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How was Christmas? Hope it went smoothly for all of you and the hangover wasn't too heavy..
I spent it at a Venezuelan friend's in Kent, surrounded by water. My outward journey promised to be a nightmare; I didn't want to take the car as, well, I don't trust it entirely and I need it for lessons. My friend said to go to Lewisham and he'd pick me up from there. The train stopped at Orpington and the driver announced the service was just terminating there. We had to carefully plan my journey back also; the local station (Tonbridge) was under water, almost all services were disrupted and my friend decided to drive me to East Grinstead. Coincidentally I had just finished a book by Charlie Stross (who used to go to Blake's in Watford in the '90s, across the road from where I lived and the one dodgy alternative pub in town and is married to a goth and is friends with a lot of people I know, apparently*), a sort of occult-secret agent-science fiction-H P Lovecraftian story in which there is an infestation of unicorns, which are evil eveel deadly creatures, in East Grinstead. Didn't see any unicorns there but maybe the word'd spread out and people were escaping: the train left as packed as it could possibly be or a little more perhaps, with police guarding the station in case of problems.
Xmas itself was good. We had a good catch-up, with some bewilderment on the part of my friend's 18 yo daughter at all the Venezuelan references from the '70s and '80s. I had a Venezuelan christmas dinner (with Portuguese and English overtones, but without brussels sprouts) twice, as we did the traditional V'zlan dinner on the Eve and then again at lunch on Christmas day. All was good.
* unless I'm getting my science-fiction writers mixed-up.....
I spent it at a Venezuelan friend's in Kent, surrounded by water. My outward journey promised to be a nightmare; I didn't want to take the car as, well, I don't trust it entirely and I need it for lessons. My friend said to go to Lewisham and he'd pick me up from there. The train stopped at Orpington and the driver announced the service was just terminating there. We had to carefully plan my journey back also; the local station (Tonbridge) was under water, almost all services were disrupted and my friend decided to drive me to East Grinstead. Coincidentally I had just finished a book by Charlie Stross (who used to go to Blake's in Watford in the '90s, across the road from where I lived and the one dodgy alternative pub in town and is married to a goth and is friends with a lot of people I know, apparently*), a sort of occult-secret agent-science fiction-H P Lovecraftian story in which there is an infestation of unicorns, which are evil eveel deadly creatures, in East Grinstead. Didn't see any unicorns there but maybe the word'd spread out and people were escaping: the train left as packed as it could possibly be or a little more perhaps, with police guarding the station in case of problems.
Xmas itself was good. We had a good catch-up, with some bewilderment on the part of my friend's 18 yo daughter at all the Venezuelan references from the '70s and '80s. I had a Venezuelan christmas dinner (with Portuguese and English overtones, but without brussels sprouts) twice, as we did the traditional V'zlan dinner on the Eve and then again at lunch on Christmas day. All was good.
* unless I'm getting my science-fiction writers mixed-up.....
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His April Fools' day post, two or three years ago, was all about commercial pressures pushing him into a new creative channel: Unicorn School TM: The Sparkling.
Go and look for all and any 'Laundryverse' short stories on the Tor website: they are very entertaining. Meanwhile, I will be using the official term for unicorns: Enhanced Mobility Operational Capability Upgraded Mounts.
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Yes, I've got quite a few of the Tor short stories now.