That steamy field trip report

1. TODAY IS MY FIRST ALAN-SPOTTING ANNIVERSARY!!! IT HAPPENED AROUND 5PM I THINK!!! ANYWAY!!! ALAN ALAN ALAN ALAN ALAN ALAN ALAN ALAN ALAN ALAN ALAN!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

2. I did end up in a room with...

THE GUY!!! :O

Feck, by now ya'll think I AM deeply in passion. Alas for you, he was shy around me/more likely BORED AND SCARED TO DEATH by me and so partied till 3.30am every night. Phew. I never got a chance to discuss anything with the hotel staff either (haha, everyone knows just how "good" I am at nagging), 'twas the guy who got the keys first. His responsibility to act shocked and scream "COOTIES!!!", and he didn't... dammit.

So desperate me was roomies with A GUY!!! Pity I didn't want him, but I thought of how cool any trip would have been if I became roomies with, say, Nick L/Alan/Joaquin/Brad D! :D The following situations would have taken place in a universe where Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad came along (hmm... bio-student trip... ah, bless your imagination) and are pretty much shaped like reality but upside down and mirrored and with inverted colours (I guess that sort of makes it "a negative", BUT IT WOULDN'T BE FECKING NEGATIVE!!!) and taste better when one licks the monitor.

~*~

Scene: Trip planning, day -5
Teacher: "So who here's got a driver license?"
Yoze: "ME ME ME ME!"
Teacher: "And which of you suckahs are early risers? We'll meet at the minivan rental place at 8am Monday."
Yoze: "Minivan? Maximum load? 8am? Monday? 300 km on the first day? COUNT ME IN!!!"
Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad: "As I am the kindest and best of men, I'll drive too."
Yoze: "Noooo! You'll relax in my minivan, I drive very softly."

Scene: Minivan, day 1
Stereo: *blasting Yoze's Mixed Burning Love Song Soundtrack for nick/alan/joaquin/brad... i mean all the passengers*
Yoze: "Oops! Sorry I ran over that moose, guess I was staring at you Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad! NOOOOOOOOO, RAVIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE..."

Scene: Hotel and base camp, day 1
Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad: "Oh, look here Yoze... Apparently the two of US will be staying in the same room!"
Yoze: "OMG! This is quite unexpected! Oh well, no turning back now, is there? Ehehehe..."

Scene: The Heron Room, day 1
Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad: "..."
Yoze: "..."
Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad: "So which bed do you want?"
Yoze: *faints* *resurfaces* "Doesn't matter, hehe... We're gonna share them at some point anyway."
Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad: "Nice room, this... Bed's too soft though. It'll kill my poor back... I may have to sleep on the floor. No, seriously."
Yoze: "As I'm certain you've noticed, I'm a real hardarse. You may sleep on me for as long as you like. You don't even have to sleep."
Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad: "Hmm, think I'll have a shower now."
Yoze: "Damn, I'm dying for a shower too. I just CAN'T wait."
Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad: "What a luxurious bathroom!"
Yoze: "Wow... Yeah... Big shower... Wait for me! I didn't bring my bikini, since that would have meant bad weather luck, but what the hell. We'll be working together for the next four years and might as well get intimate."

Scene: The Heron Room, evening 1
Yoze (calling from bathroom): "It's all right Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad, I totally respect that you didn't want me in the shower with you. Well, good things come to those who wait and the late shower I just had was divine!"
Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad: "That's... great."
Yoze: *trots into the room dressed in Tiny Pink Towel*
Yoze: *leans over to look for wildly imaginary item in bag*
Yoze: *gives up, turns around & leans over nick/alan/joaquin/brad*
Yoze: "Howd'ya like my Japanese cherry soap from Lushhhhh? Sniff right here... Oh, don't be shy, deeper you go, it's really... er... discrete and mild."
Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad: "I'd better go and... join the others out there and have some whisky. You coming?
Yoze: "COMING?! BLOODY 'ELL, EVERY TIME I THINK OF Y -- um, of course I'll party with you!"
Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad: "Damn, it accepted."

Scene: The Heron Room, day 2
Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad gone rugged Aragorn: "Ahhh, lovely morning! I'm going swimming in the fjord before breakfast... You coming?"
Yoze: "COMING, HELL YEAH! AS I SAID -- but, YES! You remember I brought no bikini, don't you?"
Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad: "Damn, I forgot."

Scene: The fjord
Fjord: *is gorgeous xcept in certain ugly photos*
Yoze: "Nick/Alan/Joaquin/Brad, it's probably illegal to shag in fjords in daylight, but it's full moon tonight..."

~*~

I could describe the rest of the trip which was also gorgeous but as I a) have still got no grasp of geology and b) am trying to forget all about it as was decapitated by exam today, screw that for now! :D Well, Monkeys is *COUGH*updated*COUGH* and the pix from this one & onward were taken during the trip.

"Now I'm gonna go home and have a heart attack." ~Pulp Fiction

Except I'm home already, but I could take the E-dawg for a walk. Moulin Rouge-Audrey style: GOOD-BYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! >:O

Huge muscular steaming bodies

I went to the race track today... (This blog is turning out hilariously.) I used to be their sort of-official photographer as I've been an 97% obsessively faithful visitor but now they've gone back to the evil OTHER PHOTOGRAPHER.

*drools over his pics for a while*

Cough... Where was I... Yes. I'm completely offended and will now go commit suicide under the bridge, the unemployed photographer's home from now on, ya know. Not really... But they could have ASKED me if I had anything better to do this year... which they haven't, and I haven't... Communications have been a bit bad but I know they knew how to contact me. Heck, I e-mailed one of their people a few weeks ago.

None of us losing much, the only thing they'd got right in the wee printed program was my mobile phone number:
Phone: "I DON'T WANT A LOVER..."
Yoze: "Y'ello."
Horse owner: "Are you at the track today? Will you shoot my horse if she wins?"
Yoze: "Yes... And yes... And if I wasn't here, I'd pick one of my *COUGH*many*COUGH* friends out of the warm and wonderful online photography community where everyone worships me seven times daily. Though you might want a trained vet to shoot your horse if she breaks her leg."
Horse owner: "Phew! That's wonderful!"
Yoze: "Not really... Were I so unprofessional as to ever skip this duty without notice you could sue my arse and buy every horse in Kentucky. Or summat."
Phone: "Click."
Phone: "I DON'T WANT A LOVER... I JUST NEE-"
Yoze: "NOW WHAT?!"
Horse owner: "WE WON!!! So could you please send all the perfectly sharp and existing photos you took of [the weirdest horse name ever] to [inaudible addy], after you've photoshopped them to perfection, oh, and include a frame, OK? 100 x 70 cm should do it! Bye bye!"

What they'd got wrong was my home number... So perhaps there is some confused old lady out there getting loads of...
sniffle...
lucrative calls from...
sniff...
rich-arse horse owners...
I THINK NOT! :D Think I did call this person sometime, though. So no one can blame me. *growl* Then I hinted to the race track people that maybe they should correct the home number.

Hmm... I should just have made that bloody photo site from the start and given them nothing but the addy to print.

Not that I've been keeping my mobile phone on a lot, as I'm trying not to get cancer, but Theeeey HAVE used my home number in the past. E-mail too.

Ah, bugger! No wonder they hated and fired my arse! They probably only let me stay for 1.3 seasons because they had more important things on their mind... They're curing all their childhood diseases and now the turn has come to me. Wonder what the OTHER PHOTOGRAPHER was up to in the meantime, since they asked lil ole me to shoot the horses.

Now I'm 4000% more motivated to endorse the site myself, I suppose... I SHALL INFECT EVERYONE WITH THE ADDY, MUAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!! Owners... Tracks... Horse communities... Riding schools... Ahhh. And then I'll e-mail THE track and ask "Whyyyyy?" (I have a CV to think about.) "And I'm so suicidal!" (Not at the moment.) "That was my only source of income!" (Luckily not.)

Mmhm...

Anyway, think today's photos sucked... And I broke a fence by standing on it... See, I had to, since the OTHER PHOTOGRAPHER keeps running in front of me the whole time and he's taller. A kid was also standing on the fence but no, I didn't manage to kill any children today. (Hmm... not directly, that is...)
Yoze: "Feck, I'd better act concerned."
Yoze: "OMG, are you all right?!"
Kid: "Um... yeah?"
Kiddo was a hardarse kid jockey who'd probably fallen off higher and faster things than fences.

-----------------------

The perfect and existing photos from today won't be online for a while though, since I'm going on a bit of a school trip... For a week... Geology stuff... I happen to know the hotel (no... we're not bringing tents... hehehe...!) knows their gourmet (well, so it seemed) vegan CuIsIiIiIiIiIiInE and I guess we're gonna spend the sunny (YES!!! SUNNY, DAMMIT, SUNNY!) days staring at rocks and at night my classmates will party for hours, leaving me free to relax with some Sonnet 130. (Gotta bring something Alan, don't I.) And... a... school book...

Perfect, except, according to a list, it looks like I'll be roomies with...

A GUY!!! :O

COOTIES!!!

Nothing against him, but, erm, if we end up being the ONLY mixed roomies (that'd be my luck, and the first time in history as I know it, and ya know, I know it all) everyone will think I have much less against him than I have...! Or worse, HE will think I'm stalking him. I was only sitting next to him in class and signed my name on the school trip list after him... Naturally... Did someone interpret that as "WE'RE SHAGGERS"?

I'll ask the receptionist if there's any possibility of swapping people around, once we get there... In which case everyone will think I
a) hate the guy
b) stalk someone else
c) am trying to break up another pair

Yay... Paranoia...

Must act cool... By listening to Shakespeare and making out with the book...

Maybe we're not the only mixed roomies at all... In fact, if they mixed the guy and me, most likely they just broke the entire list into pairs... We're supposed to be cool bio-students who can speak of SSSEEEXXX over professional dinners -
Student 1: "...and then we killed the worms while they were having sex."
Student 2: "This rice is extreeeeeemely interesting! A hybrid, no? What had sex with what?"

- and not get all worked up over the gender of one's roomie BECAUSE IT DOESN'T MATTER, GET IT?! *stares around angrily*

Only in the movies would I inevitably fall deeply in passion with the guy. I hope no one else on the trip has seen to many movies.

Urgh.

*hits sonnet button*

I was just sitting in the Royal Court Theatre bar one evening...

... sipping some strong shit, I mean orange juice, when Alan Rickman did NOT walk in, since he was and is reportedly in Canada. :9 If I hadn't been so worried about school I could have visited the theatre about 23 days earlier, in which case my report might have looked something like this. (My friend's friend was apparently there, and I read that report the day before my journey. :) )

But anyway, I went to London on April 30 to see My name is Rachel Corrie, since it was DIRECTED BY ALAN!!! :D

Before I visited London in 1999, everyone asked in jolly voices: "Oh! London! That's nice! First visit? Are you going to see any plays or musicals then? :D" I was an immensely cool 15-year-old... "Why the feck would I want to do that?"

I had never before seen a play on my own time - only on kindergarten/school time. I don't even remember what any of those were about. There are two fragments - something huge and pizza-like in Alice in Wonderland (1992) and a guy reportedly dying of a heart attack in a small fishing boat in some random Swedish play (2000)... Well, wasn't that INTERESTING!!! :D

The entire 24 hour trip in 2005 kicked arse, because *SPOILER* I got to see Alan's play, *END OF SPOILER* but also because I had never travelled completely alone outside of ole Sweden before. (Thank you Rickmaniacs for taking care of lil me last year. :D ) I only got a headache (due to dehydration/skipped caffeine dose), lost twice or thrice (though never far and only through faults of my own... Hey, a map wouldn't have been THAT heavy... But if I were a mugger, I'd zoom in on confused map people), possibly harrassed (it's a good thing I still have trouble with certain Cute Bri'ish Accents) and not mugged, raped or mutilated at all!

The fabness started when I popped into my hostel to check in. A guy behind the counter, he reminded me of Colin from Love actually btw, started the following cool conversation:
Colinguy: "Where are you from, sweetie?"
Yoze: "Me?! Sweden."
Colin: "Sverige?"
Yoze: "Eh?"
Colin: "Sverige?"
Yoze: "Oh... yup."
Colin: "What brings you here?"
Yoze: "I'm - SQUEE - gonna - SQUEE - see - SQUEE - a - SQUEE - play!"
Colin: "What play?"
Yoze: "My name is Rachel Corrie." (This was repeated in vain a few times.)
Colin: "Uhhh... *looks at coworker who shrugs* Never heard of it... Why did you come all the way from Sweden to see it?"
Yoze, seer of trendily unknown tiny artsy political plays: "One of my favourite actors is directing it, so..."
Colin: "Who is that, then?"
Yoze: "Alan Rickman! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!" (Repeated ad nauseum (sp).)
Colin & Coworker: "WHO?!"
Yoze: *cannot believe londonpeople don't know about Him* "Seen Die Hard? Harry Potter? Ehehe?!"
Colin & Coworker: "Umm..." *shake heads* *mumble*
Coworker: "You know, Ewan McGregor works next door..."
Cool Yoze: "Oh, cool."

After throwing some crisp sheets onto my Ikea-ish bed and washing my sweaty red face and Rickmania-stinkin armpits I set off to battle the HUGE, HOT, PULSATING... city. (Yes, London was hot. Or maybe it was just me, thinking about the evening and mutilation.)

To avoid annoying Fate I went straight to the theatre and collected... my preciousss ticket! Then I looked around for the stage door. Just as the report had said, one was able to watch the entrance, bar door and stage door (which was in a dead-end-looking alley) from one street corner. Good to know in the future perhaps, hehe. But since I was 99% certain of Alan's distant whereabouts, I spent only 80% of the day watching the stage door alley. There was a great stone platform next to the theatre doorstep. Sunny side. Humongous Heathrow planes passing overhead. 700-page... geology... book... and... Slytherin... green... marker... pen... But the corner of my eye watched people passing into and out of the alley (er, bar door...).

With luck, I figured I might recognize the shape and colours and... *gasp*... smooth moves of an incredibly energetic man who would, I hoped, happily fly Canada-UK-Canada over one weekend to bless the final show of his play. I guess not. I guessed right. BOOHOO!!!

So, people, this long boring report is not going to lead up to any heavenly glimpse of Alan, if that's why you're still reading. :B *points and laughs evilly*

There didn't seem to be any fun shops in the area, so when I had lost enough Sprite and fangirly hope I found my way into the theatre's cool but cosy dungeon bar and tried to dream up which one of their white wines Alan had on April 7. :) Sadly I hate wine, so I asked for the orange juice mentioned in line #1 and sat and stared at the stairs, wrapping my head around the events from which I was separated by only... 23 days... and whatever distance Earth had travelled through space since then and whatnot, but I touched a lot of banisters that day.

I can't find the damn page in my old Bio-Potions book where it said (importantly...) how many protein molecules there are in a thumbprint, but it's dream-worthy number for a wee Rickmaniac risking infections from dirty old banisters.

And then I ascended the stairs described in the premiere report... The play was of course wonderfully directed! :D Though I tried to concentrate on the directing, I enjoyed the play itself more than I thought I would, since I also enjoy total political ignorance. And I suffer cruelly from lack of artistic insight on directing, hehe.

Anyway, Corrie was a great writer, and *cough* someone else *cough* is a great editor! (Hmm... I lack insight on editing too... Ah, what the hell! The result was cool.) Well acted, and funny where funniness was not, like, inappropriate. The room itself was quite tiny... (My god, if it had been Alan doing a monologue 4 m away for 1.5 hours... I wouldn't have noticed any mutilation. And I would have fought my fear of looking into people's eyes. :D ) The crowd was attentive, laughed easily and occasionally someone threw in "Oh!?" Awww...

According to the premiere report, no one coughed or moved during the first show. Hmm. I bet no one would have coughed here either if the guy next to me hadn't had a genuine cold. Weee. When the play ended, there was a long little silence studded with sobs. (Not from me... DAMN MY INSENSITIVITY!!! Hey Alan, I think you need to direct Black Beauty or something...) Then the crowd clapped their hands off (oops... mutilation theme resurfacing) for eons and Megan Dodds had to run back in twice.

The show must have been sold out too, because earlier I had overheard numerous desperate people asking to get in the line for unlikely return tix. In the theatre, it took a while before they managed to find seats (which were unnumbered) for everyone there. GO ALAN!!! :D

I wonder why exactly the gang of about three teenagers, one of them wearing a green dress, green socks and loads of black eye shadow, had come. (:B

I alley-lurked for a little while afterwards so that no new smart thought would hit me after I'd gone to bed, basically meaning "Of course Alan must have been there, because..." This never happened. Phew...

A while after I had gone to bed, unmutilated and fuzzy, some of my anonymous hostel roomies stormed in, hit the lights and rumbled about. I lay awake and thought "Ooooohhh yes... Please keep rumbling about so I can stay awake and thus think some more of how I'VE SEEN ALAN'S PLAY TONIGHT!!! IIIIIIIIIIIIH!!! FUZZZZZZZZZ!!!"

When my folks picked my up at the airport back home, Dad went "I read up on this Rachel Corrie, she was a lot like you I think!"
Yoze: "Ohhh! You think? *does not think often*"
Dad: "YES!!! She too wrote a lot of diaries and made lists of everything! Cool huh?"
Yoze: "..."
And I wear hoodies. And there's a baaaaad girl living in my room.

I also know frustration *rip tug arrrgh*, just like Corrie, and once in a while I get my arse off the wagon and become a "doer" in some way, but BLOODY 'ELL - she was a true doer, and in any case I don't do heroic things like bulldozer-wrestling, nor have I made burning speeches on poverty... especially not at age 10. Sniff.

So what have I done?
Written diaries. Worn hoodies.
1993: Read book about 50 things kiddies can do to save Earth and took it to my heart. The book will possibly save Earth.
2000: Read article on the consequences of education on overpopulation, etc. Education will possibly save Earth.
2003: Went closet vegan (as am paranoid I'm a lousy scary representative most days). Veganism will possibly save Earth.
2004: Heard Alan do a radio ad about Link Community Development and I thought it sounded like a good education-related organisation. Now I support them. Education will... hmm, you already know. Go Alan!
2004: Entered the Ranger Program at uni. Rangers (not always the Aragorn kind, exactly) will possibly save Earth.

However, I'm still horrible and none of the above required any guts. (THERE GO YOUR EXCUSES, PEOPLE.) Even if they will possibly save a piece of Earth, which is always nice.

Rickmania: Thinking about what you would have to do before Alan directs a play about your cool cool life. :9