Saturday at Eastercon
The reason that you’re only reading about Saturday at Eastercon on the following Tuesday is that unlike last year at Heathrow, there was no free wi-fi either in the con or my hotel. So with much grumbling I decided that rather than pay £12 for 24 hours –most of which would be wasted– I would just book one hour, although at £6.50 it doesn’t half concentrate the mind.
However, having queued to get a log-on ID, I found that to add insult to injury, I couldn’t log on. The hotel had obviously had this problem before as they hadn’t charged me -telling me to check the access first– but when I went back to reception, a mile-long queue had spontaneously generated, so with dark mutterings, I abandoned the blog for the weekend. I’d already wasted enough time, and I had a meeting scheduled with my publisher.
After lunch I met up with Sharon and our friend Rob and spend an afternoon in the bar, just easing back.
Then it was time for the BSFA awards. Kim Newman and Paul McAuley gave another brilliant performance as Masters of Ceremonies, including an imaginary interview between David Frost and Sir Arthur C. Clarke in 1969, with Clarke giving some wildly inaccurate predictions of how the world would look in 1999 and 2009.
Then the long-awaited Doctor Who special: only a middling episode, but still the best thing on TV all week.
And it was one of the best curries I’ve had in ages, eaten in good company. From a fairly crappy start, the day had turned out really well.
