http://rachel.fotopic.net/c1483320.html

I noticed that people were much nicer to us when he was in fancy dress - both a lot of (very flattering) positive attention but also a reduction in negative attention (from a small amount to pretty much none). He was much more noticeable especially in the dragon suit and therefore seemed to be less of a trip hazard. I may take advantage of these observations in future.

( childcare witter )

Items I remember enjoying, in no particular order:

SF in Musical Theatre, complete with videos played from an iPod, delivered with verve and enthusiasm. I have an urge to get the soundtrack to the Superman musical now.

Everyone's a Critic, on reviewing, criticism and what blogs have done to more traditional reviewing.

Mitch Benn, with the profanity turned up a notch and more stand-up. And lots of gentle flattery of his audience for getting all the sf jokes. (Like I was ever not going to like a Mitch Benn gig - but it's fun watching a 'new' audience hearing my old favourites for the first time, hearing the moments when they get the jokes. And the patter was mostly new. I'm glad they let him overrun into the goth disco.)

Women SF writers, interesting if only from the "how I got started writing" stories, slightly spoiled by sweeping statements about gender of the kind that make me cringe. In fairness there weren't too many of these and at least two of the panellists actively resisted such statements.

You're Reading It Wrong, more on ways of reading and critiquing a book.

There were one or two more I can't remember right now, plus a few that I ducked out of early due to toddler.


I enjoyed the hotel itself, the luxurious decor, the slightly strange layout and the atrium with its huge water feature and underlit bridges and many different paths around the place. Our room was comfy and the bed easily big enough for the three of us. I thought the food was reasonable, but the tills appalling to operate, and the staff clearly not used to or trained for the kind of full-on demand of 1000+ people milling around all day long.

I accidentally bought about 20 books in the dealers room, at least half of them not actually sf, thanks to the vast and eclectic charity book stall. Tony was more restrained, and luckily we didn't overlap.

Overall an excellent weekend, and fanf and I are very glad we went, and looking forward to the Discworld Convention in August. A sizeable chunk of our leisure budget, but so worth it.