Confidence - my thanks

So many people replied to my last post that it will take all day to reply to them all so I thought I'd just say something here. Its been really interesting reading through everybody's responses and discussions on the matter. Interesting to see the common themes come out and interesting to see where the differences were and think about why certain people see things differently and what it says about them.

There may well be some similar posts coming up in the future so stay tuned. The next things I am considering are social defence mechanisms and the like. eg the fact that in a social situation where I am not always completely comfortable I always like to have a drink in my hand (not necessarily alcohol), but just to give me a focus to distract me... I need to go and think about my thoughts on it and what views I want to gain from others first though.

A night with OULES

So, last night I finally got around to seein some people I've not seen for ages. OULES was putting on their performance and I'd been told that being the last night there would be a big party afterwards. A bit of prodding saw me coming along to watch the play (missing half of the first one) and talking to lots of people.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Both plays were urder mystery types and both were very silly. I think I appreciated the second more, partly because there were people I knew in it. And there were doctor who references and I think on the whole it was a lot more silly which is always good.

Following that there was much walking around trying to work out where the party was going to be held. Several locations were tried and then failed and after probably about an hour of wandering around I was considering bailing on the walking round oxford. Then the port meadow decision was made and after a very token amount of persuasion I found myself heading up there.

Despite my scepticism a fire was built and after eyeing it warily for fire safety I ignored it and chatted to people, listened to songs I could unfortuantely not join in on but generally had a thoroughly good time. I decided that 1AM was my home time and so just before 1 I started saying my goodbyes. Unfortunately this meant talking to people I hadn't really talked to before and therefore I chatted to for a while. So I finally left after about 45 minutes of goodbyes. Which could have been a lot worse.

I met lots of nice new people. A few of whom recognised me but I didn't recognise them. Some of whom recognised me but as somebody I actually wasn't (it was the beardiness apparently). But yes, lots of nice people.

Many of the people there have LJs which I shall try to list. Please don't take offence if I miss you off, its pure carelessness or laziness on my part. :)

foulds - who was a wonderfully clueless holmes
mi_guida - who first suggested I should come along
sebastienne - who was a wonderfully mocked Oscar Wilde
neoanjou - who I failed to recognise at first - sorry, but was a good person to talk to for chunks of the evening
jacinthsong - who was a wonderful bored palace guard
short1sandwich - who was one of the people I failed to talk to until the goodbye rounds and is an awesome pirate lass.
antoniabaker - who I recognised from her reputation and made me feel very welcome and made me feel appreciated and not like a hanger on.
half_of_monty - a LJ username that I remember being told and the name on the info page is elizabeth so might have been the nice girl I was talking to at the end about friends of mine who are relatives of hers. Otherwise that was a different elizabeth and I am sorry, too many people!
lizziwig - whom I have come across on LJ and we did the "Ah, you're [username]" thing.
loneraven - who I believe played the most long suffering corpse in any play...
arifirh - who was a most disturbing butler and a most friendly person.

Hell, there were more. If I've missed anybody feel free to supply me with usernames and I'll see if I remember them and put comments down. There were of course lots of people there that I didn't do the LJ introduction with and they were all jolly nice. Including Dan (Browne) who is also known to many other people here. He played a wonderful roll and told some awesome jokes. I'm still not sure if he was the straight man or the funny man in some of the scenes. Ask him to tell you a joke next time you see him!

A thoroughly good night and I am very tired today as a result. STill, I'm very glad I did it and very pleased that they were all so friendly and welcoming of random hangers on. :)

Edit: I was also flattered in a way by one conversation. I can't remember precisely who it was with (sorry, too many new faces, not enough braincells) stemming from me saying I wasn't student any more. "How old are you then?" I was asked. "Its rude to ask somebody's age" I reply - I don't think other people need to know since it doesn't make a difference. "Well, when did you matriculate then?" "That's the same question!" "Well, if you matriculated after '99 then you're not old." "And if I didn't?" "...". I took it as a compliment since she clearly hadn't expected me to have matriculated before 99. Go me. :)