Ok, look away now

This is so so silly, but now, having watched the last episode of Buffy, and knowing there are no more, it feels a tiny bit like a light has gone out. Sad. In a different way to Six Feet Under being over, or even The Flying Doctors when I was a lot younger. Because there was magic in Buffy, literally and in the very fabric of the show. Not to mention the seriously amusing dialogue.



And I cannot believe how appropriate this song would have been for Buffy. Or was it even used in it sometime?

If I could tell the world just one thing
It would be that we're all OK
And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful
And useless in times like these
I won't be made useless
I won't be idle with despair
I will gather myself around my faith
For light does the darkness most fear

Seriously, if you ever enjoyed Buffy, close your eyes and let the montage happen. Tearfulness.



Maybe I'll grow up now.

Tricky

So for Halloween we are not answering the door, closing the curtains and ignoring rings on the doorbell from hooligans asking us for money. I really wish we had little kids coming around with their parents and we could give them sweets, but alas, not in this part of north London. I should have realised what Halloween in London would be like when I lived in Ealing and a kid at a bus stop, a few days before Halloween, asked me for a pound. I asked her why and she said, ‘For Halloween’. She didn’t blink when I said it wasn’t even Halloween yet. Eventually the lack of movement of my hand to my purse alerted her to the fact that she should probably ask someone else.

While closeted in our dark house, we will very appropriately be watching the final two episodes (ever! sob!) of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. Actually, she hasn’t been slaying too many vampires lately. She should probably be known as ‘Buffy the Slayer who investigates creepy demonic situations with her friends and sometimes slays vampires too’.. Maybe there will be some vampires in the final big battle for the world, because the poet gets bored when there’s no fighting. I get a bit antsy when there’s no Anya.

Also, I will be psyching myself up for NaBloPoMo – The Return.

I have never really seen the point of Nanowrimo unless you already want to write a novel. Maybe I do, maybe one day. For now I'm sticking to short stories. But hey, it keeps all the wannabe novelists off the streets, and creative endeavour can only be a good thing compared to crime, substance abuse and other popular pursuits. But would someone somewhere please share the draft novel they have produced during Nanowrimo? I have never seen one, which only reinforces my suspicion that they are all really crap. (Except for my friend Shari's, of course, because she is a writer).

Gratuitous Anya post

Yes, I am actually a 14 year old girl living in 2003. And proud of it.

The Buffy Project - part 2

The poet is still addicted (less so than me, he gets bored with the non-fighty episodes) and I am starting to get sad because we have only one more disc to watch of the entire series. Three, maybe four episodes and it's all over. Is it just me, or when you really enjoy a television series, does it become like an alternative universe to you - the characters you love or hate do actually exist out there somewhere?

Sigh. Soon, no more Anya to adore from the wrong side of the DVD player. No more Buffy's clothes to study and sometimes covet. No more camp Andrew - how amused am I that he's become a regular character? No more occasionally irritating Willow and increasingly chubby Xander. No more Giles.... but wait! Do I detect the stirrings of a BBC television film (please let it be a series) in the wings? Or will I be reduced to starting the whole process over again with the Angel series, in hopes that Buffy characters will make regular visits, or that Cordelia will remind me of Anya?

And my lovely lovely favourite character dies, apparently. This is the problem with watching series years after they ended. The internet knows these things and tells you when you're not ready to know.

However, despite my fantastic ability to suspend disbelief, and in an attempt to distract myself from the upcoming series finale, I'd like to highlight two Buffy anomalies for the record:

1. All vampires turn to dust when staked, even those who only died very recently. It's a great visual effect, but surely only those who died so long ago that their original bodies would actually be dust should dust? Of course, that would mean that the very term 'dusting' would have to be reconsidered.

2. Vampires with souls, i.e. Angel and Spike (much prefer Spike, btw) feel remorse for their killings and cannot kill humans due to the emotional pain. However, humans, who supposedly had souls all along and are demon-free - kill all the time and some of them don't seem to feel much remorse. So does the reintroduction of a soul into a soulless creature make them better than human? Or was it just not thought through very well.

You get what you give

This song has always had the strangest and most lovely effect on me - both saddening and uplifting. Now it also makes me homesick. I think I might have heard it for the first time in Australia (although it was released the year I came to London) and there's something about being twenty-seven in a bright climate in a young country that is so bittersweet now.

I still think it's slightly too slow-paced, but I can overlook that. The singer is kind of geekily endearing. Like a cute younger brother.

Frightening a little mouse under her chair

The poet is going to London to visit the Queen for National Poetry Day tomorrow.

He has threatened* to misbehave but is of course the epitome of a professional always.

We're just back from a fantastic weekend at Orta in northern Italy. Lakes, islands, poetry and new friends, a wonderful way to spend my 37th birthday weekend.


*Hmm, I wonder if a blog post with 'threat' and 'Queen' in close proximity is flagged up by the security services?

Right Brain/Left Brain Freakiness

So I'm obviously a right-brainer, but it freaks me out that the poet and I saw her going in opposite directions at the same time! And that you can change her direction by concentrating.

Click here for the weird whirling woman

We're off to Lake Orta in Italy for the Poetry on the Lake festival and for the poet to collect a prize. Four star hotel on a lake, poetry and Italian weather for my birthday sounds pretty good. If only I didn't have a sneaking suspicion that London's weather is going to be even better over the weekend - but then has the BBC's forecasting ever been accurate?

Weeping guitars

I love this version of George Harrison's 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'. (And the way the video makes you think Nyjon plays the guitar...)



And I promise this is my last Nyjon post. But one last little thing, if any of you are interested in hearing the song the poet wrote for me with Nyjon, go to the cdbaby link a few entries earlier and click on 'First Love, Last Love'.

Useful site for UK ebayers

fatfingers.co.uk finds items on ebay (UK) that might get missed and not snapped up because the seller has mispelled the item description. Not that I'm encouraging ebay addiction or anything.

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