This entry is otherwise known as 'Why you should not tell someone who doesn't know London so well to meet you at the Royal Festival Hall without specifying where in or around the Royal Festival Hall you're actually going to be because it's TOO DAMN BIG, though it does have a spiffy fountain and nice riverside location and there's a Foyle's'.

... I like life lessons that aren't going to be that applicable ever again.

Its third and final title is 'That day I met someone from the Internet and didn't get horribly murdered.'

So. It turns out that kay_cricketed, who amongst her other many, many, many talents and charms is a Professional Iowan, is in London until the 19th. This, needless to say, is extremely good news for me because it means that after years of harassing her through Livejournal comments and over MSN I actually got to meet her and harass her in person. Big step forward, though not as big as it could be as it turns out that the kind of things we say in person are just the same as the things we say on MSN, except we both have accents here.

Anyway, the meeting itself went well (PASTA! Pasta and fangirlishness!), actually meeting up rather less so, as can probably be imagined given that pointlessly descriptive entry... um, description up there. The Royal Festival Hall, when kay_cricketed (henceforth known as Kay because it's easier to type) suggested it, seemed like a nicely innocuous choice of meeting place. Facing the river, a few hundred yards from the spot on the South Bank where I usually meet my father when he's in London - under Waterloo Bridge by the secondhand book mart - it's extremely easy for me to get to, not easy to miss, and her friend already knew how to get there. The South Bank isn't usually too overcrowded, either - another plus, as trying to meet someone in, say, Leicester Square would be a disaster waiting to happen.

We've seen one another's photos, but I told her I'd be wearing my shamelessly infantile sheep backpack, to make myself easy to spot.

Okay. We arrange to meet between ten and half-past. I get to the Festival Hall at about ten past ten, after a rather annoying bus ride which is made more annoying by the fact there is no room in my sheep bag to put my notebooks or my Discman, both of which usually help a lot when it comes to traveling on a bus without ending up wanting to stab some teenager in the face for being obnoxiously noisy. I'm not too surprised to realize that there's nobody there who seems to be waiting for me, as in spite of being ten minutes late I'm still twenty minutes early.

On the other hand, the Royal Festival Hall is a lot bigger than I imagined, and like an idiot I hadn't specified which side of the building I'd be waiting. I'd assumed it would be on the South Bank proper, by the river, but I had rather stupidly forgotten to mention this to Kay. Which meant she could already be here and waiting on the other side of the building. Or she could be by the riverbank after all. Or...

Cue me wandering around the outside of the Royal Festival Hall what must have been about five goddamn times as I tried to work out what a good place to wait would be so I could watch both sides of the building without too much hassle (there wasn't one, of course) and starting to feel increasingly lonely, panicky and stood-up.

After half past ten had been and gone, I wondered if maybe I should call Kay and find out if we were still okay to meet.

Except, brilliantly, I had forgotten to write down her UK cell number.

Okay, um... right, now I was really starting to panic and, in my panic, I did something which is becoming my standard response to a bad situation. I called John. Yup, when in doubt, call your boyfriend. I am a shining example of Independent Womanhood to be sure. On the other hand, I don't have many other people I can casually call up and he's about the only person I could think of I'd actually trust with my Gmail password. See, Kay had emailed me with her cell number the night before and I had a brilliant plan - if John got her number from the email, we could get in contact and find out what the Hell was going on. Except John had a better plan, because I'd called Kay from his mobile the night before and the number would still be in the memory. Brilliant! Now I don't have to tell him my embarrassing Gmail password and change it the minute I get home.

So, John calls Kay and finds out what's happening while I stand on the courtyard on the wrong (non-river) side of the building, fretting for my country - turns out she'd missed the first train. Oh.

Furthermore it turns out she'd tried to call to let me know about the delay, using the number I called from last night, got John, and thought she'd got a complete stranger so had quickly hung up. Oh.

Right then. Feeling like a complete dumbass, I ask John if he can call her back and, as I'm really tired of wandering round the Festival Hall and want to stop, tell her that I'm in Foyle's bookstore. I've learned at least one lesson from all this, you see - if you're meeting someone outside a big-ass building like the Royal Festival Hall, for God's sake specify where you're meeting so you don't have to worry that you keep missing the person you're supposed to be meeting because you're both wandering round trying to find each other and constantly just missing each other. Of course, the minute I put the phone down I have another panic-stricken thought that Kay won't be able to find Foyle's and I should have said 'by the fountain on the terrace', because water is almost as good as books and besides, it's outdoors and easier to spot and--well, I'll call John back if we still haven't seen hide or hair of one another in a half hour, I guess, this is not going well.

Thankfully, however, Kay found Foyle's without too much difficulty and snuck up on me while I was browsing through an artsy book on manga and anime art. I would have preferred a volume of Saiyuki but Foyle's doesn't have them, and I wasn't sure I could bring the necessary application to Breaking Dawn, cracktastic as it sounds. At which point the day got appreciably better and remained that way for a good few hours, which was nice, even if the Trafalgar Square fountains did seem to want to drown both my bag and Kay's bag in quick succession, making Kay's bag bleed black fabric dye onto the edge of the fountain and all over her hands.

... now all I need is for her to email me back so we can work out when we're seeing one another again. Must get in second meeting before she vanishes back to America to be a professional Iowan again.