Novacon 40

Just got back from Nottingham and, as usual, feeling energised to get on with some fannish stuff. Unfortunately this feeling doesn't usually last long enough to actually result in something concrete, but I've decided that from this time forward THINGS WILL CHANGE.


That's what I wrote on Monday when we got back home, now it's Thursday and I'm only just getting on with it.


In the 'old' days, I always used to define a successful con as one where I:

• Met up with old friends
• Developed a previous acquaintance into a close friend
• Met some new acquaintances.

Novacon 40 met 2 out of 3 of these criteria, so I count it as a success. I definitely met up with old friends - it was great to see Chris Priest & Chris Evans again, though the latter didn't hang around for nearly long enough for my liking; to meet up again with Randy Byers was an unexpected surprise and Novacons just wouldn't be the same without Lennart . I didn't develop any acquaintanceships, but having bemoaned the fact that Novacons just don't seem to be bringing in the newer fans, I was proved wrong!

The most surprising occurrence at the con, though, had nothing to do with other people, but with my and John's earlier incarnations. On the freebie fanzine table on the last night I found a copy of Wallbanger 2. Knowing I was missing one copy, but not of which issue, I decided to take this one, and then I started reading it. That was really strange, because it didn't feel like me at all. I think I need to get re-acquainted with this person purporting to be related to me and see if I can track the differences. I always thought in the early days of our fanzine activity that we were deemed too 'nice' for the KTF times we were living in, but perhaps my memory is mistaken.

And John was downright rude in his fanzine reviews. That just didn't feel right somehow, John is NEVER rude... Still, we were obviously different people then.

The zine also contained an article by the greatly missed Rob Holdstock, which I've attached it here for everyone's delectation.

Rob Holdstock article

In the intro to the article, I explained that I was asking various 'famous' authors whether and why they are still fans. Don't know if I understand Rob's answer even today - was he being satirical, or serious? Unfortunately it's now too late to ask.


One thing that I do remember which appears to be true, is how very active we were at those times - I was doing Wallbanger, and we were editing Matrix and we were doing the BSFA printing as well. We were young! It's a different situation now, though things are changing. Having ducked out of doing anything for some time (well, not since Eastercon 2003 and Worldcon 2007) we have now put our names in the hat for doing publications for next Novacon! Well, at least that job is over by the time the convention starts!


Only time will tell if this was a good idea - but at least we made it whilst sober.

Getting old

After a gap of over 5 years, there we were back at The Roundhouse for the second time in a week on 18th October to see Steve Winwood (thanks Harry for the reminder that I'd forgotten to mention him!).




Waiting in the bar for the doors to open (where else would you wait?) I looked over the rest of the audience, and it happened again - just like when we went to see The Blues Band - the rest of the audience seemed SO old! The trouble is, so are we. There I was thinking we were so 'with it' still going to gigs, and the reality is that we're as old as that audience, all of us still following our favourites from the 1970s.



Looking over the standing audience on the ground floor, it looked like a Grecian 2000 salesman's dream!



When we sat down I was really pleased with the positioning:



"Hey John, it's great I can see the whole stage - the pillars are only blocking the view of the keyboards p.. l ..a ..y ..e.. r . . . . . . aah, do you think he'll play the keyboards ALL night?"



The gig? It was good, but for me it was too jazz rock. Way too many jazz-style solos.

Below there might be a short video if I can ever get it to upload. . .

Life at the moment seems to be concentrating on making me feel age. At Novacon this weekend (there will be a separate post on the convention) Doug Bell referred to joining our table in the bar (John, me, Mike & Pat Meara and Graham Charnock) as 'visiting the 70's table' Bad enough if he was referring to us as 70's fandom, but I've just thought he might have been referring to our age! No, surely not.

And then there's John, who should know better, but still let slip that when I collect my next prescription on Tuesday, that will be the last one I have to pay for.

Excuse me while I go off into a corner and cry a little.

Metropolis and coincidences

It's quite 'fun' to be back at work again. Not least it's all change with a new boss, the departure of an old boss and a new location within the building. Which Roman general was it who made the comment about constantly being moved/rearranged? Incisive seems to follow that plan, I've been here since June 2008 and have moved 6 times over 3 floors!

Anyway, it was good to see Julie again. She told me that she'd been to the Prince Charles cinema (just round the corner from our offices at Piccadilly) to see a restored version of Metropolis. Not a science fiction fan, she still thought it was excellent and 'iconic'. This took me by surprise - not that she should like Metropolis, but that she should have seen it so recently. Only the day before John had mentioned that they were showing the film at The Roundhouse with a live orchestra. (Mind you, showing it with a dead orchestra would have been a bit silly.) What a coincidence!

"Do you fancy seeing it again?" "Yes, that would be awesome."

So I bought tickets for the next evening (the last evening) and off we went.

What a performance! John and I reckoned it must have been at least 25 years since we'd seen it, so I had forgotten most of the storyline apart from the obvious clips. I was on the edge of my seat for most of the second half, due in great part to the emotive nature of the live orchestra.

If anyone is reading this, and you get the chance to see it with live orchestra - GO! And the reconstruction with the new bits they found in 16mm in S.America makes the whole film hang together so much better than its disjointed predecessor.

There were only 2 downers

1. They wouldn't let us take our bottle of wine upstairs where we were sitting so had to decant it into large plastic glasses which meant the white wine warmed up very quickly.
2. The seats in the circle at The Roundhouse are INCREDIBLY uncomfortable.

Such is life - we're going there again tonight to see Stevie Winwood, but hopefully we'll be up and dancing so the lack of padding on the seats won't be so much of a feature.

A Brighton Belle Met Skippy

I don't know if I'm really cut out for this constant contact lark - life seems to get in the way of uploading info about our 'doings'. So, over a month ago I left you having just arrived at a disgusting time of the morning after a 27-hour flight, and 36 hours after leaving home. Now I'm trying to remember what on earth we did over that period! I did make notes (well for a couple of days), but as usual they mean very little now.



So, we met lots of old friends, avoided some others, didn't see as much as we would have liked of yet others, and made new friends. Plus, we saw the same and different bits of Australia. Hey presto, that's a 4-week holiday boiled down into a nutshell. What I really want to do is an interactive map - when eventually I can stop working to keep our mortgage in the style to which it has become accustomed, I want to experiment with doing a 'proper' online fanzine. By 'proper' I mean one that actually utilises the power of the web properly. After all, I earn my crust at the moment doing this for training, so it would be fun to play around with doing it for stuff I really enjoy. Hopefully this time will come next summer - it depends on what happens to the stock exchange by next March when I'm 60 and my personal pensions mature. If all goes well, we can use some of the money to pay down the mortgage and hence reduce the horrendous amount we have to pay each month.



Anyway, for now you'll have to put up with words. Pictures will come later and even perhaps some video - when we've sorted out what we actually have.



The bare bones - we started off at the 68th World Science Fiction Convention, Aussiecon 4 where I quite amazingly realised that we had been to more Worldcons in Australia than anywhere else. In fact, we have only been to 2 other world conventions - Seacon 79 where we ran the Fan Room, and Conspiracy (where we wisely were not on the committee), both held in my home town of Brighton, England.



I just love the way in fandom you can meet up with someone after many years and it's like no time has passed (so long as you squint so you can't see the added grey hairs etc). For me the whole aim of convention-going is to meet up with old friends and make new ones, which we did in spades at Aussiecon 4. This was most surprising considering the austere and unfriendly nature of the Convention Centre in which we spent most of our time - to try and find someone was almost impossible because the place was cavernous, and also the convention committee didn't really do the best with the rooms they had to provide a convivial meeting/waiting/chatting area.



I actually made some notes about the first day . . .

A Truly International Technological Affair

I know it's a world convention we're attending and so it is not surprising that it's an international affair, but Thursday was mind-blowing. In the few days before we left the UK, John and Rich Coad from San Francisco(ish) had been in touch about about meeting up here in Melbourne, and had exchanged mobile phone numbers. On Thursday morning, John received a text from Rich and we agreed to meet up at the Registration Desk in the Southern Cross Hotel.

So there we were on registering in the bowels of the Southern Cross Hotel with a handful of people we didn't know. (BTW, it just doesn't feel right registering for a convention without long queues - it was so quiet there that although no doubt extremely efficient, it didn't get the adrenalin going and the realisation that you really were at a big affair without the queues - is it just me, or do others feel this?) Anyway, there we were wondering when the madness was going to start when we recognised LynC - Oz fan who, with her now-dead partner Clive, had been the first fannish faces we had seen on our first trip out, when Justic Ackroyd (our supposed host) had been too busy to come out to the airport. This was the first of our reality checks - not only did she have kids, but they were teenagers now!

This was to become a theme throughout the weekend, which isn't surprising really given the 4-year gaps between each of our trips.

But back to Rich - we hung around for a bit but still no sign, so thought we'd wait upstairs, only to receive a text "I'm here, where're you?" - we'd missed him on the short journey up the escalator. Now, that's not so surprising - but what blew my mind was that Rich's text had gone from Australia via San Francisco to London and then on to a spot 200yds away from him in Melbourne!

Now THAT's science fiction!

A Brighton Belle meets Skippy - Part 2
[or part 7 for the pedants - John]

(For those of you who haven’t known us for 25 years, this title will be meaningless – others will remember that it was the title of my trip report of our very first visit to Oz in 1985. This is our 7th trip down under, but the only the second time I have attempted a trip report.)

Sunday, Aug 29th. Woke up early on one of the few days we can relax after a summer of running B&B in France. I can't imagine why, but my iPAQ gave me the explanation as the appointment reminder chimed up with AUSTRALIA. Aha.

Andy's disappointment that we were ready even though he turned up 20 mins early to take us to the tube station, having joked on Friday about our continual lateness. It’s not my fault that the last thing I do after getting the house ready for dinner parties etc is to have a shower and hence always seem to greet guests with wet hair (mine, not theirs). Having woken up early, though, we were actually on time!

Disappointment that we stopped for a cup of coffee when Andy turned up early because as we were en route Andy’s sat nav was predicting arrival 5 mins before the last tube from Cockfosters to Heathrow for an hour. The question was did his sat nav calculate according to ‘Andy speed’, or normal motorists? It's astounding that someone who could drive Miss Daisy with his sedateness and a satnav which warns of speed traps could accumulate points for speeding. We didn’t want to start the 20+ hour journey by hanging around a tube station for an hour.

· Disappointment when we tried to drop off our baggage just after 2 p.m. for our 9.30 flight. Although you are exhorted to get to the airport early, and BAA's adverts suggest you drop off your bags early and then relax BA don't agree - not at Terminal 3 anyway [and that's another disappointment, I was looking forward to experiencing terminal 5 once we'd decided to fly with BA, but no such luck]. Back to the bags, though. 'Oh no, you can't check your bags in till 3 hours before the flight - we just don't have the storage space.' Now they don't put THAT on the website, or on the boarding card you get when checking in online like good little girls and boys. We had planned to get there early, get rid of our luggage and have a long, luxurious dinner.

Reasons to be cheerful
We made the tube train with time to spare. Andy got going with the speed, the M25 wasn’t being a naughty little motorway and we got to Cockfosters with no aggravation.

My knee. Two weeks before we left France my left knee started playing up. Don't know what caused it - possibly too much standing doing all that ironing whilst running B&B in France, or the stretching exercises I started doing whilst ironing. Or just a combination of old age and gross overweight. Myself I subscribe to the stretching exercises theory - I've always claimed, as many of my friends will testify, that exercise is bad for the health.

Anyway, I couldn't straighten my knee out whenever I got out of a chair, and couldn't put any weight on it until I could lock the knee. You should have seen me trying to get up and down on the beach when Steve, Alice, Kate, Malcolm and Tony stayed. Not only was it the new trouble, but also the fact that I haven't been able to put any weight on my knees for the last few years since I've got rogue cartilages.

But as soon as we got back to England I tried ultrasound on it and hey presto, it helped! I’ll take the machine with me and hopefully all will be well soon.

· Paying the extra for Premium Economy – just look at that legroom! I even managed to sleep for about 3-4 hours in the 13-hour flight out to Singapore. Qantas for the second leg was even better – not only bigger seats, but trays that weren’t broken, tablecloths and wine poured from 75cl bottles not little screw-topped 1/3 ltr bottles. And they didn’t stop coming around with it, unlike miserly BA.

Watched some really uplifting films too – How to Train Your Dragon. I started to watch Sherlock Holmes but just couldn’t get into it, which may be my fault rather than the film. Then I passed the time with various comedy programs which required little concentration. I just love the films on flights – on the second 7-hour leg from Singapore to Melbourne, though, they were even better – Iron Man II and Shrek Forever After.

· Singapore Airport – how often is it that you are slightly disappointed you only have a 2-hour stopover. Somehow this terminal manages to engender a feeling of peace, exactly the opposite of the disgusting Terminal 3 at Heathrow. Perhaps it’s the carpet which keeps the noise down, the plant displays, the . . . care for customers? It showed up BAA who seems to believe it is in the herding of cattle business. At T3, when we actually got through to departures after our 4-hour wait with all our bags, I was almost pleased that we had to have our meal on the other side. The departure lounge was even noisier, had less chance to find a seat and only 1 decent place to eat.

· Pensione Hotel, Spencer Street, Melbourne. OK, the room is so small the door actually hits the bed as you try to open it, but it is clean, a big comfortable bed and has everything else you need. Plus it is A$100 per night cheaper than the main convention hotel, and that’s a lot of food and drink. More importantly, though, they had a room ready for us at 7.30 a.m.!

Now that’s a great start to our holiday!

Dead squirrels

It looked like rain this morning, so John got out again to try to clear the brambles down the road-side of our hedge. We've had the house 7 years and never yet cleared the pathway down there, so it's no wonder that there's a mess. The picture here is what it used to look like when Steve & Ruby first bought the house. We had the equivalent of the Irish navvies who are 'just in the area' offering not to tarmac the drive (we used that when we lived in south London, and it lasted for a couple of years before beginning to break up, so not bad really). No, in France they offer to chop down trees.

Now, if you've seen our house, there are trees up on the cliff behind us, but they paled at the thought of clearing those - which is a shame because they are so large now they shade the garden until the sun moves round to the east. But there had been about half a dozen saplings self plant in front of the hedge which they got rid of for us, so we could get at all the blackberry and cotoneaster.

Anyway, John went out this morning to continue hacking through the jungle, and found a dead red squirrel in the hedge. Such a shame. Don't know whether it was killed by a car, or just ran out of breath, but it looked so cute. Yes, we have red squirrels here. See if you can find one in the picture above. There is one, I promise! Why they have been overrun by the grey squirrels just 100 miles north, but not here I don't know. You'd have thought they had made their way across La Manche on boats or through the tunnel by now.

Time for me to start work - yet more washing, ironing, gardening - oh, what a hard life we lead!!

Aurelien's Wedding

Where do they get all the jambons from?

They love their festivals here in France, or any other reason for a get together - but where do they get all the jambons from? Back in June we had the 'mechoui' at a local farm. According to the dictionary, it is 'North Africal style barbecue, lamb roast or spit roast' and about 100+ of us ate a set meal (including copious amounts of wine, of course) in an open barn on the farm. There was also a tombola, 1st prize a 5.6kg smoked ham - and we won it! Then there was another for the orange tickets, and another for the red tickets. . .

The same happened last Sunday - Le Bourg Dun has a Repas Champetre, a rustic meal under tents on the green just behind the bar. It was here last year that I realised I really DIDN'T like andouillettes. It's a barbecue - sausage frites, ham frites, frites frites - and again they had a tombola, with jambon as first prize for the yellow tickets, another for the organge tickets, another for the blue! They just seemed to keep coming out of the refrigerated van - I wonder if the inside of the van was like the Tardis?

Anyway, a good time was had by all, and John and I returned to watch the grand prix (actually, doze through most of it - wine at lunchtime is a killer), decide not to do any work in the garden and basically laze the Sunday away.

Until, that is, I had the absolutely brilliant idea to go for a walk. There is a little path that runs from the back of the Mesnil campsite (where Carole & Martial have their restaurant) down to the sea, and we've been meaning to walk it for years now. So we did it. Very pleasant little constitutional of about 1/2 mile walk each way that took us about 30 mins and we felt very pleased with ourselves for the exercise, until that is we were watching the European Championship Athletics later that evening, in particular the women's 1500m (about 1 mile) which they did in 4 minutes! Still, they didn't stop to pick pea pods, or talk to the cows en route. Why is it that the flies absolutely adore cows? These were Cherolets, the big white cows raised for their meat and very prevalent around here. But on each one you could see the massive black stripe down (I suppose) their warmer stomach, which was the flies. It's understandable that we should get an influx of flies each night when the cows come back to the farm opposite.

Ah well, that's enough blue sky thinking for now.

So, it is tomorrow now and what's happened is it's raining. Just when I've got all the bedding from Ian, Yvonne, Jack & Sally's visit washed and waiting to be dried. Oh well, that's life. I hope it's raining at Hockenheim (the Grand Prix) because that will make the race this afternoon more interesting than it may otherwise be. But I don't want it to be raining in Paris for the end of the Tour de France, it would ruin the spectacle.

Still, we can't complain, the weather here in Normandy has been fantastic for about 90% of the time since we came over at the end of June. Apart from one day (when John was showing Yvonne et al around one of the local harbours and I was tied to the computer at home here - forgetting that I had washing out on the line) it has only rained at night, and by mid afternoon the sun has re-appeared.

I think it will put off any walk-ins for the Chambres d'hotes though. It's sod's law, the only potential walk-ins we had were when Ian & Yvonne were here and when we hadn't got the rooms re-made after they left. Now we are all ready to take money off the hordes, no-one's knocking on the door.

So, given the weather, it looks like a day of armchair sports, and then I've got more work/work to do to get the changes to the e-learning course on the Bribery Act 2010 done and over to India so they can start on the coding SOB their time. It's a shame you don't get overtime when you're freelance! Still, can't complain, working from the kitchen table here in France isn't a bad life. The only trouble is I worry so much that they think I'm not working, that I end up doing twice as much as if I was in the office. I must get a hold of myself and give myself a good shaking and talking to.

I'll try to see if I can upload some pictures in due course.

Bisous

Today was another learning exercise here in Le Bourg Dun. A young lad we know from the bar was getting married and we thought we'd go along to see the wedding. Over here you start off at the Marie first for the civil paperwork, which is just down the road from the church, so everyone walked in procession to the church where we were waiting with our cameras poised.

Martial, the temoin (best man) was at the head of the parade with Aurelien - the groom - followed by Melamie - the bride carrying the 10-month old baby. As Melamie came level with us, however, she turned to say something to Beatrice behind her, and she was definitely not happy with the result. In fact, livid would be a bit of an understatement - not the happy face you expect to see on a bride. Then she disappeared back up the road again to the Marie.

Seeing Carole in the crowd, we asked what was going on and learned that one of the two wedding rings had got lost in the parade down from the Marie! Luckily Melamie returned and seemed happier (though obviously still seething - that's someone I wouldn't want to cross, she's scary. Beatrice, who was in charge of carrying the rings on the cushion said she hadn't realised that they were sitting on the cushion, but thought they were in the ring boxes (at least that's what I think she said).

This camera of ours, a Creative VadoHD, is useless in sunlight. I can't tell whether I'm running the video or not because the sunshine reflects off the screen, but I hope I got Martial entering the church - something he swore he would never do, do it shows the affection he has for Aurelien.

Once they'd all gone into the church we went down to the beach for an ice cream to wait for them to come out again, which would be some time yet, since Carole had told us they were going to have their daughter's baptism immediately after the wedding. Only in Catholic France!

We got some photos but then left since, as with any wedding, there was lots of milling around without much going on. I had wanted to wait to film the procession back up the road to the first reception which was drinks etc in a marquee near the Mairie. The French have two receptions, drinks etc immediately after the wedding, then later the dinner. Their dinner is being held next door to us, in the Salle Rene Prouin, the salle de fete of Bourg Dun.

Last thing today was supposws to be the fireworks display at St Aubin, but unfortunately we forgot until it was too late. As we were getting in the car to go down and see what was going on, we heard what must have been the finale, because we saw nothing more en route, and the number of cars coming up from the beach seemed to imply that it was all over. Tant pis.

I wonder what tomorrow will hold?