Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Kevin arrived safely yesterday. And for dinner, on Judith Clute’s recommendation, we went to Simply Fish, a new restaurant in Camden. I’m fussy about my fish. I recommend this place.
Where’s Cheryl?
Busy, Busy
Deep breath. What am I up to?
Last night I saw Iain Banks in Bath. He was great fun as usual, and announced that he has enough ideas to write another Culture novel. Obviously that will take a while as he has a new mainstream novel to do first, but it sounds like something new will be out for the London Worldcon.
I have read The Hydrogen Sonata. but I’m not sure when I’ll have time to write a review.
Today I’ve been mainly answering email, though I have found time to post some programme information to the Bristolcon website.
Next I’m off to Bath again to meet Johan Harstad, a Norwegian YA SF writer who has a novel out in translation, 172 Hours on the Moon.
Tomorrow it is Bristol for a BristolCon committee meeting, followed by London to see various friends. And I’m staying in the city overnight so that I can attend a trans rights conference on Sunday.
Don’t expect me to be online much except via Twitter before Monday.
Radio Again
It will be quiet here today because I’m off to Bristol very early. I’ll be on Ujima Radio talking to Paulette North about Out Stories Bristol. For local people, I’ll be on between 11:15 and 11:45. For everyone else the show will be podcast later and I’ll put up a link to it when I can. I have lots of stuff to do in the city after the show so don’t expect bloggage before tomorrow.
Well That Was Fun
As you may have seen on Twitter, I got beautified and interviewed. Things seemed to go well, and the director was pleased, but I have not seen any end product. My suspicion is that I said some fairly sensible things (and nothing hugely embarrassing), but that people watching the interview will be thinking “wow, that’s ugly” and not paying much attention to what I say. I am so much more comfortable with just words and no pictures. But it was an enjoyable day out, and hopefully some good will come of it. Films, of course, take a long time to put together, so you folks won’t see anything for a while.
I’ll be out much of today as well. My friend Feòrag NicBhrìde was in Bristol last night for the Ultravox gig and I’ll be showing her around town a bit. It is possible that we’ll be taking Fluff Cthulhu to see Jonathan Coulton and Paul & Storm tonight. Brains may be eaten. The action, if any, will be on Twitter.
In The Movies
I am not here. This post and the previous one were written last night and scheduled to go up today because I’m busy. Today I am being interviewed, on film, for this. So I will have spent the morning in the beauty salon getting my hair and face done, and then it is off to Bath where we are doing the filming in the Bibliotherapy Room at Mr. B’s Emporium. In a way this is even more scary than being on Croatian TV. I have no idea how widely the film will be distributed, but I won’t have a famous Russian writer to deflect attention from me, and there’s a good chance that people I know will see this. The good bit is that I get to worship Fluff Cthulhu, so if today goes really badly I can ask Him to eat me.
London Tomorrow
There’s an academic conference on the work of China Miéville taking place in London tomorrow and Saturday. I have to be at home on Saturday because of the Trowbridge Arts Festival, but I’m going up to London for the day tomorrow. Hopefully I will see one or two of you there.
Still Traveling
If I was an organized blogger I would have a lot of posts pre-written ready to go live while I was traveling, but I don’t, so you’ll just have to put up with this shambles.
Yesterday I was in that city in south eastern England which we are no longer allowed to name unless we are official sponsors for the big sporting event that we are not allowed to name unless we are sponsoring it. I would like to say that the golden sun left silver edges on the clouds and bronze skins on the inhabitants, but of course it was raining.
Not that I allowed that to cramp my style. I had a long and interesting lunch with Djibril al-Ayad of The Future Fire, followed by a long and interesting dinner with John & Judith Clute. Much bookishness was discussed. For some reason Mr. Clute would not allow me to sneak off with his copies of Empty Space and The Hydrogen Sonata.
I am now in Helsinki, where the weather is much better than in England. Liz and T had already been exhausted by their experiences here and had fled back to their hotel to sleep. I did get to say hello to Lois briefly, but she has headed off to bed too. I probably won’t be awake too much longer, but I do need to eat as Lufthansa unaccountably tried to feed me salad for lunch.
The news from Finnish fandom is that Sari has sold Jukka to Hannah in exchange for a chocolate cheesecake recipe.
Slow Train to Helsinki
Bloggage will be intermittent over the next few days as I wend my way slowly to Finncon. Today I have come as far as Oxford, where I am talking publisher stuff with Juliet McKenna and meeting up with Fabio Fernandes who is here for a conference. Fabio recommended a Lebanese restaurant called Al-Shami, and all I can say is that he has astoundingly good taste in eateries. I am stuffed. Now I am going to catch up with the email and go to sleep.
Wipe Out
Today I seem to have been able to do little except sleep. This suggests to me that I had a great time in Finland. Hopefully I’ll be able to remember some of it and write about it. But not now. Zzzzzzz.
Still in Finland
My apologies about the lack of bloggage over the past few days. I have been kept very busy: with Ã…con, with the Translation Awards, and with clients wanting me to do work. I’ll be back home tomorrow and can start catching up then.
In the meantime, a few quick notes. The convention was excellent (as I have come to expect from the Finns). I have eaten very well, and seen lots of beautiful places. The weather has been great (and not as screamingly hot as Zagreb). All is well except with my waistline, and lack of sleep.
In The Islands
Hello again. I am safely arrived in Mariehamn. Ã…con 5 is due to start in a few hours. But I owe you a couple of days of blog posts, so let’s go back a day.
Otto, Paula and I drove to Turku yesterday afternoon. It is a holiday weekend in Finland, and the entire population of Helsinki appeared to be trying to leave the city. Thankfully Paula had some ideas about alternate routes. It only took us an hour to escape. Another car that left before us arrived after us.
We found Cat and Dmitri in Harald (where else). They had already been persuaded to try the tar ice cream. I got them onto cinnamon beer as well. I’m pleased to report that a branch of Harald will be opening in Helsinki soon, so all of the major Finncon venues are now covered.
I had perch in nettles for dinner. Perch have lots of little bones, but are otherwise lovely.
After dinner some of us repaired to the Cosmic Comics Cafe, a thoroughly geeky establishment funded by local comics creators. It has good beer too. But we couldn’t stay long as we needed to be up early to catch the ferry. I almost wrote “at the crack of dawn” then, but that would have been about 3:00am in Turku at this time of year.
There are two ferry services between Turku and Stockholm: Viking and Silja. We traveled on Silja, because Hanna works for them so arranging block bookings is nice and easy. Our ship was the MS Galaxy, which is a large ro-ro vessel. As with any such thing, it is a floating mechanism for relieving the resident humans of their money. There’s a casino, several bars, several restaurants, duty free shopping and so on. But it was very comfortable, and you didn’t need to spend money if you didn’t want to. Also, the lunch buffet was very good value – €12 for all you can eat.
Of course the usual ferry rules applied. There were plenty of young Swedes on board who had no intention of getting off in Turku. They were just there to drink themselves insensible for the best part of a day. Doubtless many of the young Finns who boarded with us were doing the same thing in the other direction.
Ã…land is a lengthy archipelago of small, granite islands that stretches out from Turku. It was foggy for much of the trip, but when we could see we were never out of sight of at least one island. It looked like a great place for a sailing holiday, or indeed for a pirate hideout. Aside from the more northerly vegetation, and the separation into islands, I found it very like Cornwall. Cat and Dmitri, of course, found it very like Maine.
I am now safely in the con hotel and listening to Test Match Special. Opening ceremonies are in 2.5 hours, and the main event of this evening is a trip to the local cinema for a special showing of Iron Sky. But first, a nap and a shower.
Oh, and the convention program is online here.
Reporting In
Hello from Helsinki. I am here. The weather is good. Cat is apparently in Copenhagen changing planes. All is well. Today Otto, Paula and I will be on the road to Turku. There’s some sort of pub meet tonight, but we’ll want to be early to bed as the ferry leaves at stupid-o-clock tomorrow.
On the plane over I read Ishtar, a collection of stories by Kaaron Warren, Deb Biancotti and Cat Sparks. It’s wonderful. Review to follow.
Ã…con Here I Come
Lots of bloggery today, because tomorrow I am heading for Finland and my first ever Ã…con.
In US con terms, Ã…con is a literary relaxacon. Rather like SMOFcon, it is as much a holiday for Finnish con-runners as a convention, but it is a holiday that they take in the company of a favourite writer. This year that writer is Catherynne M. Valente.
There will be some programming. I’m on two panels. The first is on post-modernist fantasy. The other is on kick-ass heroines. I shall be referencing this.
But I’ll also reference the blog post on which I found it.
There may also be beer, chocolate and sauna. And doubtless mosquitoes.
I’ll try to blog when I can, but I understand that the hotel only has wifi in the lobby, so tweetage will be limited.
Busy
No, I am not at Eastercon.
Yes, I am busy. I have day job stuff that I have to get done so that I’ll be clear to go to Croatia at the end of the month.
Sorry for the silence.
Off to London
I’ll be leaving for London in a couple of hours and will be there all next week. I should be online as usual, though I may take the opportunity to pop out to visit museums, art galleries and friends.
On the Road
I’m in Manchester tonight, back home tomorrow for the rugby, and off to London on Sunday. Blogage will be limited until Monday.
March Travels
March looks like being a very busy month, despite the fact that I can’t be at P-Con this weekend.
Next Tuesday (6th) I will be in Bath for an event that is part of the Literary Festival. It is a speculative fiction writers workshop.
On the Wednesday (7th) I’ll be in Cardiff for the opening of an LGBT History exhibition. The stars of My Transsexual Summer will be there. I’ve corresponded with a few of them, and it will be great to get to meet them in person at last.
The following week on Friday (16th) I’ll be in Manchester to give my talk on trans characters in SF&F to a group there. The event is in a trans safe space, and therefore not open to the public, but if you are interested in attending please get in touch.
The week of the 19th to 23rd I will be in London cat sitting. I have no idea what will be going on while I’m there, but if anyone has ideas of things I should attend please let me know.
There may also be something in Bristol on the 30th, but that’s not public yet.
Can I sleep now?
An LGBT-HM Day Out in London
Yesterday I headed up to London for the day, and managed to get back before the snow got heavy. Thanks to someone else being unable to go, I was able to snag a free ticket to a workshop being run by Write Queer London as part of LGBT History Month.
The main thing of interest to me was the historical talk on LGBT people in the 1950s. The obvious lesson from it was that tabloid newspapers have always been scum. Also, people believe the strangest things. Alongside the usual scare stories about the corruption of youth, the tabloids ran “queers under the bed” stories. How can you tell if someone you know might be a secret queer? Some of them look just like humans. It might even be your wife/husband.
The theory was that guys going to the pub together, or women having afternoon tea together, might in fact be having secret homosexual orgies. And this led to a truly wonderful headline: “The vicar drank cups of tea in secret”.
The vicar in question was trying to divorce his wife on suspicion of her being a secret lesbian. The court was told that she called her women friends “darling” and sometimes hugged them and kissed them on the lips. This was highly suspicious. But the vicar’s main beef with his wife appears to be that she nagged him mercilessly about his habit of having tea and biscuits before giving sermons. Apparently she was very High Church and regarded this as deeply inappropriate. So the poor vicar had to drink his tea in secret. Dreadful.
If you are able to get to London in the evening you might like to check out Wednesday’s talk in which Robert Mills will be addressing the issue of “Discipline and Desire in the Medieval Cloister”. That sounds fascinating.
The workshop took place in the Geffrye Museum in London, which I think is in Shoreditch, but Gideon & Jen may take me to task for my lack of understanding of London geography. It is a fascinating place. The museum is built inside a terrace of old alms houses. The interior walls have all partially knocked down, and a corridor opened up along the front of the building. So you walk along with front walls and doors on one side, and a sequence of rooms on the other. Each room is furnished from a different historical period. Much of it is hideous, but some of the earlier furnishings would be quite nice if you could add cushions.
The Geffrye is essentially a museum of middle class life, which makes it very British. Of course most of the visitors will be middle class too, and doubtless most of them disapprove of the majority of the decor in some way, just like I did, that being a very middle class thing to do. I should note, however, that they have a few very retro futurist pieces that were, of course, futurist at the time. This was my favorite piece.
You can read more about it here.
Busy Schedule
With February being LGBT History Month, I’m going to be out and about a bit. Here are some details.
On Thursday I’ll be presenting a talk on “Changing images of trans people in speculative literature” at Hydra Books in Bristol. Hopefully some of you will be able to attend (because right now Eventbrite says that the number of attendees is zero).
On Saturday I’ll be in London for a history-writing workshop. Someone offered me a ticket, so I snapped it up. I should have some free time late afternoon if anyone is about, though I have to be in a conference call from 5:30pm.
On Sunday, if I have any energy left, I’ll be at the History Walk in Bath.
Tuesday next week there is a celebration of lesbian and gay literature at Hydra. I’ll be taking some Hal Duncan poetry and talking about my pals at Lethe Press.
And on Thursday next week I’m hosting a talk by Juliet Jacques, also at Hydra.
That’s enough for now. I’m tired just thinking about it.
Me On The Aqueduct
It is that time of year again, and as regular readers will remember I always write a Year in Review post for Timmi Duchamp at the Aqueduct Press blog. My look back at 2011 is now online. You can read it here.