Distracted by a Thing

London 2014 PPC Gathering

So here we are again

It’s always such a pleasure…

Yep, after a five year hiatus, I was once again going to a PPC Gathering. I’ve moved house five times since Bath 2009, have had two children (and one of them started school a month after the Gathering), and have written more words than I can possibly count. The PPC’s membership has changed about as much - very few of our 2009 members were still around. So of course, three of us would be at the Gathering.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We need The First Photo:

Huinesoron & Kaitlyn, preparing to leave

Yes, that’s a twenty-to-ten departure, for a Gathering starting at noon. You see, Kaitlyn and I had decided to walk across London to the Gathering location; that meant we needed a lot of time to get there - and even more when you account for taking in the scenery, such as the evidence that at least one church in London still remembers the Kings and Queens of Narnia:

Church dedicated to King Edmund the Just

The setting for the Gathering was the British Museum - this place:

The British Museum, home of… old stuff

We got there half an hour early, because I am bad at timekeeping. Over the next 45 minutes, the rest of our attendees trickled in, and for a wonder, everyone showed up! That can mean only one thing: group photo!

… what do you mean, I didn’t take a group photo at the start? That’s ridiculous. Okay, fine. That can mean only one thing: not telling you who came until the first group photo!

The first thing we did was… well, go inside. And when we did, we looked up at the vast glass ceiling, and realised we were being watched:

Bob? Tod? Deirdre? Is that you?

Yes, the pigeons from the Department of Intelligence were on the case, keeping a very close eye on us. Nervously, we ate our lunch (it was closing on half twelve, after all), and then headed for the number one attraction of the British Museum: the Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone (sort of)

Yes, that blurry rock in the case is the actual Rosetta Stone, the foundation of our understanding of hieroglyphics, and yes, this is the best picture I could get of it. It would be a lot better if it weren’t for those two ladies in the foreground though, right?

Wrong! Because they are, at last, your first picture of members of the Gathering. That’ll have to tide you over until the group photo though, which is- oh, right.

The PPC! Front row: Kaitlyn, Fractal Dawn, Lycaenion, the Irish Samurai.

Back row: Huinesoron, Cassie, Storme Hawk

So there we are. Not shown are Fractal Dawn’s relentless plugging of Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera, the frankly bizarre contents of Lycaenion’s notebook, or endless discussion of every fandom you can think of (including a long excursion into A Very Potter Musical). And yes, Cassie is the third ‘person who’s done this before’ - though Fractal Dawn is apparently on a quest to meet every single Permission Giver, since she’s already hunted down Araeph and Neshomeh (and Phobos? I’m not sure).

But you’re not here to look at us. You’re here to make silly jokes about the exhibits! No, wait - that’s what we were there for. Like this one:

Isn’t that usually ‘Sekhmet’?

What’s the mini for Ancient Egypt, again? Judging by their carvings, it’s apparently ‘mini-Owl-in-a-Fez’.

Fezes are cool!

Seriously, these things were everywhere. There was a whole list of kings where every single one was represented by a befezzed owl. Presumably they were Pharoahs Hedwig I, Hedwig II, Hedwig III…

Eventually, we made it out of Egypt, and into Mesopotamia, where we saw the majestic… thing.

This is in fact the original Thing one of us was Distracted By

-- hang on. Show me that again.

It is, admittedly, very Distracting

… how many legs does it have, exactly? There’s something seriously strange about this.

Moving on, we marvelled at a massive reconstructed gate (ooh, aah) before entering a long gallery flanked by battle friezes. And while we were there, we noticed something kind of… strange.

Did that bird just throw him?

It did! Also that horse is clearly related to the many-legged Thing.

But surely we’re misinterpreting? A bird like that surely couldn’t-

OH YE MERCILESS GODS.

So there were a few competing theories on this. Either Agent Monty (the goose, friend to Bob, Tod, and Deirdre) had gotten a little lost on his way to spy on us (which would presumably make all those murdered soldiers Gary Stus), or Agent Falchion (the Skarmory) had been caught in the act on a mission, or either myself (Huinesoron, ‘EagleShade’) or Storme Hawk was engaging in extramural activities in bird form, or… the ancients had really disturbing ideas about birds.

I’m not sure which option scared me most. Let’s look at something soothing.

Lord… Voldemort?

THAT IS NOT SOOTHING.

The Romano-Greek zone was filled with marble statues, many of them missing significant parts of their anatomy. To be honest, I would’ve preferred Riddle there be missing significant parts - like, say, everything. But apparently ancient vandalism didn’t take my wishes into account. Some of the marble was wall-mounted:

Left to right: Storme Hawk (background), Cassie, the Irish Samurai, Lycaenion, Kaitlyn

But a lot of it was statues, and large structures that I really don’t know how we managed to nick liberate from Greece, let alone get inside the museum.

We moved onwards into the pottery section, where we found:

Not more birds!

Okay, that’s definitely Monty; the description even says its a goose! I guess it explains why he’s not with the pigeons, at least. Maybe we need to mount a rescue expedition to the ancient world to pick him up?

Fractal Dawn (background), the Irish Samurai, Cassie, Lycaenion

The pottery section was (predictably) full of pots, which fascinated us…

Fractal Dawn gets her studying on

… some more than others. Probably my favourite was the sphinx-shaped cup (apparently called a rhyton); I would happily stock my kitchen with just these:

What? I did say ‘some more than others’

The displays also included small (clay?) statues, which some of the group found inordinately fascinating:

‘Some’ here meaning ‘everyone but me’

Breaking free of the pottery, we ventured on into ever more bizarre realms:

The World’s Scariest Sock Puppet?

What… is that thing at the back supposed to be?

WHY DOES THE HORSE HAVE WHEELS?

And then we… no, I’m sorry, I have to address this: why is it that every time we saw something alarming, it was bird-shaped? Do birds, like, hate us or something? Or did the Ancient Greeks have a massive collective case of ornithophobia? Even if that’s the case - why do all their statues look like Pokemon? Who looks at a horse and thinks ‘nice, but it’d be better with spherical wheels’?

It’s all too much. I need something soothing.

I said soothing!

That’s better

Once we’d had our fill of Mycenaean metalwork, including trying to spot the real One Ring on a board of random gold jewellery (a failure, of course - did you miss the fact that I was wearing it around my neck?), we moved on to Minoan stonework. Apparently Fractal Dawn had Opinions to share:

Kaitlyn listens because Kaitlyn is awesome and I am not at all biased

I mean seriously, she’s a patron goddess of the PPC, why are you questioning this?

Then we all sat down and played Ancient D&D.

They hadn’t invented anything above 6 sides yet… or any numbers other than 4…

At this point we realised what you all noticed ages ago, if you know anything about the British Museum, which you probably don’t, so I guess you didn’t notice after all: we’d missed the second most famous section (after the Rosetta Stone). So we trekked back through metals and pottery, past Lord Voldemort,

Stop doing that!

and into the Parthenon Gallery, home of the Elgin Marbles.

Yes, the biggest thing Britain purloined rescued from Greece, and we’d walked right past it. But we made up for it! We walked the entire length of the hall, commenting on all the friezes. We actually needed a rest in the middle - it was hot in that room.

Cassie & Lycaenion hide, Storme Hawk and the Irish Samurai talk, and Huinesoron sneaks into the background

At one end of the room were friezes of centaurs and men dismembering each other, which were incredibly popular with the PPCers:

Kaitlyn is having a fantastic time

And Fractal Dawn is - yep - Distracted by a Thing

You have to admit, they’re pretty funny. “Don’t worry, mate, I’ll hold you up until your legs grow back.”

“I kicked so hard that my leg came off! MOTHER, WHY DIDN’T YOU WARN ME?”

I’ve no idea what was in this picture, but apparently it was really funny.

Technically, this is a group photo! Even though only one person’s face is visible.

The theme of ‘where are all my important bits?’ continued around the room. The massive statues which once graced both ends of the Parthenon were… rather battered.

The description says ‘She is perhaps Hestia, goddess of the hearth’. Which, on the one hand, that’s awesome and Hestia is incredibly cool, but on the other hand… really? How can you tell? She could equally be, uh, anyone else ever. ‘She is perhaps Helen of Troy, just sort of hanging out on Olympus for giggles’.

The end of the Gathering was nearly upon us, but no visit to a London tourist attraction is complete without a chance to buy expensive junk from the gift shops. And the junk available at the British Museum was…

There’s definitely a ‘junk’ joke here, but I will refrain from making it.

Okay. This next picture? Seriously disturbing. I’m giving you fair warning, here - the shop at the British Museum is not a place for the faint-hearted. I wouldn’t blame you for just skipping the next picture altogether and moving on.

Seriously.

I’m not kidding.

Okay, you asked for it.

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?

The worst part is, you can see what they were trying to do; you can imagine the planning meeting where they decided that this would be an adorable, quirky idea. And then… that.

Can we have a soothing picture next?

I WILL NEVER DIE!

Gah!

The sword almost lets me ignore the evil thing in teddy form in the background… almost.

Guard yourself, Storme Hawk! Don’t let it take you by surprise!

That’s better. We were almost ready to go now, but… well, if you’re in an Egyptian-themed museum on a PPC Gathering, there’s one thing you have to take pictures of:

HI, BAST! So that’s two PPC patron goddesses in this report. Doing well!

And that was just about that. We had enough time left to take a picture of the PPCffindor 2014 Quidditch Team:

From left to right, that’s: Huinesoron (Beater), the Irish Samurai (Beater), Cassie (back; Chaser), Fractal Dawn (front, Seeker), Storme Hawk (back; Keeper), Kaitlyn (middle; Chaser), Lycaenion (front; Chaser)

And yes, it took quite a bit of arguing to decide who did what.

And then we all went our separate ways at last.

Bye, Lycaenion and Cassie!

Bye, Irish Samurai and Storme Hawk!

Bye, Fractal Dawn!

Good riddance, Lord Voldemort!

And Kaitlyn and I walked alllll the way back across London, got back on a train, and went home.

So there we have it. It was fun! Though we never did get off the ground floor of the museum…

Oh, well. There’s always next year.

I’ll be waiting.

sO wIlL i

Then again, maybe not.