In which I meet Neil Gaiman

 

I have had one of the busiest weeks ever at work and so every night I said I would do some blogging, but I just watched Criminal Minds instead... oops. It's a shame because there are so many things to blog about, so much stuff to photograph and to share.

Last weekend I watched Skyfall, did our declaration of intent to marry (it's a legal thing) and bought some new Lego. In the week I worked my socks off, made some delicious food and played lots of games. This weekend I met Neil Gaiman at his Camden residence to interview him, had a pumpkin carving party and made an Other Mother (from Coraline) pumpkin face, ate lots of party food, went to a firework display and played a Lovecaft-ian board game. So it's been a pretty good time since I last did a blog post.

And yes, you did read that right. I interview and filmed Neil Gaiman. If you know me, you know I have been pretty obsessed with him for a long time. Own most of his books, read his blog, wrote my dissertation on the Sandman - that kind of thing. I should be absolutely utterly over the moon about it -and don't get me wrong, it's a pretty darn cool experience- but I just feel like I was so awkward. It turned out he'd been up really late and was sleepy, we hadn't prepared for the interview/filming as much as he would have liked us to and I was a shy bean. It was the first of a set of films we were doing for work and I really hadn't expected Neil Gaiman to be our first. I was also incredibly nervous. This was someone I admire immensly, but in a situation that was not appropriate for fan-girlism. I fidgeted with my scarf, chewed my lip and stood around thinking 'why don't I know more stuff?'. And Neil Gaiman himself was very nice, but he did not put me at ease like Mike Carey did. I even mentioned my Mike Carey experience to him in a kind of hint that I was feeling super-nervous. I think he is just kind of intimidating, even at 11am on a Saturday without any socks on. Perhaps he doesn't intend to be, but it was defintely there, and I just felt so young and inexperienced about it all in the face of his potent Neil Gaiman-ness. I'm still pretty new in my job so I just found myself wishing I knew so much more on my topic and could have actually impressed him. I managed to slip some stuff about fairy tales and suchlike into the conversation -I was even at a talk he had done earlier in the week so getting to talk about Cupid and Psyche with Neil just for a moment was wonderful.

But funnily enough I found myself worrying far more about the work aspect -was the video good? Did we get good content? Was the camera angle right? I'm proud of myself for that. Because Neil Gaiman can have a bad impression of me if he wants, but I don't want him to have a bad impression of the organisation I work for.

The other thing is, despite meeting my hero and getting to chat to him, I had more fun just carving pumpkins with my friends and eating prawn toast in the afternoon.

I couldn't find my camera last night so I could take any pictures of the pumpkins, but I'm going to take some photos again when it is dark now I've found it.

In the mean time here are some photos of me in my second-favourite dress:

Ok, so you can see the car in the background which possibly ruins the shot but I do love my little bows poking out of the booties. :)

This is the first dress that appeared in this blog, when it wasn't even a fashion blog at all. It become one entirely because I love the dress so much and wanted to share it. Back then I was in my Origami Girl hero persona and didn't show my face. It also had awful photographs. However, my love for this dress has not abated.

In which I dress up as Princess Mononoke.

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Sorry for the long delay in blogging. I have been incredibly busy so had no time at all.

I did however have a fantastic party. It was rather belated for my birthday as folks had been occupied at the weekend.

I spent aaages making my costume for it. It was themed on 'things you would find in a forest' and I spent ages on the planning. I went for a walk in the woods with my sister and gathered sticks and things and wild feral apples and put them in jars around the room. I bought beautiful lights disguised as cherry blossom and then wound plastic ivy around the window bars and dotted playmobil trees and unicorns around the tables. It looked so beautiful and atmospheric.

Here is a picture of one of my friends in costume, looking 'atmospheric'. :)

Thinking about planning the party with my sister, I have just realised that having a sister is kind of unusual for a superhero. I think the heroism works for them in the comics because they are all 'an only child'. So much angst.

I'm trying to imagine batman with a big sister. She wouldn't have stood for all that emo nonsense with dressing in black and going travelling to 'find himself.'

Or imagine if Spiderman had a younger brother who caught him flexing his muscles in the mirror. A little brother would have just laughed at the skin-tight outfit, although probably been quite jealous.

The only ones who had siblings were heroes in teams, I think without them people like Iron Man can only think of operating on their own. (Although I suppose he had friends who helped but shhhh)

I think it is similar to how in children's fantasy novels the parents have to conveniently disappear. They are always orphans. Although it is something that I really like in the Doomspell books. The kids there have parents, worry about them and try to protect them from the witches and so forth. Really really good series actually.

But anyway I do have a sister.

I dressed up as Princess Mononoke for the party. Finally linking back to my first bit about spending time on the costume. I went on a little tangent there.

So here are some photos:

Notice, still wearing a mask. :P I love costumes so very much. I really want to do a 'wolf suit' from Where the Wild Things are one day.