London and Leeds

Right. I drove down to London on the Friday (uneventful), arriving after midnight after the usual jam at the Blackwall Tunnel. Saturday was nice and relaxed, with nothing much remarkable happening until we went over to Greenwich in the afternoon to see sushidog (with rather fine new 'too)and childeric (with rather fine hair, as usual). I was meaning to order a Burrito for my dinner, but absent-mindedly went for the enchiladas instead. No big deal - they were still excellent.

We walked back through Blackheath, with my guts griping a bit (something on Friday, I suspect - fast food poisoning makes you chuck, so it wasn't the Tex-Mex), but arrived safely.

Sunday was mainly occupied by a fascinating trip to Morris' Red house and Eltham Palace. Both are recommended. Unfortunately there was no sign in the former of George Bernard Shaw trapped under the wallpaper, but that was the only disappointment. The latter was quite spectacular, both for the old sections (Great Hall and sections of the walls and moat survive - abandoned by James VI, I think) and the new ones (1930s - the Courthauld family, complete with ring-tailed lemur). Immensely grand, and not at all ruined by being used by the Army Education Corps for fifty years. They took good care of it.

Then we had an early night and I got up at half-three to drive to Leeds. ( Read more... )

In other news, Eric's telling me a story about a man who gave himself a fatal electric shock via the genitals. Accidentally. I don't think I wanted to know.

The Unicorn Girl

Some years ago, I read The Unicorn Girl, a very strange book indeed. It was written in the late sixties, and could easily be summarised as "longhair hippy nonsense" if you're feeling uncharitable. It even had a plug for another book on the back, starting "If you dig psychedelic SF . . ."

It was a lot of fun, though, if you have the stomach for purposefully bogus Arthuriana (and a lot of other stuff - the bit I always remember is the scene where a dragon is seen teaching a primary school class of dragonets, pointing at a large picture of George and the Dragon and saying "Now children, the story of Ethel the martyr and the man in the tin suit"). Apparently it's the middle part of a trilogy written by three different authors - it's the one that got a Hugo nomination and has therefore been heard of outside the States.

Having a quick look at Abebooks, all three seem to be going quite cheap from a range of sources. Tempting.


http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?y=0&kn=butterfly+kid+chester+anderson&x=0&sortby=3

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?PID=555228&tn=The+Probability+Pad&ph=2&AID=9467007&an=T+A+Waters&sts=t

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?y=0&kn=kurland+unicorn-girl&x=0&sortby=3

This Has Been A Clue.