Today’s big thing was visiting this place,

Where I had one of these,

It was a pretty slow start to the morning, and I spent a bunch of it sitting in the lobby on the comfy chairs, trying to summon the will to go out into the outside world.
It’s not a bad walk to the Guinness Storehouse; Goes past some interesting buildings.

The tour … Well, it’s a tour of a showcase about a brewery, so you’ve got the 9000 year lease document, various things on brewing where a video of the brewer follows you around on video screens, explaining the process, that sort of thing.
Creepily, they claim that the fifth ingredient of Guinness is Arthur Guinness, which makes me want to know exactly where he’s buried

There was a tasting session, where the recommended drinking technique managed to make the aftertaste linger for the rest of the tour. Impressive, but not all that welcome, to be honest.
Part of the ticket price was a pint at the bar at the end of the tour, or at the Learn To Draw A Pint room, both of which I declined, as it seemed a waste to draw a pint I had no interest in drinking.
Still, a pleasant hour or so.

It started drizzling on the walk back, then pissed down once I was clear of the area where I could catch a bus easily. I’m chalking that one up to the Authentic Dublin Experience, though I could have done without the traffic lights with ludicrously long phasing, so that you’re spending more time standing in the rain than actually moving.
Some seem deliberately rigged to need two phases to cross a road, leaving stranded in a little pedestrian corral in the centre; A bit odd in fine weather, but kind of very annoying in the wet.

The afternoon/evening was spent packing (quite a lot of my bag is dirty laundry at this point), paying the bill to make tomorrow’s early departure a bit easier, and watching a bit of TV. (The continuing adventures of Royal Marine Commando recruits, plus the second Scottish Independence debate, which got … heated)

I normally avoid map-making panels* at cons for professional reasons, but thought I’d try the one here. This was a mistake, but not for the usual reasons of Really Bad Maps and Really Bad Advice; This one was just Really Boring, with one presenter murdering the development of star maps with quasi-straw man comments about modern-day views of historical cartography, combined with questions to the audience about details of unreadable PowerPoint images. Kind of took me back to some high school teachers, now that I think of it.
I lasted maybe half an hour, then snuck out behind another escapee.
( * Russell Kirkpatrick exempted, of course )

The next panel, about factual Steampunk Monorails, was awesome, and very educational, including details about the steam monorail built in Ireland, video of the restored engine in question, and some information on the various attempts at pneumatic railways.

I took a couple of panels off and went to have lunch by the canal, where a wasp took an entirely unwholesome interest in said lunch, & required a bit of shifting to get away from.

Post-lunch, and post-wasp, was a panel on Zombies.
Well, it started out as a panel.
And maybe it should be a panel on Undead, since, as Seanan McGuire put it, ‘Zombie is a term borrowed from Haitian Religion; It’s like saying “I’ve invented this new monster; It’s called The Pope.”‘
This was interesting, but pretty swiftly turned from being a four-person-including-moderator panel into a conversation between Seanan McGuire & the Moderator where Seanan did most of the talking & they talked past the other two panellists, as said superfluous panelists were in the middle.
Lots of Resident Evil movie analysis.

Animals in Speculative Fiction spent maybe 20 minutes getting increasingly pedantic about what constitutes an animal in a story, then kind of rambled from there.
Mostly it killed time until the closing ceremony, which was … pretty much what you expect from a closing ceremony.
There was the unfurling of a flag of some sort, but a git with a camera stood right in the way for the entire time it was unfurled. Can’t find a picture of it either, so thanks a bunch, pal.

The traditional Dead Dog party followed, though I only stayed a couple of hours, chatting to people. Didn’t even attempt a run at the bar, as I did not have access to a crowbar or one of those little battering ram things.

Went back to the room & read for a while before getting an early-ish night.
The current book is Hull Zero Three, by Greg Bear. It’s not about an English town at all, which was a nice surprise, and instead has a certain Pandorum vibe to it. Written in First Person Present, which is not a favourite of mine.
Once I got into it, it’s a good book, but that took a while.

A bit of a mixed bag on today’s events.

Kids With Jobs, talking about the need to get YA protagonists away from Family & Mentors, unless you want to end up writing a school story.
The panel spent a lot of time talking about the tendency to kill off the parents, as opposed to merely sidelining them.
It reminded me of a book I’d read back in intermediate school, The Xenon File, which may have been a sequel, and which had a teenaged protagonist who’d been the brainwashed lieutenant of the bad guy. Parents were still around, and were aware of the situation, and I seem to recall them not interfering with the events of the story, recognising that their daughter was, in fact, capable of dealing with this.

An introduction to Le Fanu could have been a fascinating look at an Irish Gothic writer.
Sadly, I’ve had more interesting dental surgery; The presenter took his historical narrative & wove a chronological recitation which made no damn sense unless you already knew the basics, starting so far back on the family tree that I’d tuned out before we even got to Le Fanu.
Sadly, I was trapped against a wall & couldn’t get out.

Post-Fanu, I hung out in the lobby for a couple of hours, chatting to people I knew & meeting new folks, one of whom is a keen Gen Con attendee, of the Boardgame Clan, Cataan Tribe.

A panel on Peaceful SF kind of wandered around the topic, and mostly focused on Conflict vs. Violence.
E.T. came up as an example, as did the Inner Light episode of Star Trek: TNG.

There was a screening of the Dr. Who Season 8 Premiere scheduled, but with only 350 seats, there were a number if people planning to camp out in the room by going to the session before it & not moving. Others had bought tickets to see it at a movie theatre.
I realised, embarrassingly late in the piece, that I have a TV in my hotel room, and could simply watch it there. People laughed at me when I worked this out, and they were right to do so.
I did look up the BBC schedule, just to make sure I knew which channel it was on. Got temporarily confused by CBBC, which looks to be a kids channel, showing an animated Dr. Who show at the same time, but eventually figured it out.

John Vaughan’s Vault Of Horror turned out to be Mr. Vaughan commenting on, by which I mean mocking, an Irish Horror Filum (that’s how he pronounced it), Rawhead Rex.
It’s a bit shit as a film.
They apparently had many actors who went on to be very well respected, though watching this you’d wonder why, and the film was written by Clive Barker, though he denies it.
A lot of fun.

I smuggled a pizza back to my room for dinner; The con book says that It is not normally permitted to bring food and drink into the hotel. … If hotel staff discovers you bringing in food or drink, you’re on your own.
Turns out that a quick walk straight across the lobby & up the stairs will do the job nicely, so my guesses are that it’s food & drink in ‘public’ areas of the hotel that they object to, and that it’s hotel management who have a problem, not the day-to-day staff.

I’ll not spoil the episode, so shall just say that it was good, with some rough spots.

There was an International Fandom Party in the late evening.
Loud. Very loud.
Lots of people, talking, loudly.
Did I mention the loudness?
Yeah, I lasted maybe three minutes, despite the free drinks.

I had an early night for once, finished reading Old Man’s War, and started Hull Three Zero.

I started this con in the usual manner, by waking up too early & being unable to get back to sleep. I killed some time responding to, or at least reading, the pertinent bits of yesterday’s email barrage, most of which had to do with LonCon, so as to hit the breakfast room(s) at a slightly civilised hour.

Sat in the lobby reading Old Man’s War for a while, then Katie turned up, so we nattered for a while until Registration opened & we could collect badges. Sneakily, they’d set up the line to be mostly-invisible until you rounded a corner, though it moved fairly quickly.

There’s a pretty big dealers room & art show; I’m still holding off on buying much, as I don’t have that much wiggle room in my luggage, for volume or mass.
Outside the dealer room is a sort of con suite/fan village thing, with the various bid & fan club tables at one side, where I was able to find out how to say Wrocław*, and pick up a badge promoting the Polish Eurocon bid. Probably should have told them that I had no dog in that fight, and indeed didn’t even know how to vote, but they were so keen to answer questions & give away promotional things, including a little laser-cut wooden silhouette of the convention centre.
( * Vroksuave )

First panel was Newcomers Guide To Cons, which I didn’t really need to go to, as EuroCons seem pretty similar to other varieties. I did get an “I Loved Loncon 3” badge ribbon, though I had to write on the “I Loved” bit myself with the pen provided.
(One of the panellists was handing out his accumulated ribbons on increasingly strange pretexts)

Next was Missing Medieval Women, talking about the non-damsel in distress women missing from historical narratives, and thus from high fantasy.
Two of the panellists were historians, so there were a bunch of references & citations, plus the odd shoot-down of assumptions & audience questions.

Made In Ireland: Come To Ireland, We Have Tax Breaks was … exactly what it sounded like; How the artist exemption on tax works here.
It was unlimited at one point, but the tax-free amount has been decreasing over the years, down to €40k. The panel did point out, multiple times, that Bono moved elsewhere once the unlimited exemption went away & he had to pay income tax.
The idea, and they say it has worked for some artists, is to make it less miserable in Ireland for creative types.

I had intended to go to a thing on 2000AD, but got persuaded to go to Conrunning – How The Sausage Is Made.
Better than other sessions of that sort that I’ve been to, but there were too many panelists, & too many people chiming in towards the end of the hour. Basically, it got loud.

Immediately after that was the opening ceremony, but after leaving the room into a corridor which was even louder, I decided to skip the ceremony, wait out the worst of the crowd, & go back to my room to read for a while in the quiet.
I’m pretty happy with my decision.

A panel on Translation for books & games was good, and veered wildly between “The Responsibilities Of The Translator” seriousness and “here’s a funny problem/mistake”.
Turns out that Swedish has 4 genders, two of them being ‘it’. This makes it hard to conceal someone’s gender without being obvious about it.

After that, because it was in the same room, I re-watched The Truth About German Fandom; Not as funny the second time around, and the group of Polish fans who found out that the next event was about Germany & left for historical reasons put an odd spin on things.
It wasn’t a big public walk-out or anything; Just a “What’s the next thing? German fandom? Nope!” conversation which I was probably the only one to hear.

Eventually I got dinner at the hotel bar/restaurant, who seemed kind of rushed off their feet, and the usual convention process of being about to leave when someone you know sits down, then someone they know comes along, …, and eventually it was 11:30pm, and I really had to go & get some sleep.

So, what to do with my first day in Dublin?
Based on my wanderings last night, it looks like the hotel was being entirely honest when they said that the City Centre was walking distance away, so that’ll help.

I’m thinking maybe the Old Library at Trinity College, so that the zCats do not murder me with a cat when I return, and the Guinness Storehouse, because it’s always worth supporting a stereotype.
Also, I’ve never been on a brewery tour before.

~ some time later ~

For future reference, I am absolute crap at navigating through St. Stephen’s Green.
Got turned around on the walk to Trinity College & ended up doing an increasingly-confusing extra loop to get back on track, but found the place in the end.

They had an exhibition on about the Emperor of Ireland, Brian Boru, who would appear to be part of the Warhammer Fantasy setting from the look of the artwork;

I must admit that my very favourite bit of the whole Old Library/Long Gallery & Book Of Kells experience was Pangur Bán, a poem about a Monk & his Cat, and the similarities between their jobs.
No big surprise there.

There was this thing outside the library, which I had plenty of time to look at while waiting in line;

Not sure what it is, but it struck me as being an interesting artistic thing. Also, it’s interactive. Sort of;

Well, it turns.

On my way back to the hotel, while staring at a very pretty & historical-ish map of St. Stephen’s Green and wishing for a historical “You Are Here” sign, I was spotted by Katie, who I’d met at the hotel I stayed at for LonCon. She knew where the correct exit gate was, I knew the way from there, and so we made it to the hotel.

After a spot of nattering in the lobby bar, at Katie’s suggestion, we set off to find the National Leprechaun Museum of Ireland; A group of five, from The UK (Katie), USA (Steve), Canada (I’ve forgotten, but possibly Carl Jenk, though it’s spelled with a ‘C’; Will fix in post), Belgium (Peter), and New Zealand, heading for adventure and what I imagined would be a Leprechaun Petting Zoo.

1. Irish Buses take exact change only
2. Very few of us had exact change, and one guy had no change at all, having only just arrived
3. The bus driver didn’t really want to talk to us
4. We probably could have caught a bus which got us closer

However, we made it, and joined the tour, and it was fantastic. With luck there will be some more photos (cellphone camera wasn’t really up to it) of the group on & around an enormous chair, having all been Leprechaun-ised, or standing in the rainbow, at the end of which there was a pot of gold. The stories are true, it seems.

Ended up in a pub for dinner after the museum, where many of us learned the term “The Bank Of Fandom”, where someone gets local currency without paying ATM fees by paying for the meal/drinks on their credit card, and getting cash from everyone else. It’s a good system; I just never knew the term for it.

Steve, Katie, Cenk, Me, and Peter

Katie, who’d actually done some research, unlike the rest of us, knew where the bus back to the hotel left from, and indeed which number it was, so Steve & Peter & I rode back on the top deck of a modern double-decker (didn’t ride one in London. nor did I eat fish & chips; that happened on a ferry in the middle of the Irish Sea, and again at an Irish pub), having sorted out our exact change ahead of time.
I asked one of the people at the Leprechaun Museum, and they find the exact change thing annoying too. Apparently it’s just a Dublin thing, and they don’t know why

Back at the hotel, we pretty much hung out in the lobby in the constantly-merging & splitting groups of fen chatting. Spoke to people from Florida & New York about things in general & cons in particular, and eventually went to bed a shade after midnight.

Peter the Leprechaun checks his email.

Katie assists Irish tourism.

The various posters read;

• Come To Ireland – The Country Shaped Like A Teddy Bear
• Do You Take A Drink Mister? – Come To Ireland
• Come To Ireland – Much Like England But Smaller
• Come To Ireland – The Home Of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, And Terry Wogan

Here are a couple more photos, taken on the walk.

A canal, with locks of a manually-operated nature, ran near the hotel, requiring a bridge and a big-ass pipe or two.

Probably a church?
I took the photo, then got distracted & didn’t check, but it looks pretty churchy. Also, it’s right by St. Stephen’s Green.
I just checked – Dublin Unitarian Church, according to Google Maps.

It’s like a Train To Malta in some respects, ..,

I didn’t sleep well last night, probably due to concern about getting to my train on time. On the positive side, that did give me the opportunity to watch a documentary about the London fish market, possibly Basildon, and a chunk of a thing about Royal Marine Commando trainees.

Woke up a bit before my first (5am) alarm, which wasn’t really the plan, but it did mean that I was pretty much ready to go when the second (6am) one went off.
I had been concerned about trying to get from Royal Victoria to Euston during what I’d assumed would be workday commuter time, but it wasn’t that bad; Got a seat on every train, and the enormous black bag wasn’t too much of a problem on the stairs at Bank & Euston.
The route I took was Docklands Light Rail from Royal Victoria to Shadwell, another DLR from Shadwell to Bank because the Royal Victoria trains only go to Tower Gateway or Stratford International, neither of which connect to the Northern Line.
At Bank, change to the Northern for the trip to Euston.
I’m kind of regretting the big black bag; It’s doing the job OK, but wheels would be nice. Then again, it was selected to cover the worst-case situation, based on The Coworker’s experience with a broken escalator, a huge suitcase, and a spiral staircase, which clearly left an impression upon the man.

As a result of the early start, I ended up at Euston maybe 2 hours before the train, which was, I think, overdoing it a bit.
There’s someone I know on this train who’d had the opposite experience, possibly due to much luggage. Finding the lifts took time, changing trains took time, and they only just made it on board.
I suspect they’ll need a hand for the Train-to-Ferry transfer, and suspect that a shared taxi to the hotel may well be in order.

Did I mention that I got a window seat?

Norman & Leanne maybe didn’t need help with the many many bags, but it certainly didn’t hurt.
Following the signs with a little ship on them solved the problem of finding the ferry, though we did stand in the wrong check-in line for a while. After finding out that the guy ahead of us had no idea what he was queuing for, I checked ahead, & moved us to the Irish Ferries line, instead of the Stena Line one.

Getting on board was pretty easy, and involved a trip in a little bus to get onto the ferry; It’s a car ferry, so the little bus just drove on.
We set up in some comfy chairs by a window, & simply didn’t move, except to get lunch, which we took back to said comfy chairs. Talked, looked at the lack of scenery, wondered what was showing at the on-board cinema, and played a game of Fluxx.

Getting off the boat was a little odd.
I passed through gates which had ‘EU’ & ‘Non EU’ signs on them, but the booths were unmanned, and nobody seemed at all interested in the notion that we might not be citizens. I’m honestly not sure whether I’m in the country legitimately or not, but if the return journey is anything like this one, it won’t matter.

Getting a taxi took a while, as the system seems a bit haphazard, and someone in one of those quasi-SUV things clipped a curb while waving to someone, and exploded the tire. First one of those I’ve seen.

Hotel check-in went very smoothly, and came with a cookie & a rather nice room, comparable to the JW Marriott in Indianapolis. I’m chillaxing there now, drinking the complimentary water (still and sparking), and summoning the energy to go back to the lobby & see whether they have free wi-fi.

Not free wifi as such, but there is a Hilton Honours network which will let you use the Internet without actually giving them a membership number. It’ll drop you as soon as you look away, but it seems to work for now.

I ended up wandering into what I’m assuming is central Dublin with Leanne, who was looking for a cellphone SIM card. We did find some stores, but everything was closed, so we grabbed non-hotel dinner instead.
Turns out that she was involved with the Chicago WorldCon in 2012, and so was able to shed some light on a comment made by someone talking about a future Chicago bid; “And it won’t be at the fucking Hyatt”
The Hyatt, it turns out, were not good to deal with, on a pretty epic scale. Changing one part of a contract at the same time as the part that was being negotiated, so that the whole thing, with known & unknown changes, would get signed off on.
This, I am thinking, is why Contract + Variation exists.

rather than just blasting out the whole email, which was … long … , here are the highlights

Gen Con Attributes Record-Breaking 2014 Numbers to Growing Partnership between Gamers and Indianapolis Community

INDIANAPOLIS (August 19, 2014)
Gen Con 2014, completed August 14-17 at the Indiana Convention Center, experienced another year of record attendance numbers and unprecedented growth. For the fourth consecutive year, Gen Con grew by more than 10%. This year, reaching more than 14% year-over-year growth with a weekend turnstile attendance of 184,699 and unique attendance of 56,614. This number surpasses 2013’s previous record of 49,530 unique attendees. Since 2009, Gen Con’s annual attendance has more than doubled.

Due to Gen Con’s expansion throughout the Indiana Convention Center, the show also featured record numbers of exhibitors (370+) and events (14,000+).
Gen Con 2015 will return to Indianapolis July 30 – August 2, 2015.

56,614 unique attendees.
No wonder the housing sold out so fast, and led to so much complaint & so many calls for the convention to move, usually to Las Vegas.
That’s a whole lotta nerds.

On a less numberical note, my Gen Con attending friends in the USA appear to have enjoyed themselves, and are hopefully emerging from the depths of the post-con doldrums, where, no matter how exciting your work is, you’d rather be gaming.

I slept in today, and it was awesome.

The one thing I ‘needed’ to get done today was picking up my train tickets for the trip to Dublin & back.
Promptly got onto the wrong DLR train, so ended up going to Euston Station via Stratford. Given the idiotic degree of interconnectedness of the London Underground, this wasn’t really much of a problem.
As a thought, how would you measure interconnectedness? Number of stations you can get to without changing trains?
The wee ticket contraption took a few goes at reading my card for ID purposes, but eventually spewed out a number of little cards for me.

From there it was a quick trip down to Leicester Square station, partially because it’s in the vicinity of a couple of bookstores, but mostly so that I could stand on the platform for the Piccadilly Line & hear the announcer say ‘Cockfosters’.

Don’t You Judge Me.

The Orcs Nest is tiny & filled to the gills with stuff, and pretty easy to find when you have more prepaid cellular data than you know what to do with. A return to Forbidden Planet (as last time, the bookstore, not the planet. I couldn’t go to the planet, for obvious reasons) netted me a couple more books, as I’m getting close to the end of Side Jobs, and have a full day of travel ahead.

I did investigate the options at the London Eye, but the prospect of a half-hour queue on not entirely healed feet did not appeal. Think I’ll save that for an early morning between Dublin & Zurich.

Something I’ve not mentioned previously is that most of the food options at the ExCeL centre, and near my hotel, are a bit meh.
Not bad, just … Meh.
Turns out that the good restaurants are hiding on the other side of the river, in the O2, so I had lunch at Slug & Lettuce, which was everything I’d hoped it would be.
~urp~

Plans for the rest of the day involve packing my bag for an early departure, pre-paying my hotel bill to make that a bit easier, and generally taking a bit of a light day.

Tick Tock Tick Tock

Well, all of that happened without incident.
The guy at the desk turned out to be something of a Star Wars fan, and had had no idea that conventions happened in the UK/Europe, so I told him about the wandering nature of WorldCons & EuroCons. He’d spent time in Ireland & had loved the place, and asked me to give them his regards; “The Polish guy at the Ibis Docklands says ‘Hi’.”
I looked up where the next few EuroCons were, but didn’t get a chance to tell him, which is a shame; Next year is St. Petersburg, and 2016 is either Barcelona or Wrocław, Poland.

John Wyndham – The Invisible Man Of Science Fiction
This was a documentary on John Wyndham, who was spectacularly closed-mouthed about himself & his past, and seems to have been quite an odd man.
This gave Wyndham & his works the sort of analysis I was hoping for from the Raumpatrouille Orion fan group presentation; Looking at what was happening at the time which influenced his works. As an example, Day Of The Triffids happened at around the same time as Lysenkoism in the USSR.
(And as a side note, my phone knew the name Lysenko, which is a little odd)

Beyond Blighty: World Steampunk
Three Germans & a South American talk about Steampunk, Clockpunk, Dieselpunk, Teslapunk, …
Or, more accurately, three Germans talk succinctly about the topic, and one South American craps on endlessly about his own works in ways that are possibly related to the topic, if anyone could follow what the hell he was talking about.
Some very good points about the eras of history no German wants to touch, and the knock-on effects of that; As soon as you have Steampunk in a united Germany, you’ve got the Empire, and everyone knows where that ended up.

Cruise Of The Gods
Feature length comedy drama starring Rob Brydon & Steve Coogan, about two actors who appeared in a 70’s children’s SF series (that looks like a cross between Blakes 7 and The Tomorrow People) – one who’s become a successful TV actor in the US (watch out for ‘Sherlock Holmes In Miami’!), and another whose career has floundered leaving him dependent on fandom and appearances at conventions (and forced by his agent to board the eponymous fan cruise).
I caught the end of this; May well have to track it down to watch the whole thing.

Comics Britannia – Anarchy In The UK
Another documentary, starting with Viz and going forward through 2000AD and into the career of Alan Moore.
Other people too, but lots of Alan Moore.

The Martians & Us – The End Of The World As We Know It
This was a screening of a documentary on end-of-the-world literature, and it did a pretty good job of looking at what was happening in the UK at the time of publishing.
I’d read a fair number of these, though I’d completely missed the point of Christopher Priest’s Fugue For A Darkening Island, and had thought it was an anti-immigration racist screed, much like many reviewers.

The State of the Anime Industry
This started and ended with ‘How Do You Solve A Problem Like Miyazaki’, and sort of expanded out to cover some history & developments in the industry.
I’m very tempted to pick up the book written by this presenter.
Something I’d found interesting was the idea that Studio Ghibli may go with the option of not replacing Miyazaki & his generation, and instead transition into being a museum of Ghibliness, with a demonstration/hobby studio as part of the ‘exhibits’.
Another suggestion made is that there is more & more of Miyazaki complaining about being brought out if retirement coming into films, starting with Howl’s Moving Castle, where the protagonist complains at length about being dragged away from what he wants to do by the needs of other people. That and the deliberate obfuscation of exactly who did what on a film.

Girl Genius Radio Plays
Old-Style on-stage radio play, filled with breaking a of the fourth wall & in-jokes. A lot of fun, especially if you like audience participation & groan worthy jokes.
I’ve no idea whether they were recording.

Writing Post-Colonialism
I missed the very start of this, so I’m hazy on what post-colonialism is defined as, but despite that, this was interesting.
More academic than science fictional, and a chunk of the audience seemed to be similarly academically inclined, and known to the panellists.
Something which occurred to me; Does the concern about immigration into first world countries by people who set up their own communities count as being worried about being on the other end of Colonialism?

London and Other Futures
I’ll be honest; The London panels are starting to blur together at this point.
Lets say that there’s a lot of material out there.
There was a point made about the rise of containerised shipping pretty much destroying the ‘go away to sea’ story, because you can’t anymore. Also the Underground showing up a lot in movies, either as a means of escape, or as an effective teleporter; The protagonist goes in here, comes out there, and who cares about the bits in between?
Oh, and a plea for people to stop taking photos of the London Eye, because they’re all the same & tedious.

The Bottom Up: The Fantastical World of Human Waste
Doing Your Business
Sanitation in SF, and the fact that few shows mention it at all.
This was double-booked with a burlesque workshop, which caused no end of bad jokes, and has me wondering whether any one has ever done a toilet-based burlesque routine. And if so, why?
The presenter, whose blog is linked above, does Loo Tours of London.