Category: Holiday 2014

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…

Remembering the Terran Trade Authority For those who don’t know; TTA I have a very second-hand copy of one of these, bought out of nostalgia, and I’d definitely pick up a couple of the others were they to become available. This was a fantastic panel, described by the moderator as a tribute to Stewart Cowley,…

Having just worked out that I can do a cut & paste from the nifty con schedule app, I’m going to do the programme items first. Fallen London – Recreating London in Games They’re taking a very wide stance on ‘games’ here; Anything from an RPG to a LARP to a Board Game to an…

My con schedule is stored on my phone, thanks to a handy little app, so doing a summary will involve a bit of back-and-forth. Let’s see how it goes, shall we? Climate Catastrophes This was done by Jonathan Cowie, who was at Au Contrairé in 2010, and was basically an introduction to Earth Systems Science,…

Woke up earlier than I’d like, sadly, and thus Wednesday changed from being an afternoon of tourist stuff into being a day where I picked up my badge & con books, then sort of chillaxed for the rest of the day. Fran gave me a lift home mid-morning, and I picked up the con stuff…

OK, I was trying to riff on the chorus in “Go West” (Pet Shop Boys version), but I’m not sure I got the right letter; Stupid double-vowel structures. 🙁 I was awake from 1am until about 4am, for reasons unknown, which is why there’s a great big brainspew about yesterday’s tourism. It may also explain…

Following on from the last post, breakfast eventually happened, once most of the crowd had cleared; All that was left seemed to be a French-speaking group of probably high-school aged girls & some slightly shell-shocked staff. The meal itself was a pretty standard Ibis buffet, with a coffee machine which did Mochas, and rather less…

As seen in Trafalgar Square. I asked one of the London Ambassador people about it, and she wasn’t a fan; A big bronze pigeon would have been more appropriate in her view.

Breakfast hit an early snag when I got to the lobby & saw the throng of people milling about in the restaurant, talking, allegedly queuing, and generally getting in each others way. There was an actual look of relief on the face of the lady working the maitre d’s desk (is that spelled right? and…

Heathrow Terminal (probably) 3 is, from what I’ve seen, pretty much like any other big chunk of airport. Go this way if you’re transiting, that way if you aren’t, yes the hallways do go for bloody miles, and here’s a queue to stand in. Getting into the country was pretty simple, and a shorter procedure…