Oooh, ouch!

   Checked out of the Fox Connaught this morning and discovered that the route given me by Nigel Furlong was perfect.  I had a round trip ticket from Heathrow to Paddington Station.  Nige gave me the tube lines to take which resulted in a far of ￡4.70 instead of ￡65.   WONDERFUL!

     What was not so wonderful was that I did not read my calendar carefully.  My flight to Dublin is tomorrow.  I checked into the Heathrow Sofitel for the night.  The choice was easy.  To change my flight cost 💲400,00;  The hotel is ￡160.  Easy peasy.  There is a huge difference between the Sofitel and the Fox.  My room here is spacious; the Fox was cramped.  The bed is larger and more comfortable at the Sofitel.  The most important differences are the bath witch is large and has room to move around and the fact that the breakfast is complimentary and contains all the things in an English breakfast and other countries, sushi, curry, and selected Chinese dishes.

We had people, not just children playing on the Fan Village green.  I thought it amusing that these three had gathered to game electronically together.









Someone brought a haul of bubble wrap.  There was a sudden noise like a fireworks stand on fire and it was a feeding frenzy of fans stomping on the stuff.  I managed to get my camera going to catch the very last of it.  Not just kids, everyone!










It was not just sedentary games being played on the green.  There were hula hoops available.  The quoits set had been broken by Monday.  But there was enthusiastic soccer with foam balls, bubble blowing and chasing and the like.










I found that I could actually see out of the Excel when I had time between crowd control and fan emergencies.
 This view almost show the Thames.  The glass circular building is the hotel attached to the Excel.  It was completely booked by the time I got around to making reservations.  Loncon 3 had over 11,000 paid memberships.  Happily for Ops, not everyone showed up at the same time.

There were huge crowds for people like George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis and others.  All of them gave panels, autographs and readings.  For the most part they made themselves available to fans who wanted to chat.  That is one of the things I like about cons.  Most of the famous want to mingle.





At the end of the con, all consumables are consumed.  Many are left from private parties that publishers throw or the mysterious SFWA suite.  SFWA stands for Science Fiction Writers Association.  I'm not sure what goes on in the suite, but they do hand out good booze at the end of the con if it hasn't all been drunk.

What you are seeing is a part of the dead dog party.  I'm not sure why it is called that, but I think it is that fans love to party so they stay until all the beer is gone and the last dog dies.



     Next post will be from Dublin.  Eurocon, the European Science Fiction Convention starts there next weekend.   I'm looking forward to seeing a bit of the lovely city before and visiting Belfast the days after.

A bientôt.

16 August 2014 at Worldcon London


     Started a couple of days ago from Little Rock aboard American Eagle (AE) to Chicago.  Typical commuter flight and the TSA was unstressed and not busy.  When I hit Ohare, there was a pleasant surprise.  British Airlines (BA) ran a shuttle from American Airlines (AA) terminal to their own in international.  The BA flight was a delight.  Business class offers enough room for legs and when the seat is dropped to level with the foot rest raised, it is a comfortable, if short bed.

     Where BA fell down badly was in their "expedited arrivals".  As we left the plane, we were given tickets that were supposed to get us into a short line.  It did, but there were not enough immigration agents to process the "expedited" passengers as fast as they could have gone through the regular process.  Several passengers mentioned that BA had been notified of this problem several times.  So far nothing has been done.

    I arrived in London rested and ready to go.  Advised to take the Heathrow Express train to Paddington Station, I took a taxi to the Excel 65 pounds,  Ouch!

     My hotel, the Fox Connaught is about a kilometer from the Excel Center.  It's a lovely walk along the Thames.  But the Excel is HUGE, it too is about a kilometer long.  It's filled with meeting rooms and even though membership in Loncon 3 is 11,000+, we have not filled it.  There are eating stands along the concours and an office work depot in the middle.  I still had to walk the length of the place to visit a restaurant or buy electronics.

     Several old friends are here.  I've had dinner with Eve and Howard Ackerman and the Furlongs.  The Furlong dinner was in the Fo bar.  Most people think it is only a pub, a nice one, but the hotel (sans lift) is above.  Since my room is on the fourth floor, there is no noise.  Actually, my days have ended in the early mornings and the pub has been closed.

     I was amazed when I arrived at the con.  Registration was steering people away because "their IT was down."  Three IT people were working on the problem.  The registration were clustered around them and could not be bothered to look through the previously made badges of the volunteers.  Ops was scheduled to be in a "yurt."  What we got was a black pavilion with no lights.

     The con is a con.  There are many lines of programming, some of them interesting others not in my bailiwick.

     This morning, the "Rat Race" was held in the hotel space around the Excel.   It is a 10km race at the end of which the runners climb a large platform and jump into the Thames.  I saw them jump in, but no one climbed out.   Could this have been a race for human lemmings?

Jumping into the Thames

 

The Thames

























Warehouse on a Thames backwater.






Anatoli Arsebarski is a Russian Cosmonaut.  He is one of the con guests of honor.   After he arrived with his son as an interpreter, we lost him and Operations ran frantically around the Excel, trying to find him.

It turned out that he was told he was to sign autographs and pose for pictures tomorrow.  He graciously changed his plans and told us that he would sign today and tomorrow after his talk.  He is in London for a private get-together with some other cosmonauts.