I’ll get back to scribbling about books soonish, promise. I mean, that is the premise behind this blog but I seem to have digressed quite a bit this year.
We did it again. We went away without telling people. Mostly without telling people. Only this time I was prepared and had something scheduled to publish on my blog every Monday until today. But today we are back and supposedly recovered from jetlag. I think my fingers are recovered but the brain and rest of the body hasn’t yet figured out which time zone I’m in, let along which season it’s meant to be preparing for.
We returned from England on Wednesday morning. It was a flying visit. The intention was to attend the UK Discworld Convention and also see family. I was hoping to do some study while there but we spent so much time on the move that when we sat down I was too tired to focus. I did manage to do some study on trains but there’s still a lot left to catch up on.
The convention was awesome. I’ve heard varying stories of when they sold out of tickets. Essentially, it’s like a pop concert where they sell out within hours or weeks. Ticket sales opened at 4am Melbourne time some time last year and I hopped on the computer at 7:30am that same day. Too late, I should have got up at 4am and then gone back to bed. At 7:30 the waiting list was already really lengthy. I managed to get to the top of the list just as we’re wondering about the price of airfares and should we bother waiting any longer or just cancel because it will be too expensive. So, we went and had an absolutely fabulous time.
UK Discworld Convention? Much like the Australian Discworld Convention but much bigger. We’re expecting around 300 attendees, the UK had around 700! Just imagine. 700 people all with the same interests as you. It doesn’t matter who you talk to there are shared interests everywhere. It was an unforgettable experience and I took very few photos to remind me. What I did try and do was a brain dump most nights after I went back to my room. Not just for me, but also for my committee so they’d see what was happening.
We also had a couple of days in Cardiff, a couple of days in Penzance and then back to London to see family. I’m considering doing a quick write up of the convention for next week, then Cardiff, followed by Penzance before finally coming back to talk about books. What a strange concept, to actually write about the actual focus of the blog. What a novel idea.