Talking in public...

On Saturday, after bending our brains together at “Looper” (excellent, but inevitably a little brain-bendy, by dint of the subject) the Dipgeek and I went for a meal and a quiet drink in a pub in Richmond.  We started off talking about all the general “how are you?” stuff one always starts with, followed of course by “how’s your food?”; but then we got onto alternative lives/alternative universes, and would-you-change-the-past-if-you-could; and excrement, of course (the Dipgeek works with it, and I use it in metaphors perhaps rather more often than I should); and then we got onto the subject of blowing things up.

It’s amazing what some of my friends know.   I had no idea how dangerous liquid nitrogen is, for example.  I can have so much fun now, writing stuff that would make any health and safety conscious person run a mile.  I have just enough factual info to make the destruction of the Droit Institute in "Gold Hawk" sound moderately credible instead of really, really lame (it was limping along on the level of “He hit him, then he hit back and a bit of the wall fell down”, which is pretty shameful).

The Dipgeek had read this, and realised she could advise me to a certain extent, simply because she's a Dipgeek and I'm not.  She very sensibly decided against sending me a detailed email entitled “How to blow up a research institute”, since it could be, well, misunderstood...  So, being two terribly intelligent people (well, actually, being two trusting souls who are used to living in a free country) we sat in The Duke off Richmond Green and talked about it in public.  

I made a lot of notes.  I now have a notebook with some really appalling things written in it.

If anyone did overhear the conversation, we’ve probably both moved up the MI6 watch list.  Particularly as we kept laughing.  It was normal laughter, though; not Evil Villain mwahahah laughter.

The Dipgeek may have missed her forte, incidentally; she shows great promise as an Evil Villain, with some quite extraordinary blow-things-up ideas.  Not quite up to James Bond standards (she needs to work on the baroque hairdo and the sadism, though she does now have the white fluffy cat, and can do a better mwahahah than me), but certainly better than the average “Mission Impossible” baddie, for example.  Mind you, it's hardly difficult to be more evil than Dougray Scott; while the Evil Villain in “MI4” is described at one point as having a ludicrously high IQ - 185, was it? - (I can’t remember, damn it; now I shall have to watch a bit of the dvd in order to check.  Lunge scene, here I come! Oh no, it isn’t in the lunge scene.  Hmm.  I think I shall watch the lunge scene anyway, simply because it is so... so... words fail me.  So - so lunge-y) and he’s just a blank cipher with a glassy stare.  If that’s an IQ of 185 then maybe I’ve got one too.  I can certainly do blank and glassy-eyed.  Pass me the whisky and I’ll show you right now.

Certainly Dipgeek would be far more interesting than Mr Glassy-eyes; but of course, she’s sane, which does make the whole Villainy plan a little redundant. 

Anyway, I now have a bit more knowledge about dangerous things in labs, and coincidentally also about Informed Consent (which is going to be really useful in Chapter One when I get the the rewrites stage), and I'm a happy writing bunny.  With an excuse to watch the lunge scene again.