At The Gates

WHO: Anyone neutral or good!
WHAT: Dominic Munroe demands merriment and good food to celebrate some birthdays.
WHEN: Sunday, June 12th, during the day.
WHERE: Haven, the rundown old church in Westminster.

For all that their home is known as a sanctuary, Haven runs the risk of becoming too austere and monk-like at times. Its quiet risks being too quiet and sacred; its innate churchness sometimes seems inextricable and inescapable.

But today is a day for celebration and socialisation, in whatever form they can make it. Voices are raised in laughter, cracking what normally stands as silence around a sacrosanct churchyard. The makings of a summer party have been installed in Haven's overgrown garden; it was evidently well-tended in the past, but the plantlife has now grown shoddy, trailing rampant over its boundaries. A beaten, slightly-rusty barbeque grill has taken up residence at the corner of the garden -- the grill's seen better days, but by the beaming expression of the man tending it (bright-red 'KISS THE CHEF' apron and all), it seems to be doing its job well enough. The sound and smell of sizzling meat fills the air, and food has been laid out on a long wooden table. Chairs are scattered throughout the flattened grass. The organisation is a little makeshift and a little second-hand -- but that's only fitting for the venue, isn't it?

[Feel free to tag in below and start your own sub-threads with each other!]

Who: Gray Adams (bitofthat) & Archie Valerian (equivalency)
What: A different kind of shopping - though to people like them it's perfectly normal
Where: Market
When: Thursday, 24 March 2011
Warnings: N/A

( Read more... )

When the Market is busy, no one notices the peripheries, not those focused on doing their jobs. And the Market is busy; Valentine's Day is always an event for those unlucky in love, those who want charms for looks and charms for the heart, those who wish to kill off the unfaithful and those who want to bring him back. No one noticed a small store setting up on the very edge, hung with pink and red bunting and a large handlettered sign proclaiming, 'Madam Venus's Charms and Delights'. No one was there when it (illegal, no permission to operate) went rather wrong at around midnight on Sunday, burst into a very loud, pink and red explosion and left nothing behind but a cloud of livid pink smoke. It was a perfect kind of plight, a warning if you will, to those who set up within the Market without the Market's sanction -- until, by morning, that smoke had spread and diffused and drifted, until it had become rather obvious that perhaps it wasn't just Madam Venus who had a plight at all.

Great swathes of the stuff drifted past the barrier line, blew softly into just a drift of palest pink and caught itself on the ever-helpful breeze meandering through London that morning. Valentine's Day for the residents was clearly going to be a little more unusual than the rest of the year.

Who: Liam Ward (richestorags) & Gray Adams (bitofthat)
What: Head-clearing after hell-week.
Where: Gray's home.
When: Monday, 12/27.
Warnings: None.

( And then Monday rolled around and it was back to business as usual. )