Bluelemur.org.uk

The missus has blogged about last weekend already, but I thought I’d add a few bits myself (and I’ve just done some upgrading on the software that runs this blog, so I want to test it).

It was a fairly fab weekend all round, seeing friends, doing a few touristy bits, etc. but one or two things were especially good.

Saturday morning we went to the British Library to meet friends and visit the Maps exhibition. There were lots of interesting maps there, although unfortunately they only had a reproduction of the famous Hereford Mappa Mundi, not the original.
Just upstairs from that, though, was something even better – the permanent Treasures of the British Library exhibition. This is an amazing display of lots of famous books and documents. Amongst them were a surviving copy of the Magna Carta, drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, original manuscripts of Lewis Carroll, and rough handwritten Beatles lyrics, including those to ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ scribbled on the back of a birthday card sent to John Lennon’s son. The highlight for me was one of the diaries of Scott of the Antarctic, open at the page where he recorded the last words of Captain Oates. Seeing it actually written in Scott’s own hand was immensely powerful and moving.

Both these exhibitions were free, but most people probably don’t realise they’re there. The Treasures exhibition in particular is one that everybody should go and see, highly recommended.

In the afternoon we went to be tourists at HMS Belfast. I went there years ago with my family, but it was interesting to go again and look round it all.

The main point of going to London was to see Penn & Teller, doing their first show in the UK for 16 years. I’ve wanted to see them for a while, so when I heard they were coming over I had to get tickets. It was a brilliant evening, well worth the trip down there. I enjoyed pretty much all of it, but some of my favourite bits just had Teller on his own, such as the Shadows Illusion, or the one with the goldfish. There’s something beautiful about those that sets them apart from the more ‘showbiz’ parts where Penn is doing the talking.

The one thing we didn’t get to see that I would have liked to was the Ray Harryhausen Exhibition at the London Film Museum. That’s on until next June though, so we should have time to go back for it.

My brother has just been kind enough to point out a cartoon currently broadcast on the Disney Channel, of which I was blissfully unaware. Famous 5: On the Case is a modern updated version of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books, which I loved when I was growing up. In the new cartoon, the characters are the children of the original Famous Five, who use modern technology like laptops and mobile phones.
My reaction when I saw the Wikipedia article? “No no no no no no no no no! No!” But the trailer on Youtube confirms it:
Famous 5: On the Case trailer.

That’s just horrible and wrong and shouldn’t be allowed. It was bad enough when they remade Thunderbirds as a bunch of kids, and I wasn’t too impressed when they did a modern version of Doctor Dolittle, but this is clearly going too far. Are none of my favourite childhood stories safe?

If they make a crappy Don Camillo film, people will die…

My favourite author, Neil Gaiman, is doing a talk in Manchester on 29th October, at 7pm. However, my favourite musician, Jonathan Coulton, is also in Manchester playing a gig on the same night at 7:30pm. Nooooooo!

I’ve already bought tickets for the JoCo concert, so I’ll probably go to that, but it would have been good to be able to do both.

Neil Gaiman complained in his blog that it was difficult to find your way around the convention hotel. Evidentally, other people agreed:

I went to a few other good talks and panels, plus I caught the second half of the show by comedian and musician Mitch Benn. He was excellent, and very funny. Some of the stuff he did had a geek/sci-fi theme, so it was the right audience for it. And Monday night I spent drinking far too much in the real ale bar with other random people.

It was a good weekend (well, two days), and I’m definitely planning to go again next year, especially as it’ll be just down the road from me in Bradford.

Multi-award winning author and all-round nice bloke Neil Gaiman giving a talk at the Orbital Eastercon. He’s possibly my favourite author, so he was one of the main reasons I came to this (although it’s pretty good, I’ll probably go next year even though he won’t be there). He read a short story, called “Orange”, and part of the first chapter of “The Graveyard Book”, which he’s just finishing off at the moment. Very cool.

I’ve also been to a panel on “Writing the Near Future”, where some authors discussed the problems of trying to predict developments that will probably be proved true or false within their lifetimes. Interesting stuff, went into quite a few different areas. Robots seem to be the answer to most things…

I’m at the Orbital Eastercon, a science-fiction convention in London. Just been to a talk by author Charles Stross:

It was a really interesting overview of various forms of technology, where they seem to be going over the next few years, and the implications of that for us. He’s obviously a really knowledgeable guy, who’s done a lot of research on a lot of different subjects. Made me think quite a bit about some areas I’d not considered before, as well as giving me a few ideas of stuff I want to look into further.

(not a great photo though, I was a bit far back, so I took one of the video projection instead)

I just bought an imported copy of Warren Ellis’s debut novel, Crooked Little Vein. And sat and read the entire thing in one go.

Damn, that book’s good.

And disgusting, and horrific. Not for the faint-hearted or easily-offended. But a wonderful piece of writing. It reminded me of Transmetropolitan in places, still my favourite comic series ever. Laugh-out-loud funny too, in parts. And downright uncomfortable when I saw bits of myself in the main character from time to time. One of the great chroniclers of internet perversion, on magnificent form.

Highly recommended for anyone with a strong stomach and an open mind.