guff_peeps

This is a special entry to record the link to an article

Which can be found here

Normally not of interest except we were on the bus returning to our temporary Croydon address when we overheard a teenage boy talking to a friend on his  mobile phone saying how he was going to "get" this other guy who had come to his school and threatened his friends. This wasn't just bravado, he was serious. He got off a stop before the school and we thought nothing of it. About ten minutes later, we were sitting in the lounge room and heard multiple police cars zoom down the street. We joked uneasily about how the kid must have kicked off at the school. What a coincidence we thought....

The next day the police were swarming the school. We saw at least 10 from the stop before through to the edge of the school property. They were the ones we could see.

We're both feeling rather uneasy about it all now.

We're still in the UK. Croydon to be precise. Just a few days left before we head home. We've had a quiet few days which is probably a wise choice knowing how hard we have pushed ourselves up until now. Last weekend, we popped over to Denmark so we could go to Legoland in Billund. Well worth the visit. We stayed with friends from the LEGO community and it was a lovely feeling to be able to walk from their house to Legoland.

This week, we popped into central London to visit a few different places. Today, we went to see Monsters vs Aliens (again). We saw an early preview of the 2D version so it was great to see th 3D version. Probably even better that we were the only people in the cinema!

Tonight, the Clarke awards are on but we weren't able to acquire an invite so we're staying home and having a curry and doing most of our packing.

Tomorrow we spending some time with some local fans. Hopefully, a quiet day again as we're still terribly tired from it all. Our flight is 12.40pm  on Friday afternoon - arriving home around 7pm on Saturday night.  I have to be back at work on the Monday but TC has a few days off before he's due back.

Somewhere in all this, I have to finish writing that piece for the LX souvenir book.

As you can probably tell, we're really quite exhausted. As much as we're going to miss all of the lovely people we have met whilst on our GUFF trip, we're desperately longing to be home, in our own bed and surrounded by our own things.

Yay! We're back in Croydon after much adventuring across the countryside.

Last night we had dinner with my cousin Linda and my Aunty Soo. I haven't seen either of them for 3 years so it was nice to see them. We ate in a lovely little pub in Yateley which was close to where we were staying in Bracknell. Thanks heavens for Ang's Satnav (named Nat by us) who actually managed to direct us to the *right* location for once. Really, quite an achievement after her previous attempts in Wales, Bradford and Blackpool.

Earlier in the day we, once again, explored the mysterious depths of Legoland (Windsor). We managed to go on a number of rides and to get around to all parts of the park. We even managed to view the "4D" film (Bob the builder) which was kind of cool. I attempted to take some 3D photos but my rig spat the dummy again (grrr!). It took some fresh batteries to fix the problem by which time I was too annoyed to be able to take many shots (and we were running out of time) but we still had an awesome time and stayed until the park closed.

Monday night we attended the SF group meeting in Reading.  The main intention of going was to catch up with ZH who I hadn't seen for around 18 or so years but, in the end, it turned out to be a very lovely evening chatting to fans from the surrounding areas. Kind of like Eastercon, I would have loved to have had twice the time to chat to everyone and get to know everyone better.  We were especialIy thrilled to see Dave Langford at the meeting, as he didn't make it to Eastercon, but we, sadly, didn't really get the chance to chat to him as much as we had wanted to.

On the weekend just gone, we were in Cornwall with our lovely Cornish hosts who took us to Land's End.  Originally, we were just going there as to have something to do but we had learnt (in a roadside cafe in Devon) of the Dr Who exhibition. It gave us a perfect excuse to visit and, in the end, was well worth the visit.

Hmm.. an Eastercon LX Co-chair has just walked in the door so I'll cut this report short for now. More later (some time!)

We're in Cornwall where we have discovered *yet another* Dr Who Exhibition. This was totally unplanned.

We're in Blackpool. We stayed last night at the lovely Premier Inn. It has an "Outside Inn" attached which is decked out internally as a little village. Very ... quaint. lol. One section has carpet designed like floorboards which caused me much amusement.

Blackpool smells funny. TC reckons it was because we are on the coast but it's not a coastal smell - at least not the one with which I am familiar. It smells faintly of chicken manure in my mind. Tnere's lot of development on the sea front. It looks like they are building a new sea wall and improving pedestrian access. We had a look at the shop at the Dr Who Exhibition yesterday afternoon and that's about all we did. We did drive  down the promenade in the evening but not all of the lights were lit up - I guess it's not the main tourist season etc.

Today we're going Penny hunting having picked up one last night at the DW Exhibition. Later I'm hoping to swing by the Miniature Village and then we'll head down to Alderley Edge and a little beyond (for family stuff). By this evening we hope to be in Cardiff. Yep, a long day of travelling.

In a rare move...

for those who have come to this journal because of our guff trip, you may be interested to know that our real LJs are

mortonhall 
and
phantomtrev 

One of which is used a lot, the other is not. Feel free to friend us over there too :)

Hey there movers and shakers!

For some reason we didn't post as much during Eastercon as we had originally planned (despite there being free wifi at our hotel).

So, here we are, the day after the day after the con. Normality has been resumed.

I ended up having an awesome time at the convention and that's including Crap Saturday. Of course, it's never until the end of the convention that you find out that you missed out on something truly awesome.  I suspect the highlight of the convention, for me, will be the dead dog. That's not to say the rest of the convention didn't have high points, but it was there that I finally got to meet some new people who were relaxed and not stressed out about the con.  I hung around until about 4.30am and only left as I was keenly aware of the need to get *some* sleep before heading back to Liverpool. The perfect full stop to the weekend (or should that be an exclamation mark?).

But, in reality, it wasn't so much a full stop as a comma as we made our way *back* to the convention hotel on the Tuesday morning to retrieve the kitchen science stuff. There, in the bar, we found the remnants of the committee hanging out and cleaning up the leftover detritus. So we stayed and chatted and finally got to speak to some of the committee at length.

And then, our convention was finally over and we departed towards the terrorist prone zone of sunny Bootle.

Today, we're heading off to Blackpool to see the sights (and get some pressed pennies). Then to Cardiff the next day, Cornwall after that, then back to Windsor, then Croydon, over to Billund and then the trip is almost over.  We have a few spare days built into the trip so have a bit of time to see people - especially if you're around the London area.

Sunday was a much better day.

More details when my head doesn't hurt.

 I didn't enjoy today (as evidenced by being back in our hotel room before 11pm)

TC did.

If you see me sitting alone in the bar, it's because I'm actually terminally shy and that I don't feel comfortable going up to a group of people I've only just met and adding myself to the conversation.

I'm hoping tomorrow (Sunday) will be better.