Iain J Coleman

And a Merry Christmas to all of you at home

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 22:16:32 GMT

Merry Christmas to all of you out there in LJ land!

It's been a quieter than expected Christmas for us. Our planned trip down south to see the in-laws had to be cancelled due to my lovely wife being knocked out for a week with the lurgy. Still, given the road conditions, perhaps digging in at home was the wiser option.

So we had a lovely bit of roast lamb for lunch while watching The Incredibles, then settled in for Doctor Who - or should I say The Three Stigmata of Harold Saxon? All jolly good fun - and I'm looking forward to seeing James Bond leading the Time Lords on New Year's Day.

Christmas Ale Top Tip: Midnight Sun from the Williams Bros Brewing Company is the finest porter I have ever tasted.

Lyrics meme

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:21:00 GMT

I caught this lyrics meme from glitterboy1, and though it started well, it quickly entered more troubling realms.

"I kissed an iainjcoleman and I liked it" sounded quite sweet, and "If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my iainjcoleman" was interesting, but complex, but then it progressed to "All I ever wanted, all I ever needed, is here in my iainjcoleman", which reminded me that I carry a donor card, just in time for "Who needs an iainjcoleman, when an iainjcoleman can be broken?" at which point I made my excuses and left.

Drama Queens

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:07:26 GMT

Drama Queens, and how to deal with them.

Win

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:42:53 GMT

This

What a difference a day makes.

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:27:07 GMT

Well-known SF author claims that all TV science fiction is rubbish.

Well-known SF author clarifies that he has not in fact watched any TV drama for the past twenty years.

Poetry Day: The Dream of the Rood

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:31:53 GMT

A poem for National Poetry Day. This is possibly my favourite Anglo-Saxon poem, and this translation by Richard Hamer does a pretty good job of getting the flavour of it across. If you want the original text, go here.

The Dream of the Rood

Hear while I tell about the best of dreams
Which came to me the middle of one night
While humankind were sleeping in their beds.
It was as though I saw a wondrous tree

Towering in the sky suffused with light,
Brightest of beams; and all that beacon was
Covered with gold. The corners of the earth
Gleamed with fair jewels, just as there were five
Upon the cross-beam. Many bands of angels,

Fair throughout all eternity, looked on.
No felon's gallows that, but holy spirits,
Mankind, and all this marvellous creation,
Gazed on the glorious tree of victory.
And I with sins was stained, wounded with guilt.

I saw the tree of glory brightly shine
In gorgeous clothing, all bedecked with gold.
The Ruler's tree was worthily adorned
With gems; yet I could see beyond that gold
The ancient strife of wretched men, when first

Upon its right side it began to bleed.
I was all moved with sorrows, and afraid
At the fair sight. I saw that lively beacon
Changing its clothes and hues; sometimes it was
Bedewed with blood and drenched with flowing gore,

At other times it was bedecked with treasure.
So I lay watching there the Saviour's tree,
Grieving in spirit for a long, long while,
Until I heard it utter sounds, the best
Of woods began to speak these words to me:

"It was long past - I still remember it -
That I was cut down at the copse's end,
Moved from my root. Strong enemies there took me,
Told me to hold aloft their criminals,
Made me a spectacle. Men carried me

Upon their shoulders, set me on a hill,
A host of enemies there fastened me.
And then I saw the Lord of all mankind
Hasten with eager zeal that He might mount
Upon me. I durst not against God's word

Bend down or break, when I saw tremble all
The surface of the earth. Although I might
Have struck down all the foes, yet stood I fast.
Then the young hero (who was God almighty)
Got ready, resolute and strong in heart.

He climbed onto the lofty gallows-tree,
Bold in the sight of many watching men,
When He intended to redeem mankind.
I trembled as the warrior embraced me.
But still I dared not bend down to the earth,

Fall to the ground. Upright I had to stand.
A rood I was raised up; and I held high
The noble King, the Lord of heaven above.
I dared not stoop. They pierced me with dark nails;
The scars can still be clearly seen on me,

The open wounds of malice. yet might I
Not harm them. They reviled us both together.
I was made wet all over with the blood
Which poured out from his side, after He had
Sent forth His spirit. And I underwent

Full many a dire experience on that hill.
I saw the God of hosts stretched grimly out.
Darkness covered the Ruler's corpse with clouds
His shining beauty; shadows passed across,
Black in the darkness. All creation wept,

Bewailed the King's death; Christ was on the cross.
And yet I saw men coming from afar,
Hastening to the Prince. I watched it all.
With sorrows I was grievously oppressed,
Yet willingly I bent to those men's hands,

Humbly. They took up there Almighty God,
And from the heavy torment lifted Him.
The soldiers left me standing drenched with moisture,
Wounded all over with the metal points.
They laid Him down limb-weary; then they stood

Beside the corpse's head, there they beheld
The Lord of heaven, and He rested there
A while, tired after the great agony.
The men then made a sepulchre for Him
In sight of me. They carved it of bright stone,

And set therein the Lord of victories.
Next, wretched in the eveningtide, they sang
A dirge for Him; and when they went away,
Weary from that great Prince, He stayed alone.
Yet we remained there weeping in our places

A good long time after the warriors' voices
Had passed away from us. The corpse grew cold,
The fair abode of life. Then men began
To cut us down. That was a dreadful fate.
In a deep pit they buried us. But friends

And servants of the Lord learnt where I was,
And decorated me with gold and silver.
Now you may understand, dear warrior,
That I have suffered deeds of wicked men
And grievous sorrows. Now the time has come

That far and wide on earth men honour me,
And all this great and glorious creation,
And to this beacon offers prayers. On me
The Son of God once suffered; therefore now
I tower mighty underneath the heavens,

And I may heal all those in awe of me.
Once I became the cruellest of tortures,
Most hateful to all nations, till the time
I opened the right way of life for men.
So then the prince of glory honoured me,

And heaven's King exalted me above
All other trees, just as Almighty God
Raised up His mother Mary for all men
Above all other women in the world.
Now, my dear warrior, I order you

That you reveal this vision to mankind,
Declare in words this is the tree of glory
On which Almighty God once suffered torments
For mankind's many sins, and for the deeds
Of Adam long ago. He tasted death

Thereon; and yet the Lord arose again
By his great might to come to human aid.
He rose to heaven. And the Lord Himself,
Almighty God and all His angels with Him,
Will come onto this earth again to seek

Mankind on Doomsday, when the final Judge
Will give His verdict upon every man,
What in this fleeting life he shall have earned.
Nor then may any man be without fear
About the words the Lord shall say to him.

Before all He shall ask where that man is
Who for God's name would suffer bitter death
As formerly He did upon the cross.
Then they will be afraid, and few will know
What they may say to Christ. But there need none

Be fearful if he bears upon his breast
The best of tokens. Through the cross each soul
May journey to the heavens from this earth,
Who with the Ruler thinks to go and dwell."
I prayed then to the cross with joyous heart

And eagerness, where I was all alone,
Companionless; my spirit was inspired
With keenness for departure; and I spent
Much time in longing. Now my hope of life
Is that I may approach the tree of triumph

Alone more often than all other men,
Honour it well; my wish for that is great
Within my heart, and my hope for support
Is turned towards the cross. I have on earth
Not many noble friends, but they have gone

Hence from earth's joys and sought the King of glory.
With the High father now they live in heaven
And dwell in glory; and I wait each day
For when the cross of God, which here on earth
I formerly beheld, may fetch me from

This transitory life and carry me
To where there is great bliss and joy in heaven,
Where the Lord's host is seated at the feast,
And it shall set me where I afterwards
may dwell in glory, live in lasting bliss

Among the saints. May God be friend to me,
He who once suffered on the gallows tree
On earth here for men's sins. Us He redeemed
And granted us our life and heavenly home.
Hope was renewed with glory and with bliss

For those who suffered burning fires in hell.
The Son was mighty on that expedition,
Successful and victorious; and when
The one Almighty Ruler brought with Him
A multitude of spirits to God's kingdom,

To bliss among the angels and the souls
Of all who dwelt already in the heavens
In glory, then Almighty God had come,
The Ruler entered into His own land.

As you can see, it's basically Christ/Cross: an unusual pairing in this fandom, but the author makes it a compelling one.

Happy Birthday

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:17:51 GMT

Happy birthday, katlinel! Though I hope you're having far too good a time on your holiday to read this before you get back.

Supervillainy!

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:34:49 GMT

Your result for The Supervillain Archetype Test...

The Megalomaniac

Ambitious, Intelligent, Calculating

The Megalomaniac is the most prestigious of super-villain classes. If anyone is ever going to rule the world, it will probably be you.

Your main goal in life is power and domination, you have the tools to do it, and you know it. Megalomaniacs are intelligent and forceful, and they tend not to let their emotions cloud their judgment. Most of the time. They are usually found, or not found, working at the top of a huge structured organization, though many prefer to work by themselves.

The Megalomaniac has but one flaw, but its an invariably fatal one; arrogance. He knows that he can take over the world, and he isn't afraid to let you know, often elaborately and in great detail. They often do not foresee the fly in their ointment, because they do not want to admit that such a fly could exist.

Sample Megalomaniacs: Dr. Doom, Lex Luthor, Ras al'Ghul, Kang the Conqueror, Emperor Palpatine, Brain

Take The Supervillain Archetype Test at HelloQuizzy

Context-free speculation

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:57:28 GMT

If LiveJournal had been around in Elizabethan times, imagine the fuss after Act 5 of Othello.

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:27:58 GMT

James Moran on Torchwood, and fan reactions.

Worth reading. The poor guy's had to put up with a lot of shit these past days.

Torchwood: When a million-to-one chance works out... about one time in a million.

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:24:45 GMT

Last week, British telefantasy came full circle. Torchwood: Children of Earth abandoned its Doctor Who ancestry and went straight back to the Adam and Eve of TV sci-fi in Britain: Quatermass. A short, intense serial, with the world threatened by a mysterious alien menace and inhuman bureaucracy in equal measure, and society breaking down when its fragile structures are threatened. Torchwood had it all - and it was better than all the Quatermass serials bar Quatermass and the Pit.

[Heresy? Not really. What survives of The Quatermass Experiment is great, but sadly we only have the first two episodes so we can't really make a fair comparison. Quatermass II is excellent, except for the final episode which is truly bad, and the final Quatermass serial has far too much of Nigel Kneale's "Grrr, get off my lawn" and an inexplicably poor central performance by the usually splendid John Mills.]

This week's serial was also the culmination of Russell T Davies' increasing hostility to the conventions of heroic drama. Midnight was explicity his rebuttal to his own Voyage of the Damned, but in its final two episodes Torchwood: Children of Earth goes much further in systematically undermining our expectations about the rules by which the TV-sci-fi world works. The two male leads defy authority to charge at the monsters, all guns blazing... and get themselves and others killed without harming the enemy in the slightest. The despicable Prime Minister is deposed... only to be replaced by the one cabinet member even worse than he is. The hero can't save all the children, and can't find forgiveness or absolution for the terrible things he does in defence of the planet.

Heroic drama is thrilling, suspenseful, even frightening. But ultimately, it's comforting. Characters may leave or die, but always saving their friends or the world, or at least wrapping up their personal stories with a neat little bow - and the more popular the character, the more likely they are to stick around. Even if characters change, the format of the show remains the same, such that viewers can be reassured of being able to come back next week for more of the same sort of story. Heroes may show regret or heartache, but it's a safe kind of angst that can be contained within the structure of the show and the other characters.

When you deliberately and skilfully break down these cosy conventions, you can produce great drama. You can also distress people. There's a reason why King Lear is one of the greatest plays ever written - and why it was performed with alternative, conventionally comforting ending from 1681 to 1838.

The key to the success of Torchwood: Children of Earth is the way the big, abstract questions are focused down to affect our protagonists personally. The first signs of this are seen in COBRA, where Gold Command's abstract discussions of how to select the tithe of children quickly becomes an exercise in making sure the Angel of Death passes over them personally. The same theme plays out systematically as the serial progresses. Torchwood decides to fight the aliens, but the concept of War quickly becomes realised personally, as futile death for Ianto and the loss of a loved one for Jack. Frobisher's loyalty to the civil service ideal - letting politicans set the policy and working to deliver it effectively - is strained to breaking point when policy puts his children in the firing line. Wouldn't it have been much more satisfyingly heroic if he'd decked the PM and walked out to join Torchwood? Of course. And that's why he went home to shoot his family and then himself. Because that's how this man breaks. And finally, the question of whether it is right to sacrifice even one child is given to Jack, and the victim is his own grandson.

Abraham had to sacrifice his own son, Isaac. In the heroic fiction of Genesis, an angel of the Lord stepped in at the last minute. Isaac was saved, though it must have been a hell of an awkward walk home. Davies is an atheist, and the last-minute escape from the awful moral dilemma evidently isn't something he believes in.

So the hero becomes a murderer. Jack's daughter will clearly never forgive him - and why should she? Jack, in the closing scenes, seems every bit as suicidal as Frobisher. Only he can't die, so the symbolic suicide of abandoning his present life and shooting off to an unknown destination in the stars is as close as he can get.

It's a bleak, cold story about our pettiness, self-centredness and inability to escape the moral mire we wade in. It's about the failure of the myths of heroism, and the tawdriness and folly that lie beneath professions of high ideals. It's also thrilling, funny, exciting, gripping, charming, and the best thing on TV so far this year. If Torchwood is to become the new Quatermass, then it is a worthy successor.

And who would have even dreamed of saying that, two years ago?

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:49:13 GMT

So farewell then, Hazel Blears. An amoral, vacuous little apparatchik, and quite the thickest human being with whom I have ever had any substantial political dealings. Ever since she blocked a well-thought-out plan to deal with a significant antisocial behaviour problem in Cambridge, I have watched her rise in government with the sensation of throwing up a little in my mouth. She will not be missed.

Oh, fuck

Tue, 12 May 2009 23:59:06 GMT

Belated birthday greetings to the noble temeres and the splendid glitterboy1 .

My lovely wife

Tue, 12 May 2009 23:52:14 GMT

It's been a tough few weeks at work, but it came to an end today. We had a review of our work yesterday and today by top people from the research council that pays for all our activities. This was a big deal: formally, it was about assessing how well we were doing half-way through our latest grant, but informally it was a lot about whether we continue to have jobs after this grant comes to an end.

So we've all been pretty busy over the past few weeks. For my part, I've had to produce the Annual Report, write articles for the newsletter, and provide content for the completely new version of our website that we've had to rush into existence for this week. It's been intense.

So the inspection came to an end this afternoon, and I made my weary way home. When I opened the door, I was greeted by a delicious aroma - chicken roasting in the oven on a bed of garlic, potatoes and carrots. When it was done, we just tore into it with bare hands - no finesse, but a very nice Maipo Valley chardonnay gave it a touch of class. Absolutely delicious, and all thanks to my lovely wife. What a wonderful way to end a hard and stressful few weeks.

European political profiler

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:08:16 GMT

nwhyte points to this European Union Political Profiler. It's quite neat. You answer about thirty questions, and it tries to locate you with respect to political parties. What's unusual is that, first, it gives strong emphasis to the parties' views on European issues, and second it allows you to do it for any EU member state.

I did it for the UK and Denmark...

United Kingdom first:

Pretty much a bulls-eye for the Liberal Democrats. Not a great shock, although I was a bit surprised at how close the match was. Oh, and it's quite interesting to note the relative positions of Labour and the Conservatives on the "socioeconomic left/right" axis.

On to Denmark:

It sees in Danish terms I'm in between the Socialistisk Folkeparti and Det Radikale Venstre. Looking at them in more detail, the latter seems much more likely to get my vote. Indeed, had I not been a little lukewarm in the specifically Danish questions concerning the EU, allowing an appreciation of my lack of knowledge of the details to reign in my instinctively stronger initial responses, I should think I would have hit Det Radikale Venstre pretty much dead-on as well.

A typo that was much less amusing than I might have expected

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:18:45 GMT

When looking for Lib Dem Voice, I just accidentally googled "Lib Dem Vice". To my great disappointment, all the results turned out to be quite dull.

The wisdom of A. Judas Rimmer

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 01:32:10 GMT

When you see this, quote from Red Dwarf in your journal

I just want to say: over the years, I have come to regard you as ... people I met.

A couple of must-reads

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:56:34 GMT

Moazzam Begg interviews Binyam Mohamed - what Guantanamo Bay is really like, why Bagram is even worse, and the moral failures of the US and UK governments.

Also, US officials state that waterboarding foiled no terrorist plots.

Petition for equal representation of women in TV and film

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 01:06:00 GMT

Equity are running a petition for equal representation of women in TV and film.

Frank Miller's Charlie Brown

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:12:15 GMT

This is quite splendid:

Page 1

Page 2

Bins

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 11:02:45 GMT

I have an article on Lib Dem Voice about how we introduced fortnightly bin collections in Cambridge.

Restaurant Review: Joanna's Kitchen

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:29:51 GMT

So, my lovely wife i_smell_shite has been doing a cooking course at college as part of her university studies. She was keen to try out some of her learning at home, so this evening we had vegetable tempura followed by sweet and sour pork. It was lovely. The tempura batter was light and crispy, the vegetables were delicious, especially the sweet potatoes and carrots, and the sweet and sour pork was fresh and tangy with beautifully tender meat. I will definitely eat at this restaurant again.

Redemption 09

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:21:01 GMT

Thursday

Drove down from Edinburgh. Planned time of departure: 11 am. Actual time of departure: 12:30 pm. Not bad. Journey goes smoothly enough, at least until we hit the Sliproad of Doom getting off the Coventry ring-road. Stress is quickly relieved when the hotel springs into view. A lot of our chums turn up to help with the unpacking, which is very kind of them (although in sugoll's case more of a moral obligation, since half the load belonged to him and katlinel, but it was most welcome nonetheless). I then negotiated the Sliproad of Doom once again in order to get to the car park, and finally got to check in.

The room was remarkably nice, but there was no time to laze around as we had arrived with little time to spare before the evening meal. Which was also remarkably good. Beer was drunk, and I gradually relaxed from the toes upward.

Friday

Busy start, as my lovely wife and I had been tasked with putting up the signs and the book quiz pictures. After a little fafing, we decided that it would be best to split the tasks between us, so i_smell_shite went off to put book quiz pictures in creative and obscure places, while I concentrated on putting signs in standard, obvious places. I had never before appreciated quite how much of a pain in the arse putting signs up really is. I take my hat off to those who have quietly done this task at previous cons without complaint.

I then had to fit in a meeting with the_magician, to go over my sketch for the opening ceremony, and then a meeting with tech to sort out the lighting. A few days before, sugoll had asked me to perform a sketch based on the Orange mobile phone ads that play in the cinema, and sent me the script he had written. I agreed, and entirely rewrote his script. He was remarkably gracious about this.

But before the opening ceremony, of course, there were panels. I skipped the "Old Verus New Who" panel, on the grounds that it was likely to turn into a cliquey hatefest, and so my first panel of the con was the, by now traditional, "How to Run a Panel" panel tat sugoll and I have run for the past couple of years. It seemed useful and constructive, and thanks to all those who showed up - though I fear it will always be the case that those who really need to go to this panel, don't. Seriously, if you've never been to this because you think you know all about doing a panel and don't need to be told, then you really really need to come to this panel.

The opening ceremony seemed quicker and more entertaining than usual, though that might have been my pre-performance nerves. The sketch went without a hitch, much to my relief. After that was the pub quiz (our table lost by half a point, because we didn't know the first names of the Professionals - where the hell were you, altariel?), then more drinking before the "Will Time Travel Ever Be Possible" panel.

I'd prepared for the time travel panel mainly by reading this review paper, but otherwise I was just drawing on such basic physical principles as came to mind. The panel was thin on actual debate, given that all four panellists basically agreed that time travel seems to be possible in principle, given our current understanding of physics, but poses highly non-trivial engineering problems. It was an interesting discussion nonetheless, with the audience very engaged in the issues. Tricky sometimes to get the balance right in terms of exploring ideas properly without getting too technical, but I think we more or less achieved it. On reflection, though, I think this kind of topic is better handled as a structured preentation by one person, followed by a Q&A session, rather than as a panel discussion.

I had been planning to go to piersb's "Monsters v. Aliens: What's The Difference?" panel, but after an hour of general relativity I was far too knackered and repaired instead to the bar.

Saturday

I woke from a stressful nightmare in which I was late and unprepared for interviewing Paul Cornell. So, after a hurried breakfast, I shut myself off in our hotel room and did more preparation for the interview. I emerged, and met up with Cornell outside the Main Hall shortly before we were due on stage. He was plainly shattered, and was most apologetic about being worn out and jet-lagged. To his great credit, though, he lit up with enthusiasm as soon as we got on stage, and was an excellent interviewee, happy to engage with questions and expand on them at length. Whcich was just as well, because what I had thought in my inexperience was an ample supply of questions turned out not to be, and had Cornell been less talkative there would have been some really desperate busking from me at the half-hour mark. As it was, we made it to the time I had set for opening up to questions from the audience, and what a scurrilous lot they were. I think it's safe to assume that large volumes of Cornell/Moffatt slash are now making their way around the internet.

No sooner had one stage performance ended, than it was time to think about another. i_smell_shite and I had decided to perform a skit in the Cabaret, with her as Don Corleone and me as the nervous supplicant asking him to stop Paterson Joseph from becoming Doctor Who. We'd learned the lines. but hadn't had much chance to perform with movement, so we took over the larger space of katlinel's room, while she and glitterboy1 were a patient audience.

Then it was off to piersb's talk on the BBC Writers' Room - good stuff, but bizarrely located in the Main Hall - and then Paul Cornell's writing workshop, which was unstructured but informative, particularly Cornell's description of a dramatic narrative going "from surprise to surprise".

We dashed from here to the cabaret rehearsal. This went quite spectacularly poorly. It is said sometimes that "A bad dress rehearsal means a good performance". If there's any truth in this, it's becaue a bad rehearsal makes you take off to your room for a dozen more runs through the material and some more cuts to tighten up the script.

Mustering for the cabaret was 7:30. Waiting in the Jubilee Bar with the other performers, I was concerned that we would miss the wonderful Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, but fortunately we were allowed out to watch the socks and the preceding Masquerade. Lots of splendid costumes, with Victorian Torchwood a worthy winner (and I don't say that just because of my uncredited and somewhat drunk role as story consultant the night before). The socks were as jaw-achingly hilarious as ever, with a good deal of new material and some top-notch banter with the Redmption crowd.

We dashed back to the Jubilee for a nervous wait, then were ushered through the kitchen and onstage. i_smell_shite performed brilliantly, really inhabiting the power of the character, and all the worries of the previous rehearsal melted away as we had to keep pausing the performance for the audience's laughter. We went back into the main hall to see the very funny "The Tribble Can Never be Buggered At All" and katlinel's excellent dancing, but then had to go back to our room to get changed out of our sweaty, uncomfrotabe costumes. Which was a bit of a shame, as it seems there were some great cabaret performances that we missed.

My normal practice after a performance is to drink a great deal of beer. This was interrupted on this occasion by the "Who is the Best Who Writer" panel. There's always a fear that such panels will turn into bloodbaths, but this one was very positive, constructive and celebratory. Opinions on Russell T Davies covered the full spectrum of sane, informed opinion, from "clearly the best writer Doctor Who has ever had", through "not quiite as brilliant as Moffatt", all the way to "a great and talented writer who takes the wrong approach to Doctor Who". I took the opportunity at the start to couple my effusive praise for Davies with an appreciation of the writers of the great Hartnell historicals - John Lucarotti, Donald Tosh, Donald Cotton and Dennis Spooner - and it was great to hear other panellists praise so many of the other great writers of Who, not just the usual suspects. Indeed, the big beast Robert Holmes got surprisingly little attention in this panel - first stirrings of a backlash, or just people wanting to highlight less-appreciated writers?

Sunday

After this, i_smell_shite and I sat up in the bar till the early hours. This turned out not to be quite as good an idea as it seemed, because when we got back to our hotel room it was shaking with a tremendous mechanical noise. This turned out to be an air conditioning unit, but it was making the room quite uninhabitable and the hotel staff were unable or unwilling to turn it off. By the time all this was resolved, which involved us moving to another room, it was about 5 am. This meant we both slept for much of Sunday morning, and I was disappointed to miss Rob Shearman's panel on writing for theatre and radio. On the upside, i_smell_shite's old schoolfriend november_girl and her husband had come to have lunch with us. They live just outside Coventry, and I had never met either of them before, so it was lovely to get together at last.

Having waved them off again, it was time for Man of Iron. Hooray! We got to the performance to find that thesp-wrangler pinkdormouse had cast me as the crippled genus Algor, and my wife as his finest creation, the fearsome robot Gabor. The performance was a hoot, as ever. I adopted a strangled, cod-Germanic Dr Strangelove voice for the role, and spent much of my time bouncing along in a chair as the budget hadn'' stretched to one with wheels. rabelasian made a splendid Northern Servalan, and i_smell_shite strode the dunes with great conviction, but the highlight had to be the growing romance and eventual engagement of Avon and Vila (teawith and piersb, really working that subtext).

With the afternoon slipping by, it was time for the closing ceremony. It was again commendably short and entertaining. I am confident that newly-elected Ruler of the Universe Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart will be a just and progressive supreme authority: I express this view freely and spontaneously, with absolutely no coercion.

The con didn't end there, though. i_smell_shite and teawith were doing a panel on "Lost", and I had been co-opted onto this at a late stage. It being the tail end of the con, only a handful of people turned up, so we all sat around the table normally reserved for panellists and had a jolly nice chat about the show.

It was my birthday on the Monday, and in recognition of the fact that I was going to be spending my birthday driving back to Edinburgh, my wife thoughtfully arranged a party (room very kindly provided by glitterboy1) involving good friends, cake and Cava. What a lovely way to spend time chatting with old friends, even ones like altariel who are Wrong about The Wire.

After this, it was just a matter of eating, drinking and generally dead-dogging into the night. I retired about one-ish, leaving sugoll to his noble vigil in the Jubilee, making sure it stayed open as it was supposed to.

Monday.

Packed up, checked out, got a refund for Saturday night after a few minutes of doggedly refusing to be fobbed off, then took the opportunity for a nice sit down and a cup of tea in the downstairs bar. It was the first I'd seen of Rob Shearman other than the closing ceremony - what a nice chap he is, and what a shame I missed his Sunday panels. altariel took the opportunity to blow my tiny mind with one of the most... astonishing SF novels set in near-future Ireland that I have ever seen.

But the road home beckoned, and so we dragged ourselves away and into the car. We made good time on the way home, getting to the Burg in about six hours, and celebrated my birthday proper with wine and takeaway pizza. Splendid!

Overall

The best con I've ever been at, hotel room nighmare notwithstanding. But, as ever, the best part of the con is the bit that doesn't appear in the programme. It's getting together with friends, staying up late into the night debating whether Bonekickers has any merit, or whether the original season five of Rome would have been any cop. So my heartfelt thanks to the whole con committee, and everyone who contributed to making it a success, but most of all to sugoll, katlinel, altariel, communicator, glitterboy1, piersb, loli8, fifitrix, teawith, and most of all i_smell_shite. Thank you for a wonderful weekend.

How many times have I watched Alien?

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:23:44 GMT

I can't believe I've only just got this.

I Alien, Kane (John Hurt) symbolically gestates and gives birth to the monster.

In Beowulf, the monster Grendel is referred to as "Cain's kin".

I literally cannot count the number of times I've watched Alien or read Beowulf, and yet this has only just clicked for me. God, I feel dumb.

Roman Valentine

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:17:26 GMT

This is the Valentine's Day card I made for i_smell_shite: