![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I never thought Inigo was an actual name until we went on a school trip in year 9.
"You killed my father, prepare to die," obviously; my mum had an old VHS copy and a silver-grey video player that opened slow and stately and sideways, like a cassette player. (It's probably retro, now, which makes me feel depressingly old in ways I choose not to think about.) She'd park me in front of The Princess Bride when I was still too young to wield a polishing cloth, which puts me pre-verbal if not precisely pre-toddle; hauling that behemoth to the offices she worked at must've broken her back but it beat leaving me to the whims of my dad. Also explains a lot about how early she got me reading.
Inigo, though, was the stuff of fantasy until I was 13.
Most of the girls had disappeared into the market in spite of the teacher's attempt to herd them, and the boys were - almost to a man - trying to impress Emi Dagogo, statuesque recent transfer, regal and Nigerian and a demon when she had a basketball in her hands. And much as I loved a tall and terrifying woman, my attention was definitely elsewhere.
Inigo Jones, Welsh boy with a flair for the dramatic, a fondness for the Italian, a design for the theatrical. Something about stepping into the square, something about the lines of the actor's church and the performers in front of it, the rapt expressions on people's faces as they stared at someone do a trick with three white hankies and an unfortunate dove... it was like the magic of theatre and the irreverence of panto and the nervous thrill of backstage at a school play, all at once.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't much of an actor, but I pored over the books in the library on London architecture, just as soon as I got back amongst the rickety metal shelves. I always wanted to know the workings, the plans behind things, even before it got tangled up in an unfortunate case of morals, and there was something about the lines of the square that spoke to me.
I guess Inigo was the stuff of fantasy a little longer than that.
He was the first one (aside from my dad) to break my heart, too. Turns out there's not much room in the architecture world if you can't actually draw.
All other heartbreaks have seemed sort of incidental, after that. Rashida Jones in year 10, the realisation I'll probably never marry Estelle, any time England have been in the world cup.
Being assigned to the Case Progression Unit.
Lesley, last night. It's like you don't see the world the way a copper needs to see the world - that one's going to stay with me. Like you're seeing stuff that isn't there.
So I guess it all makes sense, really. Poetic justice, or something. I wanted to be a thief taker, wanted to restore some sense of order to the world, but I end up seriously informing a superior officer that I'm ghost hunting while lurking in the Portico of Inigo Jones' Actors' Church. No escaping the Case Progression Unit now, if they even let me get that far.
It was all a bit of a fantasy, anyway.
"You killed my father, prepare to die," obviously; my mum had an old VHS copy and a silver-grey video player that opened slow and stately and sideways, like a cassette player. (It's probably retro, now, which makes me feel depressingly old in ways I choose not to think about.) She'd park me in front of The Princess Bride when I was still too young to wield a polishing cloth, which puts me pre-verbal if not precisely pre-toddle; hauling that behemoth to the offices she worked at must've broken her back but it beat leaving me to the whims of my dad. Also explains a lot about how early she got me reading.
Inigo, though, was the stuff of fantasy until I was 13.
Most of the girls had disappeared into the market in spite of the teacher's attempt to herd them, and the boys were - almost to a man - trying to impress Emi Dagogo, statuesque recent transfer, regal and Nigerian and a demon when she had a basketball in her hands. And much as I loved a tall and terrifying woman, my attention was definitely elsewhere.
Inigo Jones, Welsh boy with a flair for the dramatic, a fondness for the Italian, a design for the theatrical. Something about stepping into the square, something about the lines of the actor's church and the performers in front of it, the rapt expressions on people's faces as they stared at someone do a trick with three white hankies and an unfortunate dove... it was like the magic of theatre and the irreverence of panto and the nervous thrill of backstage at a school play, all at once.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't much of an actor, but I pored over the books in the library on London architecture, just as soon as I got back amongst the rickety metal shelves. I always wanted to know the workings, the plans behind things, even before it got tangled up in an unfortunate case of morals, and there was something about the lines of the square that spoke to me.
I guess Inigo was the stuff of fantasy a little longer than that.
He was the first one (aside from my dad) to break my heart, too. Turns out there's not much room in the architecture world if you can't actually draw.
All other heartbreaks have seemed sort of incidental, after that. Rashida Jones in year 10, the realisation I'll probably never marry Estelle, any time England have been in the world cup.
Being assigned to the Case Progression Unit.
Lesley, last night. It's like you don't see the world the way a copper needs to see the world - that one's going to stay with me. Like you're seeing stuff that isn't there.
So I guess it all makes sense, really. Poetic justice, or something. I wanted to be a thief taker, wanted to restore some sense of order to the world, but I end up seriously informing a superior officer that I'm ghost hunting while lurking in the Portico of Inigo Jones' Actors' Church. No escaping the Case Progression Unit now, if they even let me get that far.
It was all a bit of a fantasy, anyway.
