Red and Black Week. Day 1. Too many books? Never!

Hurrah! It's Red and Black week again, thank you to Sophistique Noir for the wonderful theme! I've been putting together a post about my Red and Black bedroom at Dad's house for a while, so what better day to post it than at the start of Red & Black week!

My Red & Black Room

Red walls and black trims, it seems my bedroom at Dad's is perfect for the theme!
I have been waiting to post pictures of this room, but it never got totally finished so I kept putting it off. I can't use power tools (don't give this dyspraxic a drill, ever) so all the things I can't do myself remain undone (mostly having heavy pictures/mirrors, but also shelves). There are also a few things I never got round to finishing myself, as you will see. I'm going to do some more work on it, then bribe a DIY savvy friend or two into drilling some holes for me!

I've decided that over the next few weeks I'll post some pictures of what's finished and still to be done. Here's the first batch! The corner of the room by the door.

As you can see my large mirror is sitting on the floor underneath where it is meant to hang! The ceiling still has splodges of red on it too! I doubt I'll ever get time to re-paper and paint the ceiling though, so I may just have to paint over the splodges....

 I ran out of paint before I got to the main door. I've decided to paint when I get back from my fieldwork at Highgate.

I need frames for these posters, then I'll move them higher up the wall so there is room to hang my small gold framed mirror.

Any offers of help for this DIY dunce? Ill pay you in Absinthe!

Before I can do much serious work on the room though, I need to go through my stuff and organise it all (which will also make it easier when me and ash get our own house and I can finally move it all out of dad's =P).

Books, books and more books

Last week I had 3 days off because of the bank holiday, but I felt knackered, must have been all the traveling (Birmingham - York, York- Bristol, Bristol - Birmingham, in 3 days) and the extra hours I had to work to get time off for the conferences. So instead of going out, I spent a day being uber geeky and re-organising and cataloguing my books. I haven't finished yet, because I have so many, but this is most of the fiction dealt with!

This is the main bookcase, for my ridiculously extensive collection of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and kids books! There are a few classics in there too, honest!

I keep my poetry, folklore and culture books on the small bookcase by the bed. Because they are mostly rather lovely old editions.

There's another small bookcase under the desk and several bags of textbooks waiting for shelves as well... Do you think I have too many books? =P

I hope you have enjoyed this little tour. I'm off to read all of the other red and black week theme posts, and plan a blog giveaway (just reached 100 followers yay! =]).

An overdue post about a wonderful evening

I'm not sure how I forgot to post this; drafted it on the 1st November...

After my visit to Highgate Cemetery to do research and take pretty pictures I went to the theatre for a very special event (don't worry I did at least attempt to scrape the grave-dirt off my shoes first).

I went to Grimm Tales: Telling Stories to see Phillip Pullman and Neil Gaiman talk about fairytales. When I found out there would be a signing after the event I very nearly fainted! I have been a fan of Phillip Pullman since I was a kid; His Dark Materials is one of my favourite trilogies of all time and the character of Lyra was my role model, inspiration and best friend when I was 11 and had no real-life friends to help me be brave. I couldn't wait to meet him and say thank you; thank you for Lyra, thank you for writing big, important stories for children, thank you for everything. I was equally excited to meet Neil Gaiman; who I'm sure you all know I also love, although didn't discover until more recently.

I was horribly dismayed upon arriving at the theatre to find that Phillip Pullman had been taken ill and couldn't make it to the event. Instead Neil Gaiman would be speaking to Meg Rosoff; the author of How I Live Now (which I haven't read, but I should do).

The first thing to make me smile again after that dreadful news was this sign:

(The Cambridge Theatre where the event was held is where the Musical of Matilda is playing at the moment; the stage set for it looks so wonderful).

Despite the lack of Mr Pullman, the event was delightful, with Audrey Niffenegger reading one of the stories from Pullman's new adaptation of Grimm's tales and Neil and Meg talking about stories, the importance of fairy tales, why heroes in fairy tales aren't heroic and many other things (including James Bond!). It ended with Neil reading us his All Hallow's Read story; Click Clack the Rattle-Bag. It was a genuinely chilling tale!

Then we queued up for the signing; me slightly nervously clutching my copy of Coraline, purchased at the event for signing, (I was a bit disappointed there were no copies of the Graveyard book, which would have given me an excuse to say 'I am doing research at Highgate, thank you for putting the Egyptian walk into your book'). I was a little worried that I'd go all silly fan-girl and not be able to talk when I finally stood in front of Neil Gaiman.

In front of us in the queue were a couple with their little daughter, who must have been about 8 and could have easily played Matilda herself. It made me smile to see her earnestly reading her copy of Coraline, which her dad proclaimed she 'would prefer to the film, it's a bit less scary'.

When we got into the room where the signing was, when there were still about 15 people between us and the signing table Neil announced that he was going to have to stop writing personalisations and just do signatures because there were 140 more people to see in 20 minutes. I was disappointed but very glad he was doing something to ensure everyone who wanted one got a signed book.

When the little girl and her family walked forward he looked up and exclaimed 'You're the girl from the video! It's so good to meet you! I wish you'd been down earlier so we could talk more' and shook her hand, asked her name and even personalised her book (I was so happy he broke his rules for her). She gave him the script from the video and then it was my turn to get Coraline signed.

He said 'sorry about that, she's the girl from the 'because the origami' video'. Then it was my turn to exclaim because I'd seen the video and was amazed I hadn't recognised her; I told him so. Then he signed by book and I quite embarassedly said 'I've got something for you too' (other than the script, the table was bare, clearly bringing presents was not usual practice) 'It's academic proof of the cat's dream'. I handed it over and he started to open the paper to look, looked up at the line sheepishly and said 'I'll look at it later. By the way I like your hat'. I said thank you and left, floating at least 2 inches above the floor.

The wonderful video is here.

For those who don't know, this is the cat's dream. When reading for an archaeology essay I found 2 lines of text in Terry O'Connor's book 'The Archaeology of Animal Bones' that said roughly; Homo Sapiens, domesticated in 7000BP by cats as a source of food. I had photocopied the page for Neil and written the Havard reference for the book at the bottom.

I hope he did read it. I hope it made him as happy as it made me when I found it.

I didn't take an outfit photo, but in addition to my very special antique top hat I was wearing an outfit very similar to this:

What I'm wearing:
Knit Dress: H&M
Black summer dress: original cream, from H7M in the sale for a fiver; I dyed it of course.
Black lace skirt: New Look (same old, same old)

Instead of the necklaces in that photo I wore my Ankh, as a tiny nod to Death from Sandman.

I will leave you with this piece of wisdom from the first page of this edition of Coraline: