Just another day

[shewhomust]

Yesterday was full of things: work and play and people and books. I added a terrifying list of legal terms and conditions to a new website (Triangle Translations, since you ask) and an installment of Alan Mann's reminiscences of life in Tenerife to his site; the post brought me a review copy of Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics; and I went to the greengrocer, so there were fresh blackberries for lunch.

And in the evening we went to Newcastle for the launch of Simon Morden's new book, The Lost Art. I really enjoyed Simon's first book, Heart, but I haven't read any of his SF, but what he had to say about The Lost Art was intriguing: an iron age future in which science itself is a lost art, a novel in which the characters come first, bringing the plot with them - yet it is absolutely, definitely science fiction. Sounds fun.

And it was a fun event, with plenty of friends there: samarcand, who I don't get to see often enough, and desperance, and durham_rambler and Gail who doesn't have an LJ, and more. So the reading and talking about the book was relaxed, and the question and answer session was more like a party, with interruptions and jokes and heckling - I beg your pardon, contributions from the floor. Peg even asked the ritual question: "Where do you get your ideas from?" (The answer, if I have this right, appears to be that Charlie Stross has plenty to spare).

After which we emerged into evening sunshine, all dark and sticky, and headed for Stowell Street in search of a Chinese buffet. Gail led us unerringly to the restaurant
at which she had left her umbrella the previous Friday, and was efficient enough to remember, before we left, to reclaim it. Efficiency marred only slightly by the discovery this morning that the black umbrella she had reclaimed was not in fact her black umbrella at all...

Just another day...

Comments

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

But all Black Umbrellas are really only one single Black Umbrella. (Apparently, the way to get a cheap umbrella in London is to go to the London Underground Lost and Found office on Baker Street and say you've lost a black umbrella and they give you the first one they find lying around.) So, in some Platonic Ideal kind of a way, it was the correct Black Umbrella.

And you forgot to mention that Peg got a round of applause for asking The Question.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

True. Also that you gave me some very stylish Suart Immonen (http://www.immonen.ca/) postcards.