Back from Worldcon and London
Aug. 19th, 2014 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjn![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
thette, Hulda, and I arrived back home late yesterday night.Our trip to London was done in stages. We started out a bit before noon on Friday the 8th, visiting my brother, his wife, and their one-year-old daughter in Lund. Thette continued on to Copenhagen for last-minute Gishwhes, but the rest of us spent a leisurely and nice afternoon and evening, and the cousins really liked to meet each other, despite the age difference.
We then could take a reasonably early train from Lund to Kastrup (the Copenhagen airport) and our flight to London Stansted (easier itinerary and time with nice relatives, what's not to dislike?), where we were picked up by
fluffboll (though not in that way) and her boyfriend, and visited them in Cambridge, having a lovely time, despite being assaulted by a vicious five-minute-downpour just before we would depart for London by train on Sunday.We got to our apartment hotel late afternoon, and quickly located two essential things just over the street: one chippy and one convenience store. The hotel itself was quite nice, but it seemed they had used the aesthetics of functionalism while forgetting its purpose. Cases in point were the lack of hangers or racks for coats, hats, and shoes, and that the glasses didn't easily fit in the washing machine.
Monday we spent entirely in Greenwich, going to the Royal Observatory, the National Maritime Museum (and the Ships, Clocks, and Stars exhibit which was wonderful), and admiring Cutty Sark from the outside. Tuesday Thette went Julius Caesar at Shakespeare's Globe with
kate_nepveu and Chad, while Hulda and I hit the primary sightseeing targets: Big Ben (which Hulda had expressed a strong interest in), the Tower, Tower Brige, and various sights on the southern Thames riverbank, like the Golden Hinde replica. We didn't enter any of them (both queues and cost were prohibitive), but we could spend some time outside all of them.Then we all met out outside the theatre and had a lovely dinner at a Turkish restaurant.
On Wednesday Thette met up with an Australian friend (exchanging candies and other local specialities) while Hulda and I went to the London Zoo. Sadly, we didn't catch sight of the tigers, but there were birds, penguins, lions, african wild dogs, gorillas, lots of monkeys, and much more. This also set the pattern of me easily going the wrong way whenever I set my foot in a London park.
Thursday started early for me, as I went in to register myself at Loncon 3, just managing to beat out the epic queues. Thette had registered on Wednesday, so also beat that, but then we had to queue one last time for Hulda, in the gigantic queue (insert shades of Laumer). We also found that their system had a hard time dealing with letters not normally found in the English alphabet, like é. I also managed to sign up for the Iain M. Banks memorial whisky tasting.
Most time I spent socialising, but I visited two panels on Thursday. Both were filled with interesting and knowledgable people, but they never quite gelled: I think lack of preparation from the panelists was the trouble. It seemed that in many cases, panelists had panels back-to-back, and thus never got the chance to do a meet-and-greet before the panel, increased the risk of them being late, and so on. This seemed to be a common trouble with many other panels, sadly.
(The more I think of it, I think a WFC-like limitation on number of panels that a panelist could participate in is a good thing. It means less risk of late-arriving panelists, better opportunity for panelists to prepare properly, and gives a natural incentive for more diversity.)
On Friday I managed to get in early for "Genre and the Great War", leaving Hulda on the Green Hall mat (the con didn't really have a bar as its social centre, it had a great big mat filled with kids and toys, which felt very sympathetic to me). The panel was quite nice, despite not talking about Tolkien at all, instead talking about the social and psychological impact in fiction from the war. When I got back, I however found that Hulda had been regarded as a "lost child", so I had to spend more time with her, especially since Thette arrived late and had other items she wanted to visit. (I can understand the rules for children being accompanied, but Hulda is eight, she had a great time with friends, knew that I would be back in an hour, knew where she could find other people understanding or at least recognising Swedish, and where the toilets were. She got sad not because I wasn't there, but because unknown adults not speaking her language suddenly took an interest in her. Thanks to Carolina we managed to avoid a total disaster, though.)
I could take Hulda to the One Shot filk item, though, where I sang Ditt hem är fandom, which went decently well, as I could see people humming along to the chorus. The other four performances were quite different but I liked them all.
Then we had the joint Norwegian-Swedish party in the tent for the Helsinki bid. I started out tending the bar together with Herman and another Norwegian, serving up primarily aquavits of various flavours. Somehow, I managed to spend at least three hours straight behind the bar, having a great time, talking about aquavits and sometimes singing. (That the Pigeon Post declared Washington DC to have the best party Saturday night while never visiting our party was a big peeve for me. I can understand them trying to appear unbiased, but seriously?)
Then I managed to seriously miss the various connections on the DLR on the way home, and in the end had to walk from Poplar to Greenwich, trying to navigate London by night, and getting lost in a park. At least I got to walk the Thames tunnel (which had great acoustics, though that is something best explored at night).
After that night, I declared Saturday to be a Day Without Booze. Then I realised I had managed to sign up for the Iain M. Banks Memorial Whisky Tasting. Oops. Nevertheless, I survived the ordeal, tasting many great whiskies, including a great single-cask one, and ending with a fabolous Glenfiddich. Easily the best and the most informative whisky tasting I've ever been to.
Before that, I had been to Bryan Talbot's speech about Grandville and the Anthropomorphic Tradition. It was a wonderfully illustrated guide through anthropomorphic animals through history and how it's reflected in Grandville, and he also showed various classical paintings he had brought into the work. Great stuff.
Afterwards, we met up for a mini-DFS. Kate, Chad, Roy (but only for the meet-and-greet, working tech ops), Jasper, CD (with Gabby), scifantasy/Will (with wife Megan), PRK, Frances, Thette, Hulda, and me, were joined by Alissa of WOOFA fame. We met up and went in search of food. Locating a restaurant was easy, getting the food was not… In the end, Frances and Will had to leave early taking their food to-go, and Frances left with my jacket that I had lent her.
But the food was good once it finally arrived, and I finally got some proper (English) Indian food.
Sunday morning Thette was feeling quite unwell—her lungs had been getting progressively worse as the week went on—so I and Hulda went in alone to ExCeL, sadly too late for the ribbon-making workshop. We were at the Manga workshop, where I interpreted and she seemed quite happy until she managed to hurt her finger on the pen. (She did think it seemed pretty basic—she said she had seen the techniques in her book on drawing manga.)
The workshop on making wings was too rowdy for her, too—it probably needed at least one more leader and better organisation, eg by splitting up the kids by the type of wings they wanted to make. Instead, we went to the One Shot 3 filk session, where she charmed the entire room by joining me in Fanmors vaggsång, holding her beeblebear.
By that time, Thette was still feeling bad, and Hulda was wilting, so I took Hulda home, changed into my suit, and went to see the Hugo ceremony. (Last worldcon I went to the opening ceremony, this year to the Hugo, and so the next one I should probably feel obliged to visit the closing ceremony.)
I managed to join the queue just before it turned epic, together with Hanna, and then we were joined by Fia at a great location, quite close to the scene. We had a blast when we called out to Bellis, but he simply walked right past us.
The ceremony itself was probably best described as effective and decent. Justina Robson and Geoff Ryman did an OK job, but it was also quite clear that they had the recent problems about ceremonies in fandom on their mind, so they were playing it quite safe. They did have us playing Mornington Crescent, sf style, however. And having the Beefeaters there was a nice touch. The only presenter who did something remotely daring was Bryan Talbot, when he spoke into Goeff's jacket.
John Chu held a quite heartfelt thank you-speech, Cory Doctorow had to don goggles and a cape and otherwise ignore the instructions he was given by Randall Munroe, and Kameron Hurley didn't so much send in a thank you-speech as a call to action-speech for Kate Elliott to read.
What did I think of the winners? No real surprises, and I'm not unhappy with any of them, but I do feel sad that Rachel Swirsky's wonderfully written short story and Catherynne Valente's wonderful deconstruction of the classic fairy tales and their structure didn't get the honours.
Since the ceremony only lasted two hours, I even managed to get in some party time, where I even was complimented by Mary Robinette Kowal on my suit (after I had congratulated her for her Hugo and complimented her dress).
Slightly after 11 I left for home, my last day at Loncon 3 concluded. We spent Monday travelling home, and today Hulda started 2nd grade.
Overall, I had a great time. I didn't get to visit too much programme, but I did spend a lot of time socialising. In large parts this was due to being stuck with Hulda, but since there were lots of parents of small fans present, that simply meant more time for meeting old friends and making new ones.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-19 06:17 pm (UTC)Hopefully we'll meet again in Helsinki in 2017 :)
prk.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-19 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 09:53 am (UTC)Preparing ahead of time is well and good if you're alone or doing the panel with someone you know. But often the first time all the panelists meet is right before the panel, that's where the participants can plan as a group and the moderator can get a feel how to handle the dynamics of the group.
The con also set up a good space for a green room, and then wrecked it by placing panelists in back-to-back panels.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 07:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 09:54 am (UTC)