Of Brum, Books, Breakfasts and Blogs

Birmingham is a strange place! I've never been there before, except to visit the drunken uncle when he drunk himself into hospital for several months. I was amazed by the sheer concentration of chain stores. There were more shops than I have seen in, well, ever. The concentration of them beats London I think, but with the miserable uniformity of a high street that's priced out any independent shops that might have thrived. Two New Looks, two Waterstones, several of everything, but no independents. I imagine they went the same way as Andromeda, Rog's SF bookshop. His rent increases were so ridiculous that he was left with no choice but to close. He pointed out the two locations where the shop had been with a mixture of sadness and anger.

The city itself seems almost entirely new. We did see one old church, which was disturbingly dwarfed by the giant shopping centres that surrounded it. Next was taller than the steeple. Brother J plays a game on the Wii which has to be the most awful game for a person to have to share a room with, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, My Life as a King. (Link warning, this will make you vomit) It's all that I dislike about computer games. But the town that you have to build during the game is Birmingham! Large buildings, connected by sloping walkways and brick pavements. Most disturbing. In the story of the game, the idea is that you, the little king (bleugh!) have to rebuild a destroyed city using the memories of your people. If the people of Birmingham remembered a rather warped city, based it seems on various computer games, then the modern day Birmingham is what you'd come up with. It's as though you know that there's a proper city under there somewhere, you just can't quite see it any more. I did like that there was modern sculpture everywhere, but there wasn't any traditional sculpture anywhere but on the war memorial.*

It was brilliant seeing Rog again though, and we got to meet his wife Arline too. They showed us around and pointed out where we should go for breakfast. The hotel offered breakfast at £15, which was a little extortionate. What would you get for a £15 breakfast? Would there be cat milk in the tea perhaps, silk worm sausages and wild boar bacon? From what we saw on the way past, it looked exactly the same as the considerably cheaper pub/wine bar hybrid thing just outside.

Chris Priest greeted me with the news that he found my blog the day before. Damned Google Alerts! (Hullo Chris, hope your journey home was shorter! Ours was down to two hours, much improved.) Cue internal blog crisis while I puzzled the role of my blog, its genesis as a way of keeping friends up to date, its development into the freedom blog and the place to record bookmaking victories. Flicking through a few pages this morning I was almost horrified by its triviality, but then again that's how it's evolved, and this is the stuff I talk to you guys about when I email and phone you. I don't think I could cope with maintaining a proper reviewing and information blog such as Carl's: the sheer amount of time that must take. It just came as a shock to remember that blogs are public. Seems stupid doesn't it? Of course this is something I know, that's why the lack of names, the discretion when discussing school issues, but I think part of my brain had forgotten.

But anyway... JB was hugely excited to meet Chris and kept flicking coins from finger to finger in an attempt to resist gabbling about magic theory and The Prestige. He'd managed to restrict himself to having only two packs of cards in his pockets but was too nervous to ever take them out. He did well though; those of you who have met him know that he's not the most direct and concise of people at the best of times, but he managed to totally loose the power of coherent speech only once or twice. Not bad! We went out for dinner with some people from the Birmingham Science Fiction Group who were universally welcoming and lovely. Another Fleur Adcock fan, hurrah! Then it was time for the meeting and Chris's talk. The rest of the Brum group were also lovely and presented a wonderful spectrum of SF literature fans. Every wonderful cliche was in attendance, from t-shirts with large whimsical prints, full neck beards, small round framed glasses and everything in between. I overheard part of a brilliant conversation on a first sighting of Jupiter that made me sincerely wish that I had a reflector telescope.

Having enjoyed The Prestige so much, in both book and film form, it was disappointing to find that the process of the former becoming the latter wasn't a hugely positive one. I think that was one of my last bastions of hope in the idea of writing as a glamourous career. I'd lost most of the rest of them years ago, but that one still remained, mostly because of the equally illusionary impression of the film industry as glamourous and cool. Ah well.

Once back at the hotel, JB and I sat back while Chris and Rog talked chatted and reminisced about every SF writer you could ever dream of wishing to hear about. Carl, I wish you'd been there! All your favourite authors: you would have been in heaven. It made me realise just how much SF I haven't read. I must admit to not being a huge SF reader at all. I must make a classics list and raid the library. Chris told us about how he'd seen The Beetles play at The Cavern, and Rog made us laugh with his absolute dismissal of their music. Turns out that Chris and I share an addiction to Radio 4 and he'd recently started reading Lovecraft, so JB was in his readership element. Breakfast gave JB the chance to ask all the magic questions that he'd been bottling up since the evening. He doesn't get the chance to talk about it too much; my eyes tend to glaze over and I try to steal his props, so it was good for him to talk to someone who knew more about what he was talking about! I'm sure the staff in International Magic understand him, but it confuses the hell out of me.

Then we went to the Sea Life Centre! There were quite a disturbing number of small children there, but there were also wonderful little seahorses who delighted me by being absolutely as I've imagined them to be, rays who flew through the water, leopard sharks who just looked cool, and an octopus which JB was tempted to steal and rehome. We returned to Hertfordshire without a cephalopod, but with the promise that should we ever be rich, we'll have one and build it a run of tubes and tanks with Duplo bricks and food in jars to play with. Hell, if it motivates him to work towards being even financially comfortable, he can have two.

So now it's back to the rush of getting ready for the Wrest Park fair. Just under five weeks to go. I've ordered in ten 2009 diaries to strip down and bind up, just to see if they sell. I'd be a little concerned that a diary takes so much more of a battering over an extended period than a journal, but I did tend to put mine through hell. In all honesty I don't think it's going to be too much of a rush, but it will be a stretch financially! The summer holidays start next week and it seems that the majority of the kids I tutor will be taking the summer holidays as a complete break, so quite how I'll be paying the rent I have no idea. I've just paid on out on the fees and insurance, the car insurance is due at the end of this month, and I won't have the time to take another job until after the fair when I can do a few days temping or find something part time. In an attempt to stop the car from breaking down, I've cleaned it and made it lovely and shiny. This, you see, will show it that I love it and encourage it to keep going, despite the strange noises that it was making on the motorway.

If anyone's feeling generous, please send beans, bread, apples and cheese.
Thanks.




*I'm sure there were more and I just didn't see them, no offense intended Brummies.