So Long, And Thanks For All The Carrots

Continuation of Account Of A Fangirl. Hopefully works on its own, though.

For some reason I cannot recall, I came up with the idea for carrots.

We stood by the scaffolding outside Wetherspoons, right next to the cinema, and right next to some very impressive costuming. There was a Legolas and a Frodo, and an Aragorn smoking an actual pipe. Elsewhere I had espied several other hobbits, along with a Gimli, a ringwraith, an Elrond, and a most intriguing cross between Santa and Gandalf. A Gandalf the White, of course, complete with silver sparkly Santa hat. Most perplexing.

At this time it was still raining. I didn't go last year, but most of my friends did, and there was genuine, if mainly ignored, terror as to just how cold it might actually get. We wandered off to an Italian coffee shop around the corner, and Celia filled up her thermos flask by buying 3 cups of hot chocolate to decanter. Foreign serving girl provided funny look number one of the day.

We went back to the main square. The posters finished going up. We cheered.

Around 11 the barriers arrived in trucks. We got moved further and further back, until we reached the point where it was decided that it would be best to simply make our way into the warmth of the pub and to then re-emerge at the opportune moment. A moment when we would be able to avail ourselves of this all too popular cunning and attain a place right next to the barrier where the blindingly bright stars would simply naturally stop to talk with us all.

The pub kicked us out. Bastards. We did actually buy a couple of drinks between us, but it was not until we were leaving that the idea for carrots came to me. I'm not sure where it came from, what small comment led to the gargantuan association leap that is fairly typical of me, but I'm sure there was some thinking behind the whole idea. Newly inspired, I went running back to the bar to attempt to purchase a carrot from their kitchen.

Cue funny look number two of the day.

As it turned out, Wetherspoons has dirty little kitchen secrets. Let it here be known that Wetherspoons does not actually use fresh carrots. It uses packaged carrots, readily chopped, and I decided this would be highly inadequate for what I intended to purpose the unsuspecting vegetable.

I was unwilling to trade in what I naively hoped would turn out to be a potentially brilliant spot next to the barrier in order to shop for groceries, and so gave up on the idea. We made our way back outside, squabbling good-heartedly with the security and straining against the temporary barrier erected to keep us safe from the construction of the actual barrier. I soon realised that although I was well-positioned in general, I was in fact at the back of what was relatively speaking only a few (but still quite a crowd) of fans.

I'd arrived at roughly 10:30. I'd thought my friends' intentions to arrive at 7:30-8 had been slightly excessive. I don't know what I'm talking about most of the time. Some people had been there since 3 am.

Ponchki and I decided we stood a better chance at the back of a different crowd, and so marched off to try our luck. We met a girl, H., at the back of this particular crowd, and were soon talking at a rate of knots. I just realised I have absolutely no idea how fast a knot is. I assume more knots equates to faster, so I will say that we were, in fact, talking at a rate of lots of knots.

Eventually the temporary barriers were removed, and the crowd surged forwards. As it turned out, our luck sucked. We were in the last row, roughly 5 people away from the barrier, with little chance of seeing much other than some boring hair cuts. We made our way out of that crush to find a better spot, and ended up outside the hotel next to Garfunkels, slightly opposite the capital radio building. We allowed ourselves to feel slightly smug, as this would be roughly where the cars would pull up. Not too smug, however, as the friends we had left behind now had excellent positions, although only Sparkyred was at the very front.

Our situation was now such that one of us could happily wander off to return to a relatively secure place in the hands of the other two. I went to buy carrots.

The carrot is a good vegetable. It has all sorts of nutritional benefits, and is rarely strongly disliked. I, personally, cannot stand grated carrot, but other than that often greatly enjoy this colourful root. Peter Jackson also has a thing for carrots. At least, that's the theory. In his cameo in Bree, he's stood by the side of the road eating a carrot. Arguably one of the funniest lines in the first movie is Merry's carrot line, "I think I've broken something."

There is thus a supportable connection between Lord of the Rings and carrots. I did have a better founding logic than that, but as I said earlier, I forgot it, and this is the best substitute I can come up with. So I went to buy carrots in nearby Chinatown so that we could give one to a hobbit or two.

The next bit wasn't my idea. The next bit wasn't my fault at all. I think I can fairly safely say that the blame for the next bit can almost entirely be attributed to Ponchki. She had pens. We wrote messages on the best three carrots I had been able to find. Writing on carrots with running out pens is more complicated than it sounds, and I speedily learnt a delicate skill stood in the now abated rain in Leicester Square.

I think this was around the time we received funny look number three.

The hours went fairly quickly amid the hilarity and chatter. We were stood in either the second or third row of people, depending on exactly who was almost falling over in the crush as the night went on. The flaming rings on the first floor of the cinema were lit, a giant puppy dog turned up to hand out promotional orange stress-reliever balls, and some people squealed at Jonathan Ross as he came out the press screening, not necessarily in that order.

In the meantime, the carrot word had spread. In attempting to communicate our location by mobile phone to the abandoned friends, there had been much waving of the carrots. Which had been followed by questioning and discussion of the carrots by those standing close to us, and also by those standing not so close to us. At some point we made a sign with big bold letters saying "CARROT", and shortly thereafter we had the entire section of our barrier chanting the word at any media cameras that happened to stray near.

My carrot's been filmed by some funky tv channel, I'll have you know. Someone that gets all the best channels and, well, actually watches tv will have to let me know if it actually made the cut.

Somewhere along the line I lost count of the funny looks.

The first celebrity to arrive was Phillipa Boyens, and although there were appearances by SClub8 and various other pop figures I failed to recognise, it wasn't long before Peter Jackson turned up, and then the mayhem for the evening truly began, and continued until after I left, for sure. They came thick and fast. Andy Serkis, Richard Taylor, and Barrie Osborne. Bernard Hill laughed at our carrots. Ian McKellen just gave us yet another funny look, although he did touch my hand.

Ponchki's a big Karl Urban fan. I may be slightly deafened.

Sigh. I know I'm getting the order all wrong, but Dominic Monaghan did walk our way. He just seemed a bit preoccupied with all the screaming fanaticism to pay much attention to the carrots. So we all failed to hand them over. We thought about throwing them, or rather, someone behind us thought about it and shouted out what we considered to be highly inadvisable, and so we decided not to, much to the relief of the premiere veterans standing to our left. We tried once again when Viggo Mortensen came around, but again, he was rather busy signing things.

I still have my carrot. I'm a bit worried I'll have to throw it away all too soon, before it starts rotting. It reads in printed black ink capitals:

"To Dom,
Hi, raided Farmer Maggot's outlet in Chinatown. Sorry, but couldn't find any mushrooms for you. Merry Christmas, love Mad Fan #2."

Posted by Missiedith at December 13, 2003 1:26 AM