sraffie reunion

[darren]

i've been off work all this week, spending time with family in norfolk.

right now, i'm sat in the garden. it's really sunny; so i can see my screen, i've propped an umbrella against the back of my laptop, so i'm half in the sunshine and half in the shade. the battery doesn't last long, so i've fed the charger through the window to the plug socket in the kitchen. you have to make the most of the british summertime.

i've been sifting through the pub of heaven -- mostly the general discussion forums (um, fora?) -- to get a feel for what's happened since i've been away. looking at my previous posts, i don't appear to have been a regular patron of the pub since 2006, though i think i came back for the odd month since, here and there -- but the pub crashed a few times, sinking many of my posts, so it's difficult to be sure.

coming back now, it's a kind of post-voyeuristic experience, i guess. i'm shadowing old threads, silently reacquainting myself with the sraffies i knew when i first joined the pub, over eight years ago. i'm meeting people who joined since i left, people who don't know me, people who haven't met me. i'm reading topics a couple of years old, reading stories about people i don't know, about their families and friends and the food they like and they music they listen to and the clothes they wear.

and, since it's slightly uncomfortable silently haunting this place, i thought it worthwhile to speak out.

so much has changed. not that i should be surprised, perhaps. eight years is a long time for anyone, but when i joined (early 2003, i think) i was young and pretty naive and the pub of heaven was my playground, and back then, eight years was too far in the future to imagine. i wore my heart on my sleeve and shared stories and i played in our playground.

it's probably best that a lot of my posts sunk without trace in the forum crashes, to be honest. i seem to remember some of them (even some of the surviving ones) were cries for attention. (but we've all been there, haven't we?) and in the three or so years i was active here, things changed a great deal in my life. my first proper relationship ended shortly after i joined. i started my first proper full-time job. i made several friends on this board that i'm sorry to say i haven't kept in touch with, despite having met some of them in the real world, like kinders and nick. through this forum i met krissy, and we had an amazing, though somewhat challenging long-distance relationship for several years, back when the idea of sraffie couples was shiny and new. grandparents died and krissy and i went separate ways and i moved out of my parents' house and i grew up a lot.

and i think it's when i started to grow up that i stopped visiting our playground regularly. it had become like never never land; i had got to the point where my imagination wasn't as it used to be, when i realised i wasn't the bohemian revolutionary i thought i was. but that isn't as awful as it sounds. amazing things have happened in my life since my pub of heaven days. i have a whole new life and i can truthfully say that i'm happier now than i ever have been before.

so, haunting the pub over the last couple of days, behind the scenes... yes, i can see that things have changed. but that's not a bad thing. it's not a bad thing that sraffies have come and gone. it's a testament to philip pullman and his novels that the pub is still drawing new people in. there's no such thing as a golden age, just ages you took part in and ages you did not.

i'm glad i was in the age i was, at the age i was.

* * *

despite this, i do wonder about old friends. i wonder where they are, what they are doing now. a couple of them i have the means to contact, but many of them i don't.

i remember shiv's colour day. (and confusslement!) i remember the seating plan for the HDM movie premiere, planned years before the movie ever materialised. i remember when we voted and decided upon the name, the republic of heaven. (i remember dubbing it the pub of heaven, just to be awkward.) i remember eniamrahc's constant spelling-and-grammar patrol. i remember (and somehow miss) Yukon's trolling. i remember merlyn/tristan, justine, soup, eloquent/ali, lostinthought/louisa, enitharmon/rosie, blighty/will, lady/cecilia, trillian/tanya, amongst so many others.

i'm so pleased that peter, jess and soapy (and blossom, too?) are still here. but where are the others? i don't think this will ever happen -- i think some people have strayed too far from the pub -- but i'd love to see a sraffie reunion. i'd love to get all of the sraffies, old and new, all of us, together at one place and time, online or in the real world, just for one day, to see how we've grown, to see if we've gotten to where we wanted to go, to see who we've become.

you know. at midsummer, in oxford, perhaps.

spread the word, sraffies.

-- darren

[jessia]

hi darren, we're all in chat, or on facebook.

you'll meet some new faces, and find that many from 2003-05 no longer frequent the pub, but a surprising number of us are still in touch by alternate means. we had a srafcon in toronto just this past weekend.

swing by #btts sometime.

[Jaya]

Hi Darren,

when Dawn and I took over earlier this year, we did archive a lot of threads that had become defunct. So some of the threads and posts that you remember may still be around, and have just been hidden away. If you remember/want one in particular, come find me.

A lot has changed, but we hope you'll stick around anyway, now that you've returned. For the mostpart, the HDM world (and thereby BTTS and TROH) is quiet...with little news, and since the film bombed, interest has died down - so the site is a lot less busy than it once was.

i remember merlyn/tristan, justine, soup, eloquent/ali, lostinthought/louisa, enitharmon/rosie, blighty/will, lady/cecilia, trillian/tanya, amongst so many others.

i'm so pleased that peter, jess and soapy (and blossom, too?) are still here. but where are the others?

This question is easy to answer. Tristan is around, but rarely visits. You can find him on Facebook, and he did come to a srafcon in Cambridge a couple of years ago. Justine has been gone a long time. Soup frequents chat occasionally, as does Louisa. Rosie left more recently, but has since reappeared with a post or two. Will abandoned us, but yes, Retty/Blossom is still sometimes around (though...haven't seen her for a while?). I don't know Cecilia. Tanya can be found on Facebook, but not here.

Peter, Jess, and Soapy are still around.

Like Jess said, if you want to talk to a bunch of people who are around regularly - do come to the chat. And feel free to wander around the forum/site as well (though I see you've probably already done some of that).

[jessia]

Tristan is around, but rarely visits. You can find him on Facebook, and he did come to a srafcon in Cambridge a couple of years ago. Justine has been gone a long time. Soup frequents chat occasionally, as does Louisa. Rosie left more recently, but has since reappeared with a post or two. Will abandoned us, but yes, Retty/Blossom is still sometimes around (though...haven't seen her for a while?). I don't know Cecilia. Tanya can be found on Facebook, but not here.

justine, lou, and retty are all on facebook too. and will is on linkedin...

[Darragh]

Hi Darren and welcome back. I never really interacted with you as you were past my time but I always love when names from the past drop by. I miss a lot of the regular posters. Hopefully you can stick around for a bit as the forum is a bit dead.

[darren]

hi darren, we're all in chat, or on facebook.

hmmm. i'm not sure how much i like chat (or how much chat likes me). i'm worried that, in real time, people will notice that i'm actually really boring and shallow. (cue everyone: we knew that already!) but yeah, i might sign in occasionally to say hello :)

some of the threads and posts that you remember may still be around, and have just been hidden away. If you remember/want one in particular, come find me.

thanks jaya :)

[Jaya]

Will you be around to answer people's incessant questions from now on?

[darren]

Will you be around to answer people's incessant questions from now on?

oh, yes! bring back ask darren!

[Justine]

Yes, bring back Ask Darren!! I've missed everyone, too. I was popping in to see who was still around and was delighted to find this.

[Mockingbird]

What a great post. Now I wish I (had) kne(o)w(n) you. Ah well, ships pass in the night and all that.

[Melancholy Man]

We love you Darren.

[Ian]

and will is on linkedin...

*He* added me a couple of weeks ago.