Articles – Page 61

Further Disturbances From Dan’s Sleepy Head

Two more particularly strange dreams last night, probably owing at least slightly by the amount I drank at the SmartData Christmas meal, beforehand… and perhaps owing more to the phase I’ve been going though of consistently remembering what are usually quite trippy dreams. I’ve not been blogging them all (I had a dream the night before last, or thereabouts, in which both my grandfathers [actually already dead] died in quick succession, which was a bit odd) because I’ve not had much spare time in which to blog at all, but I can’t really not share the unusual stories my brain was telling me last night.

The Company Picnic Dream

The first of these dreams I remember because I woke up parched at about 3am, having not had quite enough water between stopping drinking alcohol and going to bed. It’s very obviously inspired quite heavily by the SmartData Christmas meal:

Simon, Alex, Gareth and I – everybody present at the Christmas dinner earlier in the evening – were having a picnic on the Aber promenade. We’d laid out a picnic rug right at the edge of the prom, where the drop-off to the beach begins, and we were eating soup from bowls. The tide was in and it was getting dark, and occasional waves would crash against the prom and splash us, so we all got off the picnic rug and dragged it further away from the sea. We were still getting sprayed and our soup was getting cold, so I suggested that we go to Paul‘s flat, nearby, where we could re-heat it.

When we got to Paul’s flat he wasn’t there, but Ruth was. She said that Paul wouldn’t mind us using his oven [!] to re-heat our soup, so we put our bowls in the oven and turned it on. Paul’s living room had distinct elements of The Flat and The Cottage to it, but the staircase downstairs was the one from my dad’s house. After a while, people started to arrive for Geek Night – just the usual people one would expect, but also two women I didn’t recognise. I went down the stairs to collect a box full of board games, and the stairs looked a lot like those at my dad’s house, but with the carpet we had when I was young.

I picked up the blue plastic box of board games [the same one that, in real life, has been used for months to transport games to and from Rory‘s place], but it was overfilled and hard to control, so I asked JTA to carry some of the games, which he did. Later, I persuaded Claire to carry some, too, although she objected to having to help. The box for the Friends & Foes expansion pack to Lord Of The Rings fell open, and I had to pick up all the pieces.

The Animated Cat Dream

The second dream of last night is far more weird and convoluted. It’s all-too-easy to find meaning in it relating to my life and the people in it, but I can assure you that if that appears to be the case, it’s coincidental – large segments of it are from a recurring dream I’ve had several times in the last seven or eight years. This doesn’t help my case for not being a fruitcake, though, I suppose. In any case:

The dream is told from a perspective in which I am an observer – like watching a film – rather than something of which I am part of with which I can interact. During the dream, I was aware that the story I was following was something I had seen before (previous occurrences of dreaming this, which is one of the far-less-frequent recurring stories I find in my dreams). Like previous times, however, I’ve had a sensation of "seeing more" in it this time around than any previous time [another common theme in several of my recurring dreams is a feeling that I’m being told a story in fragments, seeing a bigger picture every time]: a clearer picture, a more-understandable plot, and a longer and better-planned tale.

The dream is also always told through the medium of animation, and the animation style in itself is worthy of mention. It has a particularly hand-drawn feel to it, uses very strong blocks of colour, a slightly-too-small frame rate, and it is animated entirely without outlines around the characters and their features. It’s very slightly glossy, like poster paint. Those "common" bits aside, here’s the dream:

An anthropomorphic black tom cat walks up a stairwell, as seen from a "floating camera" ascending the stairs ahead of him, in a grubby, run-down old house. He has a cheeky grin on his face as he reaches the top of the stairs and enters what appears to be his bedroom, and makes the bed, while we hear his voice as a voice-over monologue. He’s trying to impress a woman he lives with in order to sleep with her. He gets into the bed.

Later, the woman comes home. She’s tall with long unkempt blonde hair, and she’s wearing a black dress, and she’s animated in the same style as the cat (although she’s the most human-looking character in the entire story). She goes to the bedroom, and it becomes apparent [from the voiceover? I don’t remember] that it’s her room, not the cat’s. She appears to be angry that the cat has crept in to her bed, and she sternly demands that he returns to his own room. He slinks out, and she follows him, watching him skulk back to his own room, where she insists that she must punish him for his impertinence. A series of kinky games ensue, and it’s obvious that what I’m now seeing is the true nature of the relationship between the cat and this woman: one based on cheeky misbehaviour, control, sex, and sadomasochism. She threatens him, and slaps him, and makes him sit bare-bottomed on a hot radiator, and as the camera pulls away from the scene we see some text appear that for some reason tell us their "safe word" (well, a "safe phrase", really): it begins "I wish I knew the name of…" and finishes with a monicker by which we know the woman. [but since waking, I don’t remember what it is]

The dream shows another two inhabitants of the house [only one of which I can recall well enough to describe] – one of these has distinctly pig-like features. He’s excitable and slightly nervous and talks with a stutter, but he’s likable and gets on well with the other people he lives with, including the other one in this scene. The two talk [but I don’t recall about what] as the opening credits begin to appear (large, serifed white letters) and the view explores the house, seeing a great deal of filth and squalor and a generally disturbing level of decay. At one point, we see an ill and dying rat bite off and eat the eye (and surrounding face) of a dead and decomposing rat.

Some time later [there’s a huge plot hole here, and I’m convinced my brain simply hasn’t seen fit to fill it in yet], a black bakelite telephone rings at the house, and the woman answers it. We hear the voice on the other end of the phone threaten [perhaps blackmailing] her, and she appears genuinely scared. She tries to respond, boldly, to hide her fear, but the voice on the phone is being played from an old-fashioned record turntable in a car parked over the street, connected to a car-phone. The cat, the woman, the pig-man, and the fourth housemate gather to discus what to do about this threat.

New aspects in this dream since the last time I had it include: a great deal more clarity on the animation style of the cat (and the woman, to a lesser extent), the discovery that the woman and the cat have a "safe word," the dead rat (the other rat has always featured, but it’s new to see it being cannibalistic), and the woman’s face while she is being threatened (previously, I’ve "been looking at" the record player at the time).

So, that’s another episode in one of my more-unusual recurring dreams (and not a common one; I’ve only had that particular dream about four times so far, as far as I can tell). Interpretations, as always, welcome, but if you’d prefer to just sit quietly and think, "wow, that guy’s fucked up," that’s cool too.

Another Strange Dream

Well, I’m in Derby (after a hideously long and complicated journey involving long train delays, diversions, and a taxi ride – lost – around the middle of Derby city centre) visiting my friend Katie.

And another strange dream for my collection. But this one isn’t suitable for print (no, not in that way), so you’ll have to wait and ask about it.

Back in Aber tomorrow afternoon. Have a great Troma Night 200!

Christmas Cards

[thanks to several people for the suggestion behind this post]

I’ve never really "got" the sending of Christmas cards, or, really, got "into" it. It feels like a waste of overpriced paper to line the pockets of big printing companies just to save you the bother of actually picking up the phone and talking to the people you care about over the holiday season. So I won’t be sending any. But read on.

If you would have liked a Christmas card from me (and I know you!), leave your name and e-mail address using the comments form for this post. In exchange, I’ll donate £1 to Samaritans of Aberystwyth and Mid-Wales (my local Samaritans branch) in your name. Plus a £25 ‘kitty’ in the names of you all.

Samaritans volunteers will be working round the clock on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day – just like every other day in the year – to provide emotional support to those who are suffering from feelings of distress or despair, including those which may lead to suicide. Christmas can be a difficult time for many people, and this vital service – provided by telephone, post, and e-mail, as well as by face-to-face contacts – can, for some, make all the difference.

Technical note: You’ll probably end up classified as blogspam if you leave an empty comment, so say something, even if it’s just "Merry Christmas!"

We’re Going Down

Another strange dream last night:

I was in a small aircraft (one aisle, two seats either side, about 80 seats in total, two jet engines, for those who feel the need to identify the aircraft in my dreams), sat by a window on the left hand-side, when the right-hand engine caught fire. The plane was forced to make an emergency water landing somewhere off the coast of India. The other passengers and I were all instructed to put on our life-jackets, fasten our seat belts, and brace for impact, but as the plane went down, I suddenly came to an understanding that we were all going to be okay. I took off my seatbelt and stood up moments before the plane hit the water, and (despite a little juddering) I was perfectly okay. Around me people were panicking, but I was completely calm.

Read into that whatever you like.

Suppose I’d better start my Christmas shopping, today.

A Quick Play With HTML5

I’ve been playing with HTML 5 a little this morning. It’s really quite fabulous: a lot of smart design decisions have been made and it looks like – given a good few years to get things up to scratch even after the specification has been finalised – it’ll really provide a lot of useful tools to help the web developers of tomorrow reach their goals more easily and in a more structured way.

I knocked up a quick test page to see how the code comes together, and, in particular, to play with the new sectioning elements that can be used to state what parts of the page have what purpose and what their relationship is to the rest of the document. So far, so good. Then I tried to style them.

HTML5 Test in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7

Internet Explorer 7 didn’t really stand a chance, I suppose. Microsoft don’t have any plans to support either HTML 5 or XHTML 2 – an alternative language for the future web – and that probably won’t change until they think they’re losing browser market share over it. That’ll happen, perhaps, but much slower than they lost market share to Firefox over issues of speed and security: the media make a far bigger deal of computer security these days than they ever will about standards-compliance, because standards-compliance doesn’t sell newspapers.

So yeah; IE7 got all the content, at least, thanks to the fact that HTML 5 is backwards-compatible (in a way that XHTML 2 simply isn’t), and the page is just about understandable. But it wouldn’t allow CSS styles to be applied to any of the "new" tags it didn’t understand, so the page is quite a bit more simplistic that it should have been.

I’d expected more from the latest beta version of Mozilla Firefox – Mozilla are, along with Apple, perhaps the biggest supporters of HTML 5 as the future of the web. Unfortunately, I was mistaken.

Perhaps the majority of the HTML 5 support will come in a later release of Firefox – although it’d be nice it they supported at least the core, well-understood features in the final release of Firefox 3. Yeah, yeah, I know they’ve started to implement support for things like <canvas> and stuff, but it’s hard to get excited about things that, while cool, I’m just not likely to use.

Firefox understood that there was something to do with floating something in the <aside> element, but didn’t do a very good job of actually floating it, instead just drawing a box where it might have put it if it understood it better. This is actually just slightly worse behavior than IE, which failed to understand but didn’t half-heartedly try to interpret what it didn’t "get." Nonetheless, Firefox still rendered a readable, understandable page – good old backwards-compatibility, there.

Opera, as I’d have expected, excelled here. Opera’s support for emerging standards has always been impressive, and this was no exception, as it rendered the page almost exactly as I would have expected. It genuinely seems to understand the new sectioning elements provided by HTML 5 (although a later experiment has shown that this is possibly just because it will happily interpret CSS directives for unrecognised elements: however, this is a good future-proofing strategy for any browser – had Mozilla taken this approach, the majority of the page would have looked perfect in Firefox, too).

In short, we’re a long way from being able to use HTML 5 in any real way, and all the exciting things it’s bringing will have to wait for now. But I expect we’ll be seeing better and better compliance with the standard as the standard becomes more finalised next year and the geeks at the major browser manufacturers compete to have the coolest features first. My prediction? Lead by Opera, Safari, and Firefox (as well as Konquerer, which I gather is also likely to support HTML 5 early), we’ll start seeing usable snippets of some of the fun things the future of the web will bring us as early as next year, and Microsoft will – eventually – give in and implement them in Internet Explorer too.

In the meantime, it’s been fun to read through the current working draft specification for what I think is likely to be the more popular language of the next generation of the web. But that’s perhaps just because I’m the kind of person who enjoys reading specifications for fun.

Update: Two more browser snapshots (thanks Katie).

Camino, as you might expect, looks pretty much identical to Firefox.

Safari fares well, rendering the page in the same way as Opera did, seemingly understanding all of the elements perfectly.

High Places

Another unusual dream last night. I’d meant to blog about it earlier in the day, before it faded, but it’s been a ludicrously busy day with one thing and another and I didn’t get a chance. I slept kind-of fitfully, I think, and I’m pretty sure this dream came to me in two distinct chapters, because I remember details that I’d become aware of after falling asleep a second time, even though they applied to the dream I’d remembered after waking up for the first time during the night. Strange.

Claire and I were at Gregynog, just as we were last month, to help out with the Computer Science Department away weekend. Unusually, though, the majority of the guests were accommodated in tents scattered around the grounds of the hall, rather than in bedrooms in the building itself. We’d arrived early in the day, and had trouble persuading the staff that we were supposed to be there, and when we were finally able to drop off our bags we decided to wander into the nearby town [there isn’t actually a town for miles and miles around] and look around.

In need of some lunch, we got a taxi and asked for a lift to a cafe we’d heard about, but he took us to a beach. We walked along a rickety walkway (which had evidently been replaced recently, but not very well) laid over the beach, and it was hard to follow because it was becoming covered in sand, but we just about found our way, despite protests from Claire that we should try a different route. The beach opened up to a series of villas and some kind of tourist resort, and we realised that the taxi had dropped us off far further from the cafe than we had imagined.

We took a shortcut through a dry ski slope, and I remember walking across a very high open-sided bridge, which Claire again objected to.

I’m sure there were significant other bits to the dream, but I don’t remember them now. Strange stuff. Perhaps I need to relax a little and think less.

It’s Good To Be Me

It’s Sunday morning. I’ve just eaten a second crumpet, put some music on, and I’m working on writing some interesting program code for a project I’m involved with.

Ruth just challenged Claire to have a shower in less time than it takes her to go to the shops and buy some milk. Then made it more challenging by putting obstacles in her way, which she’s trying to negotiate while not flashing the neighbours through the windows – made challenging by the fact that she’s wearing my dressing gown, and it doesn’t have a belt.

JTA‘s just booted up the Nintendo Wii and is going to play a game of Super Paper Mario.

I comlpain about being busy, sometimes: about never having any free time. But I supopse that’s the way I like it. I wouldn’t wish it any other way.

Better get on with that code.

The Aber Masterplan

Have you seen the Aber Masterplan yet? The Welsh Development Agency/Welsh Assembly Government/Ceredigion County Council document that takes a SimCity-like approach to planning the future development of Aberystwyth.

No? You oughta. Here: download a copy [PDF].

It’s got some good bits. Re-routing some of the trunk roads to improve traffic flow and reduce dependence on the older, narrower roads through Llanbadarn and the town centre – good. Better use of Park & Ride schemes and a reorganisation of public transport – good. Reorganising parking spaces, making more space to park in the town centre and prioritising residents’ access to the parking spaces outside their houses – good. Better cycle lanes and cycleway connections – good. You see where I’m coming from.

And it’s got some… other bits. Moving the railway station quarter of a mile up the line and out of the town centre – not so good. Concrete everywhere – umm. Building a stadium – y’what?

The whole thing’s filled with buzzphrases, like “The overall concept for this area is to create a new piece of town commensurate with that achieved in the Victorian period.” But with a bit of work, it’s possible to cut through the cruft and get to the key points of the proposal. Here are some of the more fascinating segments:

“Whilst a continuing University function for Old College is desirable, there are also possible complementary uses such as a high quality boutique hotel or art gallery.”
“Park Avenue could be developed as a positive, integrated part of town if the railway station was moved east to an area adjacent to the Vale of Rheidol Station.”
“Redeveloped football club site as high quality mixed use development developed on a grid pattern.”
“Mill Street car park development comprised of multistorey car park and retail units.”
“Redevelopment of cinema site.” (hint: it involves persuading the cinema to move elsewhere)

There’s a meeting open to the public in the WAG side of the Technium, on the marina, at 5:30 on Monday 10th December, so if you’d like to ask any questions about the plans, to enthuse or complain, or just to make your voice heard – in fact, if you have any opinion at all about these plans – you should come along and say your piece.

Further reading: Issue 10 of The Cambrian Snooze pokes fun at the Masterplan in it’s own way.

Oh, And My Sisters Are Black

Strange dream last night. I only remember fragments of it, but here’s what I do:

At some point during it, I left work at lunchtime to visit my dad and my sisters (who lived, conveniently, within walking distance of work). I bought a bag of sherbert along the way, but I was disappointed with how clumpy it was. I met my sisters – Sarah and Becky – on the way to my dad’s house, and Becky told me that she’s just got a job working at a chain bakery (a Greggs-like place) conveniently situated at the end of my dad’s road. Sarah teased Becky about the low level of skill required to do her job, and they argued. Oh, and both Sarah and Becky were black – I’m not sure how that’s relevant, it wasn’t important in the dream, I don’t think, and in fact it’s only now, thinking back over the dream, that I’ve noticed that that’s a little unusual.

In any case; when we got to my dad’s (and I’d almost finished my bag of sherbert) he tried to persuade me that I needed to start running up and down a hill in order to get into training for some kind of event, but I pointed out that I needed to get back to work, so I left.

When I got back to work, the caterers were carrying some kind of large soup pan and a ladle along the corridor to the kitchen on our floor.

The creepy bit of this is that when I got to work this morning and popped my head into the kitchen opposite our office, there is a large soup pan in there. It’s a fair bit smaller than the one in my dream, but it’s in the same style. Weird.

Interpretations welcome, as usual, but don’t expect to make sense of me.

Reactions To The Unholy Alliance

See these squares? See these circles? See the different colours? You are falling under a trance. When you wake up, you will have no clue what this blog post is about. Here’s a blog post I’ve been meaning to write for several months now: it’s about some of the varied and different ways that people reacted to the news that Ruth and I were together, and that Claire and JTA were also a couple (and, of course, Ruth and JTA are still the fabulous pair they always were, and Claire and I are still ticking along nicely with the wonderful relationship that we have). There probably aren’t many people who’ll read this to whom that news will be a shock (after all, Ruth made a friends-only post some time ago, and Claire dropped a one-liner into a recent blog post), so I’ll gloss over it and get on to what I actually wanted to write about.

I don’t want to write about how brilliantly it’s going so far – although it is – because you’ve probably heard that enough. I don’t want to spout liberal nonsense about personal freedoms and choices and what’s right for us, because I don’t feel the need to prove that what we’re all “up to” feels right. Hell, I don’t even want to try to argue that polyamory is as valid as a lifestyle choice as the infinitely more popular serial monogamy (but if you want to buy me a pint, we can debate that particular idea until the sun goes down).

All I’d like to do right now is share with you some of the fascinating reactions that I’ve heard (or overheard) since breaking the news of our new relationship structure to friends and family. Because, in the end, that’ll make more amusing reading material, and if I’m to be remembered for anything, I’d like it to be that I made people laugh.

Oh; there’s a few references to sex (but almost none to particular sexual activities), so please insert the usual disclaimer here and cover the eyes of the child that’s sat on your lap while you’re reading this. Ta. Seriously, it’s all pretty tame; enough to make a 14-year-old blush but nothing that’ll put you off your dinner or stop you from making eye contact with any of us, but I just felt like I ought to warn you before you started e-mailing me your complaints.

So, skim read it, or skip it, or drill down to the funny bits. But if I put this all down here, now, it’ll save me revisiting it all in quite such ludicrous detail in future, and I can spare the abnib front page the excesses of my ramblings.

Common Reactions

Here are some of the things that loads of people said:

“Congratulations!”

Okay, so perhaps it shouldn’t be right up here at the top of the list of the most common reactions we’ve gotten when one of us has “come out” about our somewhat unorthodox relationship structure. That top spot should perhaps belong to “Umm… what?”“You’re joking, right?” But it has been a popular response – more popular than I expected – and it’s been great to have this kind of support from so many people. To the handful of friends and family members who were so open-minded that their first reaction was “So you’ve gotten into a new relationship and you’re happy? Well; congratulations are in order!”, I salute you: you’ve shown an unprecedented level of acceptance and understanding.

That’s not to say that anybody who said anything else is somehow less thoughtful: just, in many cases, more shocked or surprised. And, in the end, almost everybody who knows has said “Well that’s great, then!” or something similar after they’d been given a while to think about it. It’s not easy to know the correct social etiquette procedure to follow when given news like this, so we were braced for a lot of confused faces, and we saw far fewer than we anticipated. Good for you.

Or, to put it another way: congratulations yourself!

“I couldn’t do it!”

This is a really, really common response. There are two things that I can really say to it:

You might be surprised. Relationships aren’t just something you’re good at or bad at; there are skills that can be learned – and that goes for all kinds of relationships, even creepy weird ones like mine. It’s possible to learn to be able to organise yourself (and your time!) in multiple relationships, and it’s possible to learn the communication skills and trust it takes to talk about things like jealousy and shit like that.
But that doesn’t matter anyway. You couldn’t do it? Okay.

We know that this kind of silliness isn’t for everybody. And don’t worry, polyamory isn’t contagious like smallpox or homosexuality: we’re not going to try to infect you and make you in to evil sex-crazed swingers like us. Even though that’s not what we are. Probably.

“Don’t you get jealous, though?”

Yes. Almost everybody in the world gets jealous at some point or other; it’s perfectly natural and – like any other negative emotion – it can be worked through.

Jealousy is one of the first things that comes to many people’s minds as being a potential problem with this kind of relationship. And perhaps it is. But it’s important not to forget that jealousy isn’t limited to non-monogamy. I’ve felt jealous during perfectly healthy, happy, committed, monogamous relationships before: because I’ve not gotten to spent as long with my lover as I’d like (and, perhaps, when somebody else – their friend, perhaps – has), or not been emotionally as close to them as somebody else, or when they’ve talked about their past sexual conquests or the size, stamina, or general studliness of their last lover. I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

Something I’ve learnt of late, though, is how important it is to talk about feelings of jealousy, so that your partner(s) know exactly what it is that bothers you and so that, between you, you can come to compromises and agreements that make these feelings bearable, or make them go away entirely. And even if it doesn’t all work out (and let’s face it: statistically speaking, our age and the novelty of our new relationships alone counts against it), I’ll have learnt a couple of important lessons about communication in relationships.

Did you know that many biologists consider parrots to be one of the most jealous species on the planet? I don’t remember where I learnt that, but it sounds like it could be true. Hmm; they’re monogamous breeders. Perhaps I’m undermining my point with my knowledge of stupid fun facts. Damn.

“What happens if one of the four relationships breaks up? How will that affect the rest of them?”

For all the planning and all the talking we’ve done, we can’t answer questions like this one. They’re just too tough, with too many unknown factors. I’d like to think that if one of our partnerships split, the other three might be able to continue, but the ripple effects of that kind of break-up might be too much, and other splits may occur as a result.

It’s a risk we’re willing to take. Just like the risk of a heart-breaking separation doesn’t stop you from throwing yourself headlong into a relationship with somebody you adore, we’re risking our relationships and our friendships by establishing these new, less-common relationships. I think it’s worth it. You’re welcome to disagree, but you can’t feel what I feel.

On the other hand, we have all fitted ourselves with stylish tamper-proof detonator collars like the one shown below, wired so that if one of us does leave the presence of the other three for more than a week, their collar will self destruct. It’s the single best way to keep us together.

Less Common Reactions

This section contains a selection of the less-common responses to our news.

“So you’re all getting lots of sex, then?”

Not as much as you’d expect, I’d bet. I’d estimate that the average frequency at which any given one of us gets a bit of nookie has barely increased at all (or maybe that’s just what they want me to think). The increase in the amount of sex I was getting when, for example, I went from being single to being in a relationship: that was a hell of a leap, for sure. The increase when I went from being in one committed relationship to being in two? Far less significant.

Sex is great, but – in my mind at least – it’s not among the biggest things I look at in a relationship.

Breasts are the biggest things I look at in a relationship.

Ahem.

Those last two lines were a joke, by the way, in case it wasn’t obvious.

“So have you have a threesome yet?”

A few people have asked this, and it’s honestly surprised me how often it’s come up. Moreover, I was really surprised when one person in particular was quite shocked at the answer: no, we haven’t.

I’ve have a couple of threesomes over the years, but none of them have ever involved Ruth or JTA.

I’m not sure why people think of this first. Perhaps it’s because threesomes are some great romantic mystery in so many people’s minds: to be fair, there aren’t many men who’d turn down the opportunity for a bedroom experience with two Hot Bi Babes. Perhaps it’s because it seems like an obvious “next step.” I don’t know.

In any case: the answer’s no. Perhaps it’ll happen someday, but it’s not the most important thing to sort out. Far more important questions that you don’t think of until you end up in a relationship like this are far more mundane things like:

Who gets the front seat in the car?
Who pays for dinner?
Which side of the bed do I sleep on? Your other lover sleeps on that side, but I prefer to sleep on this side.
This invitation says “Plus partner.” Who do I take?
What are we doing for Christmas?
If I cook, who washes up? (turns out the answer is often “nobody”)
Who have I just woken up next to? I’m not sober yet and it’s still dark and I can’t remember who I got into bed with. I could prod them and listen to them grunt in their sleep, see if I can identify them that way… or perhaps I could turn the reading light on for just a second…

The big questions are so often the ones you don’t anticipate.

“Have you ever thought about… umm… crossing the square?”

Another reasonably popular but not really common question: is there any potential of a relationship between JTA and I? Or between Claire and Ruth?

Between JTA and I? No. JTA’s very definitely straight, and even with gender cast aside, I’m not sure we’d be “compatible” in the way that I wildly speculate he’d want (note: wild speculation).

Ruth and Claire? Well, it’s not my place to say what they think or feel. Whether or not that interests them is up to them, of course, but it’s my impression that neither of them have any intention of drawing any kind of “relationship line” through our “square,” at least not a line comparable to the lines that form it’s edges.

I’ll set the webcam up, though, just in case. Don’t click here if you want to see it.

“But how can you love two people at once?”

That’s a far bigger, more philosophical point than I’d like to go in to detail on here. A better question is: why is it that you think you can’t love more than one person at once?

My belief is that love is, fundamentally, chemicals in the brain: and I find it hard to believe that the chemicals in my brain have the concept of “counting to two” (in fact, I’ve discovered on long evenings in the pub, if I put enough chemicals in to my brain, I can’t even count to two): they’re a lot simpler than that. “Oh no,” says the brain-chemistry, “I can’t possibly make more of this chemical in the presence of that person, because I already make that chemical when I’m in the presence of that other person!” Please.

Love’s a remarkable thing, y’see, because there’s no “starvation economy” of it: when a mother has a second child, she doesn’t love the first one any less because of it. I don’t believe for a minute that we’re born with a certain quantity of “love juice” (ahem) in us and we use it up by loving people (damn, I really should have thought of a better term than “love juice,” which is just icky-sounding). Unlike time, money, and energy, love is virtually limitless, and you don’t run out of it just because there are more people who you care about.

Love Juice? Who the fuck comes up with these product names anyway? In case you were wondering, it's a lubricant oil for... painball guns. What?

“So how do you find the time, money, and energy for two relationships?”

Now that’s a better question. With great difficulty.

It genuinely is quite a challenge to find enough hours in a day, sometimes, and it takes a reasonable amount of planning to ensure that you even get enough time to yourself. In particular, I’ve found it very difficult to spend as much time with my other friends as I would like, and that’s something I’m working on improving.

Google Calendar is my friend. With it’s text-message alerts (*beep* *beep* *beep* “Oh shit, I’m supposed to be in bed with somebody!”), it’s a lifesaver.

“What does this mean for QParty? What does this mean for Ruth & JTA’s plans to marry?”

That’s two questions, but two that often get lumped together, despite the fact that they’re two very different questions. Let’s look at them one at a time:

Firstly, QParty. The (in some ways) unfortunate timing of my new partnership – getting a new girlfriend just weeks before a party to celebrate my relationship with my established girlfriend – and a similar situation for Claire… may have, we understand, confused the message of QParty for some people. And for that, I apologise.

The meaning of QParty doesn’t change, of course. It was always a celebration of Claire and I’s love for and commitment to one another, and that love and that commitment hasn’t changed one bit for the addition of an extra lover each. QParty itself was, of course, a special day for the pair of us, and those of you present may have observed that Ruth and JTA kept a respectable distance away (not least to reduce the risk of confusing some of our relatives); a favour we’ll be returning at their wedding in… what?… just under three years time.

I can’t speak for Ruth and JTA and their plans, but it’s my understanding that there’s no change in them. They still plan to marry, and marriage still seems to mean the same thing to them as it already did. And while marriage isn’t for Claire and I, I think I speak for us both when I say that we respect their choice to tie the knot in that way and we agree that it’s the right thing for them, and we’re really happy that they’re doing it.

I suppose that one obvious up-shot is that Claire could be the stripper for JTA’s stag party. Or is that just a little bit too weird?

“But, I mean: why are you having a party with Claire and not with Ruth?”

Because I’ve been with Claire for five and a bit years, and (at the time of QParty) I’d been with Ruth for less than a month. Is that a good enough reason? Part of QParty was celebrating that, after five years, Claire and I are still together. Many relationships don’t make it that far, and, in many ways, it’s a pleasant surprise that Claire and I did, especially considering how we started our relationships.

Perhaps, if everything goes smoothly, we’ll have another party in 2012 to celebrate both Ruth and I and Claire and JTA’s relationships. You’ll just have to wait and see.

And if we do, you can almost guarantee it’ll be fancy dress. Sorry, Jimmy. In any case, start thinking of suggested foursome-themed costume ideas suitable for two men and two women now (no, we’re not going as ABBA).

No, no, no, and no.

Pretty Unique Reactions

Finally, here’s a list of things that people have said that’s just a little bit more “off the wall.”

[silence; nods of approval]

One particular couple – who discovered our “quad” by accident because we forgot that we hadn’t told them and they “noticed” – took the approach of being so cool with it that they didn’t even feel the need to pass comment on it. “Oh, so they’re together now. Should I be shocked?” That’s pretty damn unique.

An alternative theory is that the people in question were shocked into silence. Or perhaps had taken a vow of silence as part of some religious cult. But I like my theory.

“It expect it’ll be a fucking disaster.”

We’re sorry to hear that a handful of our friends – thankfully very few – don’t think that it can possibly work out.

It may well not work out. There are loads of things that can go wrong in any new relationship (and, in fact, there are plenty that can go wrong in old relationships, too). We don’t think for a moment that it’ll be an easy thing to make work, but we’re glad that we’re able to work towards making it the success we hope it will be. We’ve laid a lot of important groundwork to help us support one another and to make it work, and we think we’ve got as good a chance as any relationship does.

Worst case, we’ve always got the exploding collars.

“Wow. So four of my friends are now each in a threesome? That’s ace!”

And that’s thinking like a mathematician. It’s not accurate, of course: I mentioned above that “threesomes” haven’t happened, and in poly-parlance, a “vee” (two people joined by one in the middle, in a ‘V’ shape) is a more accurate way of looking at any individual one of us, rather than a “threesome” or “triad” (which implies a relationship between the two people at the tips of the ‘V’). But honestly, mate, you call us whatever the fuck you want, because you had one of the single coolest-sounding responses to the news of anybody, and a ludicrous grin to go with it.

Fourplay

“So, what about children?”

Honestly, I’m surprised more people didn’t ask this question; especially among those who hope themselves to be grandparents in the making. But I was very impressed when somebody did ask, especially as the answer is so simple and unfinalised.

We’re not sure. Children may be on the agenda some way down the line, but we’ve still got a lot of discussion to do on that subject (and, to be fair, there are more immediate things on the agenda right now, like – who gets the front seat in the car? who pays for dinner? – and so on).

Me? I think the four of us would make great parents, and no, I don’t think the fact that theoretical far-future potential children would, in general, give a fig that for some reason they’ve got between two and four times as many parents as their peers. Hmm… I’ve just thought about that: surely I meant to say *exactly* two or four times: it’s not like we can comprise three times as many people as any other set of people: apologies if I’m wrong to any single-and-a-third parent families out there.

Really, though, that’s a fucking huge question to ask pretty much anybody who’s been in a relationship for three months or so. You might as well ask if we have a mortgage together yet or if we’ve reached that level of intimacy in which it’s okay to fart in bed: one step at a time, now, folks!

“What do you call each other? What do I call you?”

Well, I’m Dan, and that’s Claire, and over there is Ruth, and… oh, but that wasn’t what you were asking, was it? What you mean is, if Claire is my “partner,” then who is Ruth?

It must be so much easier to be Ruth or JTA, in this regard. Ruth, for example, can call me her boyfriend and JTA her fiance. I don’t have that luxury, so I tend to call them both my partners, or, better yet, refer to them by name (particularly when talking to somebody who’s only just discovered that “partner” doesn’t have to imply that there is exactly one of them).

What do you call us? Call us anything you like, for all I care! But I know what you’re asking: you’re saying, “I was telling my friend about this couple I know, then I realised that ‘couple’ might not be the right word, then it all got complicated…” Yeah, sorry about that: we didn’t mean to make things complicated for you. I quite like the word “quad.” It may make us sound a bit like small motor vehicle, but it’s an easy-to-remember, short, and understandable word: people tend to just work out what you mean when you say it, and so you don’t get yourself into any excessive complexity.

But honestly; if it makes your life easier to pretend to other people that you don’t know that we’re four couples at all, that’s fine by me too. Conversely, if you want to tell everybody you meet, that’s probably okay as well (albeit just a little bit creepy). There are more important things in life than the words you use. Like who gets the front seat in the car, who washes up, who takes soup up to the ill person in bed, what the correct protocol is for talking to people’s parents…

Coming out: I am not a vegetable!

Well, as you’ve managed to read this far, thanks! It means it might have been worth it to type all of this. Of course this isn’t an exhaustive list of everything anybody has ever asked us, it’s just a selection. I hope it’s been interesting, but I hope even more that you’ve been able to chuckle at it.

Love and hugs to all those who deserve it. Now get back to surfing the web like you’re supposed to.

Return From The Real Ale Ramble (and upcoming Abnib Events)

Real Ale Ramble 2007

Well, the Real Ale Ramble was fabulous as always. Particularly wet and muddy, especially on the first day, this year, but good visibility, so we got to see a lot of the beautiful mid-Wales countryside. Thanks to getting lost on the first day and walking a lot longer than we’d planned, I ended up walking in the region of 30 miles plus altogether, and Claire walked even further, doing a medium-length walk on the second day, too. JTA and are managed to beat Norman around Route C on the second day, which is a first (Norman is a 78-year-old who walks with a cane yet somehow manages to get around any walk we participate in faster than us… until now).

Oh, and after my trousers got soaking wet on the first day they began to chafe quite badly, which – in the cold – I didn’t realise until I took my trousers off and noticed that both my legs were bleeding. Sorry for the shitty-resolution photo and for the fact that I cleaned up this particular wound as much as possible "in the field" before thinking to take a picture for the record.

But altogether, it was a fantastic weekend away. As far as the beer’s concerned, I can particularly recommend Special-O, from Otley Brewing Company, which is the most delicious beer of it’s strength I’ve ever tasted, Berserker from Hebredian, a remarkably fruity Scottish brew, and Aur Cymru from local Heart Of Wales Brewery as clear favourites of mine.

Oh, and here’s the obligatory "JTA falling asleep in pub after long walk" photo:

Troma Night & Buffy Night

So now we’re back in Aber, which is nice, and I thought I’d share those pictures with you. We even had our very own "Troma Night On Location" out in Llanwrtyd Wells, and watched Goldeneye. Nobody’s blogged about whether Troma Night happened back here in Aber, too, yet, so I haven’t a clue. All I know is that next Troma Night will be similarly hosted by somebody other than Claire and I, as we’ll be in York (with, yes again, Ruth and JTA).

On, and there’ll be a Buffy Night this week: Thursday at 7pm at The Cottage.

Apology, Troma Night Update, Etc.

Damnit, I wrote a blog post and didn’t save it as I was going along (mistake one) and then closed the browser without posting it (mistake two). It’s kind-of demotivating, and I can’t be arsed to write it all again in full. So here’s the much, much shortened version of what I’ve been up to and what’s happening this weekend:

Last week: Me. Grumpy. Apologies. Head of cold. Not so arsey now. Woohoo.

Weekend: Claire away with Sundeep.

Friday: Quizzlecrawl. Tom + Amy = Brilliant. Richard III vs. MacBeth. Very close. Richard III lost. Grr.

Saturday: Troma Night. LolliLove. Star Trek V (RiffTrax). Hairspray. Virgins: Selina, Elizabeth. Fantastic.

Sunday: Lounging. Chilling out. Ruth. JTA. Paul. Roast boar. Roast everything. Digesting. Nom nom nom. Geek Night. Rory. Elizabeth again. BGA. Top Gear (too many cars).

This week and coming weekend: No Buffy Night =o(. Troma Night @ Rory’s ‘cos Claire, JTA, Ruth & I at Real Ale Ramble.

Consider yourselves updated.

Off To Gregynog

Claire and I are off to Gregynog with the Computer Science department this afternoon. We’ll be back tomorrow in time for Troma Night, which this week will actually feature a Troma film, which will be… well, unusual, these days.

I’ll be giving mock interviews to groups of Computer Science undergraduates. Claire will be the leader for one of those groups. Basically the same thing we did last year and the year before, and that she went to as an undergraduate the year before that. Are we getting old and predictable?

See lots of you Saturday anyway, I hope.

Quickly, Before They Turn The Glass Into Lesbians!

So, what have I been up to this weekend, you ask. Well…

“Cover The Mirrors” Launch Party

On Friday I took the train up to Preston. The train I was on broke down at Machynlleth when they linked it up to the carriages that had come down the Pwllheli line, and the repairs set me back by almost an hour, but it turns out that the rest of the rail network was running behind schedule that day, too, and so I didn’t miss any important connections. I arrived in time for a quick “birthday tea” with my family (for my dad’s birthday) before rushing off to the Waterstones for the launch party for my friend Faye‘s first published novel, Cover The Mirrors.

I drank as much wine as the store were willing to give me and bought myself a signed copy of the book. I even managed to get the photo, above, under the proviso that it’s only allowed to appear on the internet thanks to the fact that I’m holding a carrier bag in front of Faye’s face (she’s more than a little camera-shy). I haven’t started reading Cover The Mirrors yet, because I’m virtually at the end of The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, and I’d like to finish that first, but little doubt you’ll hear about it here in due course.

Dad’s Birthday

After the book launch, my sisters and I took my dad out for a few drinks to celebrate his 51st birthday. It turns out that, in my absence, Preston’s nightclub scene has really taken off. We started out in an 80s-themed bar which is part of a chain called Reflex. It’s so 80s it’s unreal: all 80s hits playing, David Hasselhoff and Mr. T decorating every wall, glitter balls and spots and mirrors everywhere… deely-boppers available at the bar… and so on. Really quite a fantastic theme venue. Then, under my sister Sarah’s recommendation, we tootled up the street and into a cafe/club called Manyana, where my dad got hit on by somebody young enough to be his daughter.

I snatched this picture. I’ve no idea who she is – we didn’t get her name – but she seemed genuinely surprised to hear my dad’s age. So I had the DJ announce it, just to make sure there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that there was an old person on the dancefloor.

This influx of Preston nightclubs is making them all remarkably competitive with their drinks prices, too. I bought a few rounds for the four of us and none of them ever came to over a tenner, and one – thanks to the “buy one get one free” policy at Manyana – came to under £6, which is quite remarkable for a city nightclub on a Friday night for four people!

Back To Aberystwyth

On Saturday I had brunch with my sister Becky, my mum, and her boyfriend and then got back onto the trains to head back to Aberystwyth. Owing to line maintenance, the stretch of track between Crewe and Preston is unusable every weekend within sight, and so I was re-directed via Manchester Piccadilly. Yet again, my train ran late, and I found myself sprinting across Piccadilly station, trying to find a train that was heading Shrewsbury-way…

…meanwhile, my friend Katie, having slept through her stop, woke up in Manchester Piccadilly and, not quite awake, clambered off her train in an attempt to find a connection. I’d apparently featured in her dream, and so she was quite surprised (and not quite sure if she was seeing things) when I sprinted past her. She sent a text (which I chose to ignore: my pocket beeped but I was too busy looking for a train to take the time to get my phone out) and then phoned me before she was able to confirm that yes, it really was me.

As we were headed the same way, she joined me on my train for one stop, which was a nice surprise for what was a long and overcomplicated train journey. A few folks have suggested that this might not be a coincidence, and that she might be stalking me, but I’m yet to be convinced.

In any case, I don’t have a picture to go with this part of the story. Sorry.

Jimmy, Beth, and Troma Night

YATN. If you were there, you know how it went. Big thanks to Jimmy and Beth for coming along.

Lloyd Kaufman’s Visit

In case you’ve not been anywhere that I can pounce on you and go “squee!” recently, here’s what you missed out on. You’ll remember that last week I mentioned that Poultrygeist – Troma‘s new movie – was coming to Aberystwyth. Well, it did. And it rocked…

…and better yet, Ruth, Claire, JTA, Paul and I got to hang out with Lloyd Kaufman, president of Troma Studios and producer of The Toxic Avenger, for a couple of pints and to share a bowl of nachos. The guy’s fabulously chatty and friendly, and if it weren’t for the awestruck feeling of “wow, we’re just sat here chatting with Lloyd Kaufman in Lord Beechings” we’d have probably been more interesting company.

Dan, Claire, !!!LLOYD KAUFMAN!!!, JTA, and Ruth

When he said goodbye, kissing the cheeks of each of the girls, I genuinely thought that they were in danger of exploding with excitement. Thankfully they didn’t, because I’d already bought them tickets to see Poultrygeist later on.

Which was, as I’ve said before, fantastic. It’s even better seen with a nice, energised audience, and better still when the director and several other people who worked on the film are hanging around afterwards to answer questions, chat, autograph things and so on. There are apparently 15 prints of Poultrygeist and the capacity to make more on demand, so if you want to see it and can’t wait for the DVD release, go speak to your local cinema now and ask if they’ll show Poultrygeist, even if only for a week (as Lloyd himself said, it’s better than showing Transformers on all 24 screens of some soulless megaplex). And hell, with Troma’s current financial situation, they could probably do with a helping hand with getting into as many projection booths as possible!

The title of this post – Quickly, Before They Turn The Glass Into Lesbians! – is a reference to one of my favourite lines in the film.

Paul might have bitten off more than he can chew, though, as he hinted on his blog. After some discussion with Lloyd, Paul is likely to be responsible for:

Re-establishing the UK division of the Troma fan club.
Acting as president of the above, for the forseeable future.
Investigating UK distribution of Troma films.
Oh, and making an official DVD subtitle track for Poultrygeist: Night Of The Chicken Dead, which describes the Troma Night drinking rules and reminds you when you should be drinking. He’s got a few ideas about things that should be in such a subtitle track, too, and if you’re familiar with the rules you’ll probably be able to guess what he’s thinking about.

I’ll leave it to him to go into detail, if he wishes.

Matt In Hospital

Between places, we also joined a growing crowd at the foot of Matt‘s bed in Bronglais Hospital. His operation was a success, but he’s reacted unusually to the general anaesthetic and they’re likely to keep him in for observation for another few days. If you haven’t had a chance to visit him already, he’d probably appreciate the company (although Sarah seems to have barely left his side): visiting hours are 3pm-5pm, 6pm-8pm: just ask if you need to know what ward he’s in and how to get there. If you’re feeling particularly cruel, mock him by talking about how well your bodily excretions are working, or swap his drip with his catheter bag while he’s not looking.

But seriously: I’m sure we all wish him well.

Curry!

Finally – as if we weren’t full enough from a large Sunday lunch – after leaving the cinema, Gareth, Penny, Amy, ~~Ruth, JTA~~, Rory, Paul, Claire and I slipped down for a late-night curry at the Spice of Bengal. Which was delicious, although there was a little much food for those of us who were already quite full.

Nonetheless, a fantastic end to a fantastic weekend! I’m sure everybody else will have a different story to tell (Paul spent longer with Lloyd and went to more films; Claire and Jimmy got horribly drunk together on Friday night after she, Ruth and JTA failed to see a Meatloaf concert; Matt’ll have his own morphine-fuelled tale to spin, and so on), because it’s been a rich, full couple of days for many of us abnibbers.

QParty – Part 2 – The Party

After extended delays, here’s the remainder of my “looking back at QParty“ post.

The party kicked off at 6pm, and guests trickled in over about about half hour to either side, which gave Claire and I ample time to try to greet everybody as they came through the doors. At least, it did until about 6:30pm, when a sudden rush of the remaining guests swept us off our feet and made us spend much of the remaining time running around everybody who’d appeared since to make sure we at least got to talk to everybody. Paul – with help from Matt P and Rory – manned the door, taking people’s coats and offering glasses of champagne… well, sparkling white wine. In the cases where he liked the look of the people coming in, he remembered to tell them about the bar tab, too.

We began to collect people’s contributions for the QFrames – the large clip frames we planned to fill with mementoes from the event. These were many (so many, in fact, that when Jenny was filling them for us while on our QMoon, later, she ran out of clip frames and some contributions have had to be overlapped or – where people brought multiple items – some have had to be left out entirely). We were overwhelmed by the thought and sincerity reflected in many of the items that are now in QFrames (some of which we’ve already mounted in The Cottage: others we still need to find room for!). Just off the top of my head, I’d like to draw attention to a few things (can’t possibly list everything here!):

A selection of fantastic photos from Claire and my life so far. Some reflect our family lives (Claire’s dad brought a huge number of pictures of her as a child), some our lives with our friends (not-gay Gareth brought a great picture that he took at an early Murder Mystery Night; Sundeep supplied a brilliant snap from a trip we took up Snowdon; Gareth and Penny gave us a picture that really sums up Claire and I’s life in Aber – the two of us looking out to sea by a bonfire – and so on), and some are reminders of the people we care about (I was particularly impressed at the courage of my college friend Andy, who, in reference to a long-standing joke, supplied a photo of himself edited such that he looked like Andy Pandy).
A collage of photographs of me at different stages of my life, from my mum, overlaid with transparencies of the details of key events in it, from my birth certificate to my graduation.
The specification for a Turing-complete programming language called Q (it’s a little like Brainfuck), and a program written in it that outputs a congratulatory message, from Andy, my mum’s partner.
A page from “a physics textbook,” describing many different kinds of scientific terms and units using the letter Q, with an “addition”: the Q-unit, used to measure weirdness of the Dan and Claire variety. Thanks to Jimmy for that one.
A map to the star “Q”, registered at the International Star Registry by Ele, Lee, Helen and Pete.
Several wonderful letters, including an excellent dialogue between Ruth and JTA, and a tear-jerking description of our friendship over the last few years from Matt R.
A fucking scary mask from Liz.
Not one but two pieces of knitting on the theme of the letter Q – now these were difficult to squeeze into clip-frames! – from Jen and Beth.
A piece of my last laptop, somehow recovered and kept by Paul, who was present at it’s destruction.

And so on, and so on, and so on. There’s far more than we ever imagined we’d get: so much that the half-dozen A1-size clip-frames we brought were actually insufficient to contain them all! From the sweet to the nostalgic to the crazy, all of these unusual gifts (and the dozens not mentioned here) have really made us feel loved by you all: thank you all so much.

Thanks are also due to everybody who – despite our request to the contrary – brought more conventional gifts as well. In particular, we were surprised (in a good way) by the sheer number of bottles of champagne we were given. A side-effect of this – and of all the cake left uneaten from the party – was that when we returned from our “honeymoon” – QMoon – a week later, the only things we had in the house to eat and drink were cake and champagne. Oh, the horror!

Once everybody who was going to appear had appeared and gotten themselves a drink or two, we decided that it was probably time to get on with giving the speeches that are so obviously mandatory at this kind of event. We’d planned the order of events only the night before. Then changed the plan. Then changed it again. In any case, we’d decided that I’d introduce, in turn, Claire, my mum, and Claire’s dad, and then say a few words myself.

Claire would talk about how she and I first met – delicately censored, of course: the finer details of the actual story are not only more long-winded than is appropriate for a speech of the length that Claire wanted to give, but also aren’t so repeatable in polite conversation (if you feel like you missed out on some juicy details, see us after class). Claire spoke well about the early days and months of our relationship, addressing her audience well and taking the piss out of me just about enough (it turns out to be quite easy).

My mum was next. We’d decided between us that what she would like to talk about was family. Her speech was simply fantastic, and earned her a great deal of respect from many of my friends, based on the number of people who later came up to me and told me how “brilliant your mum is!” Despite a meandering into a discussion on the breeding of alpacas, her musings made their point: that families – defined not by blood or lineage but by groups of individuals bonded together by love – are one of the most fundamental building blocks of society as we know it, and that everyone in the room was, by Claire and I’s action and through Claire and I’s love for one another, joined and related as a huge extended family.

When everybody was done wiping their eyes and laughing about alpacas, Claire’s dad took the mic. He talked a little about Claire’s upbringing and her unusual ways, embarrassing her just slightly in the way that a modern father of the bride is expected to, before reading a poem that he’d written for the occasion. It talked about his respect for his daughter, and his love of her, and her upbringing, and then took a change in pace at the point in her life where her dad first met me: And what’s this I find? / A man in bed with a girl of mine! / Who is this, me’s a thinker’, / Who is this bounder? What a stinker! It gets better, of course, and finishes with lines asking me to take care of “his Claire” for the rest of her life. Which, longevity-permitting, is my plan.

Finally, I stepped in to talk about Claire and I’s unusual and conversation-inspiring name change: why we did it, what it means, and how we came to choose the letter Q above all the other letters in the alphabet and, in fact, all the other combinations of letters that we could have possibly considered (I still think it would have been cool to change my name to Plugh Xyzzy – pronounced pl-urh zuzzie – and if you understand why it’s such a cool name then you’re as sad and geeky as me, and when you say it in your hollow voice, nothing happens anyway). My speech came across okay, I think, not helped by the fact that I’d put off writing it until the day of QParty – something which, in itself, wouldn’t have caused me any problems, if it weren’t for the fact that I had to spend the afternoon cleaning up and otherwise preparing the venue.

That’s when we opened the buffet.

My sister, Becky, had offered to take charge of catering and other tasks, and, with the help of one or two volunteers, had assembled a fantastic spread of foodstuffs, all carefully labelled to indicate whether or not it was “meaty” or “veggie” (curiously, these signs were later seen being worn as badges by party guests). It took a reasonable amount of time for everybody to be serviced at the buffet queue, not least because several of our friends – who are more excited by buffet food than others – had managed to get back into the queue for a second helping before other guests had even got their first portion yet! Nonetheless, there was still a little food left at the end, and not just salad and other things that everybody hates, so I think Becky and her team got the quantity of food about right.

Next up came the ceremonial cutting of the cake, or not-so-ceremonially. Hmm… I suppose it’s the symbolically ceremonially cutting of the cake. Kind-of. In any case, we brought out the cakes, my mum lit the Q-shaped sparklers thereon, and we cut them so that everybody could have a piece or two. easy).

Finally, having done all of the complicated and stressful (but still fun!) bits of the party, Claire and I could get on with enjoying the celebration ourselves. We tried to make time to talk to and sit with everybody who came, but it was difficult to spend as long as we’d have liked talking to some of the people we see less often than we’d like, because there were so many of them. Nonetheless, the atmosphere was fantastic and the experience unforgettable. At one point, Claire and I were sat at a table with a group of people who, three years ago, wouldn’t have looked out of place all sat around a table in a pub in Aberystwyth, but have since moved elsewhere… and just for a moment, I forgot that we weren’t at some early Troma Night or sat in the Ship & Castle playing Chez Geek. Quite remarkable.

As the night wore on and the music became more recognisable a good number of us migrated to the dance floor, spending much of the evening leaping around and sweating excessively in the warmth of our suits and dresses. Another party arrived (after 10pm, the management opened the doors of the venue and turned it into a regular nightclub; although it didn’t attract much traffic anyway, being a student bar outside of termtime) in fancy dress, and somebody must have been tipping them off about the nature of our event, because several people in strange costumes came over to congratulate me and to offer to buy me drinks.

The evening wore on, and many of the guests excused themselves, but for a small group of particularly hardcore party people who stayed on with us until the very end. All in all, it was a fantastic night. Thanks again to everybody who helped to make it a success, to everybody who came, and to everybody who sent well-wishes even if they couldn’t come. There’s loads of photos up now in QParty Gallery – here are some of my favourites (with captions):

	“I will… eat your face! Ha! Didn’t see that coming, did you?”
	Aww.
	Peter noticed that David’s trousers were leaking.
	“Fingers! Nom nom nom.”
	“Permission to be smug, Dan?” “Permission granted.”
	Peace, brother!
	“Boss wants ta see ya, Andy.” “Look; I can get the money next week! I just need a little more time, please!”
	“Y’know… I shhink th’alcohol’s workeeng.”
	“So, what? I put my right leg in, then my right leg out?”
	Liz tells Jen exactly how big Jimmy’s penis is.
	Off camera (left), Beth is dancing on the other pool table.
	“No way, no how!”
	Do you remember this? This is what Pete used to look like when he had hair!

There are loads more, of course, and so many of them are so good. Take a look in at QParty Gallery (or at the lower-quality ones on Facebook) and see for yourself.