Working on the road across this great big world, I've been rolling like a stone...

Part 1 of 4

Did I mention that Sunday we mostly spent in the City of Westminster? The same one that the town in Orange County, California is named after. And one of the themes I recognized that the Croydon Steel Orchestra played was the "Axel F Theme" from Beverly Hills Cop.

Sprite is from Berlin, Coke is from Armenia. Well, the can of Sprite Lynn had the other day, and the bottle of Coke I had at the same time, were from those parts of the EU anyway... I had Coca-Cola, because iced tea is hard to find. Hot tea is plentiful, of course.

The police cars here are certainly bright and colorful. I guess the neon colors are for traffic visibility; haven't seen a plain black and white ("panda") squad car yet. We've also seen a paramedic on a motorcycle with siren going down the lane.

Favorite instructional sign, posted at numerous places in the Underground: "Dogs must be carried." So far we haven't been cited for not carrying a dog, fortunately. Another thing I've noticed about the signage in London: the traffic signs and so forth use a lot more Upper/Lower Case letters, and it changes the whole typographical feel of the place. We have a lot more ALL CAPS back home on our signs.

My bruised ankle is coming along nicely; it's progressed to splotches of dark red. library_lynn is taping it up for me with her ace bandage.

At the Belgrove, we're next door to the California Hotel. Belgrove Street isn't on the maps. Because everyone uses the map data the government compiles, it's not on any of them. There's a "Belgrave" street or two, and Belgrove Square is on the map near where Belgrove Street is. And it's in Camden, for what that's worth.

Did I mention the door squeaks? And the bed creaks. We're in room 26, which is the closest to the door -- and at that, there's two steps down and one step up between the reception desk and our door. The bathroom's fan seems to pipe air up from downstairs, so if someone's smoking you get their secondhand smoke in the toilet. (The shower is a different little room, and doesn't seem to have a fan bringing air into it.) The power outlets here (which are 220V and shaped differently) have switches on them, each one. We have the room's little lamp plugged into one, and we just use the outlet switch to turn it on and off instead of trying to find the switch on the cord. The headroom to get in and out of the room, and the clearance under the ceiling lamps in the room and the shower, mean that I'm at just about the height limit for this room. "Must not be taller than this" should be posted outside the door! Or "mind your head."

But the breakfast is certainly a step up from the continental thing we had on our first morning. We got sausages, some big pieces of hammy bacon, cereal, stewed tomatoes if we wanted them, beans likewise. Also eggs, either over medium or scrambled. The juice was very watery -- we suspect it's from a concentrate and that the locals don't like their o.j. very strong. There was jam for the toast -- it was either strawberry or "mix", we're still not sure which. It was a tasty breakfast, and it turns out it was only the first breakfast we'd have that day...

( We went over to Euston Station to catch our train to Birmingham... )

...I never get back home. Yes, I've been long gone, and boy I've got the Birmingham Blues...

Part 2 of 4

( As will come as no surprise to anyone who's traveled First Class on a train before, First Class means they feed you. )

We strolled around downtown Birmingham, turned at the roundabout on a whim, and ran smack into the storefront for Andromeda Books. It looked like they were unpacking from a move -- is this their new location? I took pictures of Ped Badlan and Jackie Miller there. I wanted to support sf bookshops, so I bought an armload of Tom Holt. Plus the "Science of Discworld II" which I imagine will make the daughter of my heart insanely jealous. Well, no, actually; I'll probably just discover she's borrowed it indefinitely the next time she moves out of the house. But by then I'll have finished reading it, and I won't miss it so much. It'll still be in the family, after all.

Of course, this meant that before I'd even arrived in Glasgow, I'd managed to weigh down my luggage with half a dozen hardcover books; and, I'd done this on the way to Cadbury World, which meant that I'd committed us to lugging the books around all afternoon. Whoops!

When we got to the Bournville station, there were one or two other family groups (or one designated adult with the neighbors' kids), so it was just a matter of following the excited children (some of them randomly shouting "Chocolate!" from time to time) down the trail. It's about a 15 minute walk, they say, from the station to the factory.

( Cadbury World. What can I say about the place that hasn't been said before? )

...Been across the ocean to the south sea isles, yeah, I travelled to the east and west...

Part 3 of 4

Bournville is a company town. Cadbury has roots in Birmingham, but they decided to set up their factory out in the countryside. They picked a place by the Bourn Stream, hence the name, and where there was already a railway line, and called it Bournville. The old factory building has a great big sign that says BOURNVILLE on it. The factory complex has grown, so there's now another building in front of that building -- you can't see the sign from outside the factory complex. And I wasn't brave enough to try to shoot a photo of it, given the "no photography!" signs stationed throughout the factory tour.

( The factory tour was, in my book, remarkable for how little of the factory they showed us. )

...for miles and miles and miles, and I've been long-gone, and boy, I've got the Birmingham Blues.

Part 4 of 4

galtine1, if you're out there: we bought some red stuff in the Cadbury shops. We didn't find a bargain on the Bournvilles (which have a red wrapper), but we bought some strawberry "Bubbaloo" bubble gum, Cherry Drops (hard candies), some jelly (we'd call it Jell-O) that I can mix up with some of the rum and brandy I brought if you think it appropriate, some red wrapped "Chomp" bars (got a good deal on those, you'd be proud), five big Dairy Milk Turkish bars (which are chocolate with a red filling)... On the whole we spent about 7 or 8 british pounds (about $15 US), and I believe we got considerably more than 8 pounds of chocolate (about 17 kg).

( We went back to the Bournville station, returned to Birmingham New Street, and got on another first classcarriage to go back to London. )

We got back to our little hotel, showered, and headed out to Walkers of Holborn. The London Tun (i.e. fandom meet-up) meets at Walkers of Holborn now, which I'd learned by reading Ansible and I thought it was an important stop on our trip. (I was surprised not to see Suzle there, although I did see pnh, Erik, and Spike & Tom.) My notes indicated that Blackfriars was the closest Underground station, and it looked like you could get their via our Britrail pass more directly than going on the Tube. It turns out that it's on the Thameslink link. The "King's Cross Thameslink" station doesn't seem to be as close to King's Cross as St. Pancras Station is, but that's a nit; we rode the Thameslink train down to Blackfriars without incident. But then we were lost.

I'd neglected to actually write down their address. Or phone number. We figured out how to call information (118 141, I think) by checking inside a phone booth, and called them up to find out how to walk, then called back to ask for just the address so we could take a taxi. (9 Norwich St., EC4; their number is 020 78316965.) It turns out Chancery Lane is the closest station, by the way.

The London Tun was packed. Downstairs, that is, where the fans were. Upstairs the pub was deserted. In fact, one Monday night regular came downstairs to find out what our group was all about... I saw many people I knew, many more I've met before but can't yet match names and faces, and others I've corresponded with or seen them online. Full list later but I wanted to say that flickgc's shiny is, in fact, very shiny. I also received a number of fanzines; I was deeply embarrassed that I'd forgotten A BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN to give to those people who I'd like to give it to. Of course, if my server hadn't crashed, I'd have #3 out, and most of the people I got fanzines from had already received issue #1 or #2 or both, so maybe it wasn't that big a loss.

I now have (in no particular order) ANSIBLE, GIMMICKRY, META, PLOKTA WHO, and SHINY! SHINY!. GIMMICKRY has two gimmicks; the one I like is where she (Max) collects contributions with a 50-word limit. The part I don't like is where she drops them randomly oriented on the page -- straight, 90, 180, or 270 degrees rotated relative to one another. (And one or two 45 degrees off of that, even.) I think I'll have to send in something for her next ish, if she'll have me.

Oh, and I started building back up my photo collection of fans. I took 70+ photos there, and only a couple of people were fellow norteamericanos like myself. I saw Liz Batty, Tom Becker, John Birchby, Kate Bodley, Dirk Bontes, Tanya Brown, Randy Byers, Steven Cain, David Cake, Avedon Carol, Sharee Carton, Dave Clements, Pete Colman ("Dr. Pete"), Catherine Crockett, Tony Cullen, Rafe Culpin, Martin Dawe, Lise Eisenberg, MosheFeder, Cenk Gökçe, Rob Hansen, Jack Heneghan, Colin Hinz, Paul Hood, Tony Keen, Dave Lally, Dave Langford, Pat Lennon ("K'Rotch"), Richard Lewis, Karen McKenna, Geneva Melzack, Caroline Mullan, Robert Newman, Joseph Nicholas, Erik V. Olson, Spike Parsons, Ed Pourtahmasbi, Roger Robinson, Marcus Rowland, Kathy Sands, Alison Scott, Douglas Spencer, Bill Sutton, Damien Warman, Peter Wilkinson, Juliette Woods, Dop, Freddie, Granddad, Jim, Meike, Moz, Smitty, drplokta, fishlifter (both the long-haired one and the high-heeled one), flickgc, pnh, zarabee, and a few others that I didn't get names for. And Avedon's invited us to visit her; she had a party last weekend, and we didn't have her address or phone number to crash her party with. We now have her number. (Which is the same as the number for Feminists Against Censorship, I'm told.)

And I handed out pawprint stickers to mark my territory as I went. (Boo hoo: McGraw-Hill has discontinued the pawprint stickers. And I didn't find out until a year after they'd cut them off, so I couldn't buy out anyone's supply. I'll probably have to switch to a bear sticker, or something. So, I expect inter_action will be the last place I hand out pawprint stickers, unless a miracle happens.) We stayed for about two hours. By about 21:00 I couldn't handle the smoke anymore -- ye ghods, there was a lot of smoke down there -- and we made our way out, to Chancery Lane and home to bed.

I hope to find an Internet Cafe near our hotel in Glasgow! (The place here spells it Cafe; the software ["Antamedia"] they use to administer time spells it Caffe.) More later, we've got a train to catch.