Shirt...

...In A Class Of His Own.

Naughty Asteroid were having a signing event for the recently released tie-in ‘Class’ novels, featuring authors Guy Adams and James Goss, and series showrunner (and YA novelist), Patrick Ness. Despite having already purchased one of the novels a few weeks before (to get various BBC Books goodies), and having another event later the same night, Shirt decided to attend.

Needing to leave the signing which began at 6pm by 6.30pm to get to his second event and unsure how long the queue was going to be, Shirt managed to leave work early, reaching Naughty Asteroid by 5.15pm, to find no queue in the book department. Grazing the shelves, and constantly rechecking for a queue, finally having bought a ‘Sherlock’ comic and the final part of ‘Supremacy of the Cybermen’, at around 5.45pm, Shirt found a queue of two and joined on the back, pulling out the carrier bag containing his multiple items for signing, being a little concerned at the large number of items that he had for Guy Adams.

At 6pm, the three came into the signing area, and chairs were found and placed behind the signing table. The queue was up to around twelve, and first up was Patrick Ness. The first member of the queue stepped up to Patrick, getting him to sign one of the novels, whilst eulogising Patrick’s writing, and asking for a writing job on any second series of ‘Class’. Moving along, he got James Goss to sign a ‘Torchwood’ item and the novel, bypassing Guy Adams completely. Any concerns that Shirt had about the number of items that he had for Guy Adams were dispelled by the girl in front, placing Patrick Ness’ entire oeuvre in front of him (with multiple copies of some books). Each book had a small post-it note on its cover, stating who it should be signed to. Passing the ‘Class’ novels down to their respective authors, Patrick began working his way through the gigantic pile of books. Further down, James had signed one of the two copies of his novel, but had signed it to the name still visible on the cover of the other. Guy solved the problem, by swapping the notes over for James, meaning that when they were passed back to Patrick they had the right names on. Guy managed to sign his books correctly before these were also passed back.

The mountain of books signed, and Shirt was next. First up were the ‘Class’ novels which were all signed by Patrick, then ’11 Doctors 11 Stories’ in which Patrick wrote a Fifth Doctor story. Moving along, Shirt handed over Guy’s ‘Class’ novel, followed by a large number of Large Endings’ covers, whilst he rummaged in his bag for two books – ‘The Legends of River Song’ and ‘Torchwood: The Men Who Sold The World’. Gathering his covers and books, Shirt moved along to James, again starting with the novel (getting James to dedicate the already signed book) then Large Endings’ covers, then Large Endings’ ‘The Tenth Doctor Adventures’ in which James wrote the last of the three, which James proudly displayed to the other two. Gathering his items again, Shirt moved off, checking that he had all items before going upstairs to pay for the two novels.

Shirt then had to dash across London, rushing to Covent Garden station where he found himself waiting for almost ten minutes to be able to get into one of the lifts, and then on the Piccadilly Line to Gloucester Road, where grabbing some fast-food, Shirt walked briskly the short distance to Baden Powell House where the ‘Sherlock Holmes Society of London’ Film Evening was taking place. On entering, Shirt looked around for a sign to the event, but a passing member of staff having looked Shirt up and down, and knowing a Sherlock Holmes fan when he sees one, gestured ‘The event is downstairs’.

Finding the room, Shirt settled in for any evening of foreign-language Sherlockian productions, introduced by Matthew J. Elliott, Sherlockian author and adapter. As the seating was all on one level, Shirt found it difficult to see all the subtitles on the first offering, a Russian production loosely based on ‘The Sign of Four’, but moving to the side was more able to see perfectly a Japanese TV show featuring puppet versions of Holmes and Watson as schoolboys.

The evening having come to an end, Shirt took the opportunity to go up to Matthew, as he is the writer of all sixty dramatisations of the complete canon for ‘Imagination Theatre’, only the second audio series to dramatise all 60 stories with the same detective and doctor (the other being the Merrison series, which was written by multiple writers). Shirt got Matthew to sign first a collection of his Sherlockian short-stories, and then the Large Endings’ Seventh Doctor, Mel & Ace audio, ‘Maker of Demons’. Having waxed lyrically in a manner similar to that of Patrick Ness’ super-fan earlier, Shirt managed to grab a passing fellow SHSoL member to have a photo taken with Matthew, before making his apologies and leaving to wend his way home after a very full and busy evening.

[PL]