UK Trip Post-Mortem, Part 3

[khaosworks]

11 February. I wake up, having spent the night in Phil's computer room on a camp bed. Not the most comfy of places, but I've been in worst places - like the Economy class cabin of a Malaysian Airlines jetliner (you saw that coming, didn't you?). In my blurry morning state, I almost mistake Lissa's mom, Jenny, for Lissa herself, but that's quickly sorted out. Following an early morning conversation with Alex - who, like all babies, become incredibly talkative once you pretend that you can actually understand their attempts at language - Jenny, who insists I call her that ("All fandom does" she says), kindly drives me to Gravesend station and I catch the train back up to London.

I collapse in a heap on the duvet once I drag myself and luggage back to Courcy Road, but manage to screw up the strength to call up Rob and Larissa as earlier arranged to figure out if they want to go meet up in town. It was all really dependent on Seanan's state of health, and that is not very good as it turns out. No matter! I take the opportunity to hop down to where I had planned to stop by at some point on the journey. After a few hours rest at Courcy Road, I ride the Tube down to the East side of London, to Barking (the borough used to be infamous for an insane asylum, hence the term "barking mad" - London is full of little details like this) and the 10th Planet Dr Who shop, where I load up on several DVDs and CDs.

Suitably armed, I realize that by this time it's actually getting late. This leads me to another realization about London that is different from other cities. Unless you're planning on partying and disco, most of the interesting stuff to do shuts down by five or six. Getting from Barking down to Central London would have taken at least an hour, and by the time it would have been like 16.30, hardly enough time to see any of the sights, let alone the London Dungeon before I would be shooed away by closing time. I decided to get back to Courcy Road and watch Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning in "Carnival of Monsters" instead - which was much more satisfying. And warm.

Winter in London is dreary. I was reminded why I didn't like the winters much in London. Aside from the rain and the sky being exactly like it is in the first line of William Gibson's Neuromancer - "The sky over Chiba was the color of a television set tuned to a dead channel" - it's lonely. When I was studying here, winter was the time everyone left London. Those who had the cash went home to Singapore or to Europe for warmer climes, others went back to their respective home towns scattered throughout Great Britain. It gets cold, it gets wet, you can't really walk around all that much because of that, and if you don't think it's possible to feel isolated in a city of seven million people, you obviously haven't lived on your own in a big city. Sure, I had Aunt Jane, but she worked most of the day, and so most of the time my companion was the death of the soul known as Daytime Television.

You mustn't get the impression that undergrad life for me in London was misery - no, in spring and summer and autumn, when the sun was out and the weather was great and my mates were around, it was amazing. You could walk forever without feeling it, romp around in Hyde Park, the buskers were on the street, the performances, the art shows. London is a city best experienced with people around you, though. In the sunny months it bursts into life. In the winter months it becomes a lump of inert urban rock, like it goes into hibernation.

12 February. Rob and Larissa are going to Bristol, so that's out for them. I call Seanan up in the morning and she sounds worse, if at all possible, so she's out. I make my way down to Greenwich to meet up as previously arranged with Shanti and Ian Rawlinson. Shanti's a Singaporean Indian who met Ian during her Master's. Ian moved to Singapore for a while, they got married and moved back to the UK together. Shanti and I were charter members of the Singapore Science Fiction Association back in the days when it still existed, and she is of course quite excited to meet up with a fellow citizen now that they're in London and basically on their own. They live in a refurbished Victorian house in Hither Green, one of those where it's basically an entire row with no spaces between the houses except for the walls. They had just moved in when Shanti lost her job with a bank in the aftermath of 9/11 - 43 percent retrenchments in London's financial sector, which is incredible considering how many people work in London's financial sector. And she still hasn't found a job yet. Thankfully, Ian's working for the government, so that's relatively more secure. Shanti does a very nice curry lunch and I spend an hour or so chatting with them, telling them of my plans for UGA and so on and say my good-byes. I ride the train into London and get off at Leicester Square, spending the rest of the day around the book stores until the ache in my legs send me scurrying back to North London.

13 February. Seanan's still feeling poorly and Rob and Larissa have problems with their credit card to sort out. I don't get out of the house still well after one. I turn my attention to Forbidden Prices - uh - Planet and the shops along Oxford Street, catching up on some comics but mostly killing time until I have dinner with youngest sibling playingpossum later that night. I get really pissy waiting since there's nothing to do and my legs are killing me, but eventually the time passes and I met up with her at Holborn tube. We wander down to Covent Garden, talking, but unable to find a resturant and then randomly enter the first thing that looks viable, the Farmhouse Table on New Oxford Street. I have the duck, she has pasta and we polish off two bottles of sparkling water while discussing her academic ambitions, life in general, how she's going to schedule summer, and our dysfunctional family. Most of it I won't go into, but I have to remind myself every now and then that even though 12 years separate us, she's 21 now, she has a boyfriend, she's on birth control for Christ's sake, and I can't think of her as a kid anymore. It's hard, and not for the first time I get a glimmer of how hard it is for parents to let go of their children.

14 February. I trudge down to playingpossum's apartment down in Bayswater and drop off the stuff I had brought over from Singapore. Again, my legs are killing me - the distances I used to walk routinely in London now seem interminably long. I'm not sure if it's because I'm getting older, it's the cold weather, or just because I'm not used to it anymore. I ride the lines to the Barbican and walk to the Museum of London, and spend the rest of my day getting lost in the history of the city I used to love. Somehow, this time she seems a lot more distant. I hope it's only because of the winter, and the next time I see her it'll be in sunnier climes and she'll open herself up to me again.

Seanan would love the Museum of London, and although she's feeling better today, by the time I manage to call her it's too late for her to make it in from Gravesend. She's also leaving tomorrow for Bristol and the Valentine's Revels over the weekend, so that's basically it. Rob and Larissa are too ill to come into town and they're also leaving tomorrow. I never even got down to the London Dungeon, but it's really not worth it unless I can bring someone along for free using that tube travelcard 2 for 1 offer. She's working on this novel about London and would find so much material here. Oh, if you're reading, Seanan, a helpful book may be the Oxford Dictionary of London Place Names (available at the Museum Shop). They have a borough listing, too, and short little capsules of various places in London.

I got to admit I'm disappointed that I couldn't do the KhaOS Tour as promised, but biology is biology - if you're sick, you're sick - and in any case, I'm not sure that it would have been all that fun given the cold weather. What the UK needs to do is schedule a filk con sometime in the summer...

I stay until closing time, and navigate the Barbican high walk to Moorgate station, past St Gile's Cripplegate. Along the way I pass by the statue of a Minotaur, of all things. Moorgate. Minotaur. Someday I really have to get around to writing that Invisible Cities book (yes, I know Italo Calvino took that title first), but that's another story. First I need to complete Warhound.

The next day deserves an entry all by itself. Oh - we drew with Ajax, by the way.

Next: What Did You Do Before The War, Daddy?

Comments

[swisscheesed.livejournal.com]

Didja talk about meeeeeeeeee????

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

No.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

What the UK needs to do is schedule a filk con sometime in the summer...

Oh, you mean like HarmUni?

Great convention, only "spoiled" by being the same weekend as the annual Fairport Convention weekend festival that I (and several other fans and filkers) regularly go to. But it was ok, the festival runs Thursday through Saturday night, so Sunday morning I packed up the tent and drove over to the con in time for the BFKAJPF set and then hung around until nearly midnight before driving home so I could be in work on Monday.

Glad to see you at the con and sorry to have not heard you sing more, it was lovely hearing you sing and play and that's a lovely little guitar you've got there!

[plaid-dragon.livejournal.com]

There have been two HarmUnis - the first one on August bank holiday weekend (which clashes with Herstmonceux siege) and the second one the first weekend of August. There will not be on in 2003 due to Unicon (which HarmUni piggybacks) not having a concom, and the filk concom (Me, callylevy and Albert) not being prepared to run a full con with too little planning time. We are hoping that something will be sorted out for 2004, again it partially depends on Unicon getting their act together. Which weekend would you prefer then, Magician?!d

HarmUni weekend

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I'd prefer the middle of August, around the 15th-ish or the weekend after (the one before the bank holiday) ... the Unicon needs to be in a higher education establishment (it's in the Unicon charter) and so it really needs to be during holidays, and since Easter has Eastercon and December/January is too cold and too near February, it only leaves the summer break, which (for the US readers) really means August (ok, some universities and such clear out by the end of June, but others run well into July). And the Cambridge Folk Festival is usually near the last weekend of July, then the Sidmouth Festival is the following week running into Cropredy around the 8th of August, so the next couple of weekends are my own personal preference.

Re: HarmUni weekend

[plaid-dragon.livejournal.com]

So noted, thanks for the feedback.Í

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

Invisible Cities as a title has already been used. My sympathies--I've got most of an outline for The Lovely Bones, which some little pissant had the gall to recently use....*laughs*

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, I know Italo Calvino had that title first, but honestly I can't think of any more appropriate title for the book. Well, maybe when I get around to writing it. The idea is that there are cities within cities that nobody ever sees - the hidden streets any byways that are older than the city around it, or the hidden communities that only wake up at certain times, and are invisible otherwise.