Colin Harvey – author

It was a weird experience watching the men’s hockey final on the BBC.

(Ice) Hockey is a sport that’s largely ignored over here, except when the Olympics are taking place, even more than football is in the USA. I’ve been told that live Premiership matches are available in the US, so Britain’s attitude is more parochial than the North American one, since all we can get is the odd match at 4am on Channel 5.

Our own association goes back almost two decades to the last time someone had a go at organizing a pro hockey league in Britain. A few months before we were due to visit relatives in Vancouver, we learned that Bristol had a team. We went to watch them play and fell in love with the game, especially as we could drink with the players afterwards, and learned that one of them had a brother playing in Canada for the Vancouver Canucks. Many good evenings followed, often leading to major hangovers the next day…

Unfortunately the Bristol Bulldogs were wound up a few months later in one of those political shenanigens that bedevil organized sport from time to time. But by then we’d visited Vancouver and fallen in love with the place. And when we were over in BC in time for the Stanley Cup Final the next year, and the Canucks were in it, we were sold. Sadly, so were all the tickets.

So we had to make do with watching it on TV while we were over there; in fact it became almost obligatory for us to settle down with a match on the box, and the mere mention of ‘It’s hockey night in Canada’ still brings up goosebumps. The Canucks haven’t made the final since losing to the New York Rangers, and ever since then trying to follow them has been a bit like supporting Bristol City. They always promise much, then fade away…

After the all the preamble and pontificating by the talking heads on the panel, big matches like last night’s are usually anticlimatic. But not this one. Oh no…

…comes the reckoning, as I wrote over at suite101.

I woke up this morning feeling as if I’d somehow committed some terrible sin by having a few nights out. I must work on suppressing this Calvinism that overtakes me from time to time. But only after I’ve written a review…

This morning’s blog is a straight list of the 2009 Nebula Award finalists. However, I couldn’t resist posting links to the stories I trumpeted when they first came out, which makes me look profoundly perspicacious. Of course, that ignores the finalists I initially rubbished, as well as all the other stories I backed which never made the final… 🙂

I promised a blog post on Thursday about that evening’s murder mystery event, and despite struggling to sum the evening up –that’s the difference from real life, which is nowhere near as neat and tidy as fiction– I’ve duly posted a few thoughts over at suite101.

…has begun to the event we’ve sub-titled ‘Bring Your Daughters To The Slaughter.’ It’s official title is ‘Murder on the Dance Floor,’ and it’s a weird hybrid of a 70s disco crossed with a murder mystery.  You can read more about what’s been going on in the run-up to it at the usual location.

It was a pretty busy weekend, as I noted in passing over at the Suite. But more significantly from my own limited perspective, things seem to be slowly coming together with the lengthening and generally brighter days….

Yay! It’s that time of year again when friendly tribalism reigns supreme in the British Isles, much to . I’ve walloped up a quick blog post over at the Suite.

at Suite101

Last night’s entertainment

I should have posted this about 12 hours ago, but the day got away from me.