Generosity of Aesthetics: Mieville and Clarke at Borders, 11.10.04

Last night's SF (or 'sci-fi') event at Borders on Oxford Street was packed out: guests were China Mieville and Susannah Clarke, whose new books (Iron Council is China's fourth novel, third set in Bas Lag: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is Susannah's first, ten years in the writing, Booker-longlisted, very big).

Listening to these two was ( fascinating )

Ten Things in No Particular Order

... because I've had a rather trying few hours, and want to use words instead of program-code, and don't have time to write at any length.

- I've owned Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell for months now -- had an advance reading copy. Haven't read it yet: I am longing to do so, but want a substantial block of lazy-but-awake time in which to get started. (See previous post for reportage of Clarke/Mieville at Borders).

- last week I was out every night Tues-Sat, and only had a hangover on Sunday. (Well-deserved). Yesterday I didn't touch alcohol, had a restful and pleasant day and an early night. Today I feel as though all the pink drink has finally caught up with me. pops Migraleve just in case, though have not had migraine since August.

- getting up in the dark is horrid, though when I'm not especially tired dawn is one of my most productive times of day.

- mail is occasionally stolen from letterboxes (i.e. where the postman puts one's post, if one is lucky) on the estate -- or so it is generally believed. Suspect this has happened at some point in the last week: or perhaps I am just being paranoid and a lot of people forgot my birthday ... but that also means the RAH forgetting to send me tickets for Verdi, and my bank forgetting to send me a credit card statement, which is very unlike them.

- Hands up if you know what NaNoWriMo is. Anyway, I'm doing it this year. Historical fiction with magic realism and pirates.

- Job stuff is up in the air at present, so I have to be very flexible and enthusiastic and hardworking for at least the next month. (Slight problem with the Thing preceding this one.) Will two out of three do, d'you reckon?

- There was graffiti all over the side of the train this morning, in green, pink, orange and blue. From the inside, with the rain, it was like looking out through a rainbow.

- Low-carbed for nearly two months. Lost neither inches nor pounds, but did get into (boringly) healthy eating habits.

- Phosphorus! (In other news, I finally own a dead-tree version of The System of the World.) Spent Sunday in bed idly flicking through Cryptonomicon and noticed not only phosphorus and mercury, but also Samurai swords, the Liebniz Archive, an ancient family curse and some Root-nonsense.

- Microsoft Access's database replication function is a load of rubbish. And doesn't work.