Where’s Cheryl?

Expedition Report

~ Cheryl

Well, I have done Camden, I have done Covent Garden, and the sum total of money that I have spent on clothes is $0. This is actually a pretty good result. I had an enjoyable day, I got lots of exercise, I tried on several things that I liked, and none of them fitted me. Sometimes days go like that.

Still, I did buy a book, and thereby hangs a tale. I knew which book I wanted, and as I happened to be in Camden I popped into Waterstones. They had the book, and it was in a 3-for-2 offer. I spent half an hour in the store trying to find 2 other books in the offer that I wanted, and failed. So I gave up, and went to Forbidden Planet instead, where the book I wanted was £3 off instead, and I bought it. Silly things, 3-for-2 offers.

Busy Day

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

So I spent most of the day at Pride. Or at least that was the plan. I met up with Roz in the morning, and we were hanging around waiting for our piece of the parade to be given the “go” signal when a careless person managed to whack Roz on the temple with the end of a placard. After a little while Roz decided that sitting down was a requirement, so I took her to get some food. Fortunately things cleared up after an hour or so, and we were able to catch up with the parade shortly before it hit Transfalgar Square. I don’t have as many photos as I’d hoped, but I do have some and will upload them when I have had a chance to clean them up.

Thought for the day: If Brazil didn’t exist it would be necessary for the LGBT community to invent it, though probably anything we came up with wouldn’t have as much grace or style.

Gone Costuming

~ Cheryl

I am safely arrived in London and am once again staying with Teddy and Tom in Wimbledon. This evening Teddy got to play dressy-up with a life-size doll and I got to wear a corset for the first time in my misbegotten, overweight life. The bad news is that even in a corset I still have a pot belly. However, there are photos. They’ll get posted eventually, along with whatever I take at Pride tomorrow.

More Travel

~ Cheryl

I’m off to London for Pride in an hour or so. If you are at the parade tomorrow I may see you there. Failing that I’ll be about Sunday and Monday morning. Internet access may be patchy due to the flakiness of the T-Mobile mobile broadband system. But as all of the US is on vacation this weekend I don’t think I’ll be missing much.

Mouse Tastes of Pork

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

I’m back in Darkest Somerset and slowly catching up with the email and the blogosphere. One thing that caught my eye was this post on Crooked Timber about a proposal to “promote” tourism to the US by imposing a tax of $25/head on all visitors to the US. Of course it isn’t really about promoting tourism – it is about providing subsidies to Disney and similar companies without having to tax US citizens. And as we visitors to the US have no say in US politics, there’s nothing much we can do about it except stop visiting.

UK Bathed in Sunshine, Few Casualties

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

It was a remarkably nice day in London today, for a variety of reasons. Unaccountably, given that today was the first day of Wimbledon, the weather was excellent. As a result I spent much of the day sat in the roof garden at the Clutes’ talking about books with the assembled multitudes and actually getting sunburned. And there were multitudes as well, because John and Judith put on a little reception for those attendees at the recent Critics Masterclass who were still in the UK and didn’t have to rush off to work. I met Jonathan McCalmont for the first time, and discovered that he has a fine new idea for a blog – Fruitless Recursion specializes in “discussing works of criticism and non-fiction relating to the SF, Fantasy and Horror genres.” That one has gone straight into my Google Reader account.

I had an interesting conversation with Gary Wolfe and M. John Harrison about fan space at the end of books (as opposed to in the interstices of series) that deserves a much longer post when I have time.

The rest of the day was spent doing touristy things with Gary Wolfe, Karen Burnham and Karen’s husband, Curtis. I managed to go to Camden Market without buying anything. I have, however, picked up issue #1 of Paul Cornell’s new Captain Britain and MI:13 comic, and Sean Williams sequel to Saturn Returns.

Um, Paul. If the comic is called Captain Britain, no one is really going to believe that you’ve killed Brian off in issue #1, are they?

At the Seaside

~ Cheryl

It has been a rather nice few days here in England, and on Saturday I got to go to the seaside. On the north coast of Devon, the rivers Taw and Torridge flow together to form an estuary (see Google Maps) that forms a natural haven for shipping (albeit one with some very dangerous tides). Nestled hear the mouth of the estuary is the small town of Appledore, one of the few places in the UK where shipbuilding is still practiced, and the birthplace of some fabulous replica ships (you may have seen this one). I didn’t have a lot of time to go around taking photos, but what I have got are in my Picasa site and are linked to below.
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The Cat Has Landed

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

So, here I am back in Darkest Somerset. The weather is typical for April – brief periods of bright sunshine followed by short spells of torrential rain, on a permanent repeat loop. The summer country is mostly above water, although there are a lot of swans in the fields so it must be still quite damp. Also we have been invaded. There is a veritable army of rabbits camped in the fields between Taunton and Bridgwater.

The Asus did OK on the trip, and was a huge hit with both the TSA guys at SFO and the chap in the seat next to me. I think I need to be on commission. It does seem to leak power when on standby, which is irritating, but I need to do more tests to be sure.

I got back just in time to catch the tail end of today’s cricket on cricinfo.com, and what a match it was. Two wickets by Shaun Pollock in his first over disposed of the dangerous McCullum and Ganguly, and a masterful 3-14 by Jayasuriya held the rest of the Knight Riders batting to a lowly 137. Dwayne Bravo and Robin Uthappa knocked the runs off with ease. So the Indians have a win at last, and the Knight Riders are in a slump. Guess who they have to play next. Yep, they are off to Jaipur. Here’s hoping they are still bruised and depressed on Thursday.

Fly-By Posting

~ Cheryl

Still frantically busy here, though I do get some time off tomorrow as I have to go into San Francisco for a meeting. That’s 2 hours on BART in which I get to relax. Blogging will continue to be sporadic.

I do, however, have one important thing to say: GO SHARKS!!!

Quiet for a while

~ Cheryl

I’ve had a large project come in at work that has to be done before I head off to the UK next Monday. Consequently I won’t be at CostumeCon and blogging both here and at SFAW will be very light for a while.

Moving Slowly

~ Cheryl

For the benefit of those of you who are wondering if I don’t have anything better to so than make jokes at the expense of poor Mr. Scalzi, Kevin explains why I have no brain cells right now. We’ll be hitting the road again soon, and stopping off at the Vacaville factory stores on the way home. Hopefully I will be OK by then, but if I discover that my shopping mojo has deserted me then I’ll start worrying.

Busy, Busy, Busy

~ Cheryl

Work, jet-lag, weekend conference to attend, SF in SF reading, BASFA, off to ICFA. And of that wasn’t enough, there’s the cricket (thank you, Auckland, for helping Jimmy Anderson get match fit), the rugby (Welsh Grand Slam on the way?), and the start of the new Formula 1 season. I need a clone.

Home At Last

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Ah, it is good to be home. Whenever I’m in the UK I get cold and wet, and I miss Kevin dreadfully. And these days I also have to read Kameron Hurley blogging about Chipotle burritos all the time when I can’t buy one. This is so not fair.

However, I am not home, warm, cuddled, and fed. All is right with the world.

On the Road

~ Cheryl

Some good news from London. Thanks to major surgery performed on the Clute wi-fi system when Ellen Datlow was here, I am now able to get online using my own laptop. John, if you are reading this, thank you!

And yes this does mean that I have been spending half the evening answering technical questions from clients, but I spent the other half having dinner with Judith, Farah and Chaz Brenchley which is very good thing to do.