good for you as well because...' He launches into a beautifully drunken speech about how we're good friends and if he's happy then he wants me to be happy and it's great that we're both happy. I can't stop myself from giggling and eventually wreck his train of thought by asking exactly how drunk he is. We both laugh and Becky rejoins the conversation to ask what we were talking about.
'You,' I tell her with my most innocent look. 'Dave was just saying how adorable you are, apart from the fact that your bellybutton sticks out and you're a bit flabby around the middle.'
I escape and go hide in the toilets while Dave tries to dig himself out of the convenient hole I've just made for him.
Anyway, I eventually return to the outside world, stopping off at the bar to buy some more hugely expensive beer. When I return to the table me and Dave exchange suspicious looks, then helpfully drop the previous topic of discussion. I drink beer and hope that Dave is now done with messing with my head for the night (yeah... no such luck there, but never mind).
Eventually, about half past three, Sophie gets sick of sitting outside in the cold and we take a taxi back to Tara's house. At this point I've got a serious feeling of, 'blargh, I can’t believe I’ve been awake for twenty-four hours, am exceptionally drunk, covered in bruises and somewhere utterly random in London'. I’m suspect that I'm going to need some serious sleep before tomorrow...
Next Story: No Rest (Part 2)