squirmelia | What I did in November 2015

I took part in NaNoGenMo (National Novel Generation Month) and wrote code to generate a novel, mostly just using Markov chains, and my old NaNoWriMo novels and my Monochrome BBS diary as a corpus.

I visited The Owls Are Not What They Seem bar with Monika. It was a Twin Peaks themed bar. We found Laura in the room at the top of the stairs, solved some clues, saw Audrey dancing, and stood in Agent Cooper's office for a while.

I performed a bank heist and stole the crown jewels, along with my colleagues, at an escape room, on our team day out. We also visited the Sky Garden and then that night, drank cocktails in Vertigo 42, staring out over London, in awe.

I listened to talks about urban exploration in the boiler room at Senate House, and then explored the boiler room.

I went to the Globe Road Poetry festival, to the session on Poetry, artificial intelligence and computational creativity, and listened to poetry created by bots.

I ate raspberry, tea and cake flavour nitro ice-cream.

I saw music played by throwing stones at instruments at Richard T Walker's Everything failing to become something exhibition.

I cooked and then ate a sweet potato kitkat.

I spent a day in Nottingham.

I went to the NaNoWriMo mid month meet and talked to people about the difficulties of having characters that fly.

I ate cantuccini and vin santo, and amarena croccante ice creams in a brioche bun.

I saw Suffragette at the cinema, and caught up with

doseybat and

abigailb.

I played Caverna with

verlaine and friends, and was a weapon wielding dwarf with a number of sheep, wild boar, donkeys, dogs, rubies and pumpkins to my name, and I built a cuddle room.

I went to Richmond Park and walked through leaves and hid inside trees, and got covered in mud when dogs jumped up to greet me, and parakeets squawked and crows meandered, and in the distance I could see the Trellick Tower.

I celebrated what would have been my dad's 70th birthday, and drank some cider.

I met up with

deathboy for the first time since March and he gave me a book, "Never have a bad day ever again" and a giant custard cream. I drew a picture of a tin of goose fat on a napkin for him and we laughed loudly and strangely whenever other people in the pub did so.

My mum and I played musical instruments at the Horniman Museum and stared at enchanted lyres, hurdy-gurdies and brachiopods. It was cold outside, but the sound garden lured us to play anyway. We took a bus to Catford and said, "hello" to the cat there, before going to Lewisham and wandering around there for a while.

tackline and I went to the Hyper Japan Christmas market and stared at all the cute things and the pretty outfits people were wearing, and watched the cosplay parade and people playing DDR. I purchased some kit-kats I haven't tried before: bakeable pumpkin, bakeable sweet potato, bakeable cheesecake, citrus golden blend.

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What they did in November 2015:

On the 1st of November, they floated through the mist together, peering out of the cable car, trying to see anything but blankness, but the whole of London had vanished beneath them.

She walked from Northwood to Northwood Hills on a tube walk, and it was then that she kissed him at a kissing gate. She watched streams of sunlight appearing through the trees, wandered on a beach at Ruislip Lido, waved at people on a little train and even the cobwebs looked particularly pretty that day.

That evening, it was still misty in Richmond, as they walked across the bridge, which seemed somehow eerie then, and then through the mist filled alleyways.

A few days later, they wandered through the coloured mist at the Wellcome Collection, hand in hand, wondering how far back into the pink mist, the yellow mist, or the blue mist, they would have to step before they could no longer see each other.

That Saturday, she went to an art exhibition in Kentish Town and walked through a maze with him, and then she wandered through the woods, alone, in virtual reality. They watched some kind of furry manga images while lying in a ball pit, and she kissed him there, in the ball pit, hidden.

After that, she ate damson and sour cream ice-cream, and quince and moscato d'Asti ice-cream, at Ruby Violet.

That evening, they went to a pub where people were playing Rock Band, and she played the bass a few times on stage, to Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails, while he sang.

The Wednesday after that, they wandered through an alcoholic mist, and breathed in a mist of gin and tonic, but it was somewhat crowded.

One Sunday, they visited a Retro Gaming Market.

Sometimes, they kissed at traffic lights while waiting for the lights to change, and sometimes on trains and sometimes on escalators.

And then, a week or so after that, that ended, but she was glad those things had happened anyway.