As you may have noticed, I have been not blogging much over the past few days. That’s because I have been in London. I headed out there on Friday afternoon, attended the British Fantasy Society meeting that evening and sold some copies of Dark Spires (yay!).

Many thanks are due to my friends Teddy and Tom who put me up at their place in Wimbledon for a couple of nights. I generally take them something costume-related to say thank you. Hopefully they enjoyed the latest offering.

On Saturday I attended a party at the home of John and Judith Clute in Camden. The official theme of the party was Clute’s 70th birthday, though the actual event took place some weeks ago and the party was scheduled to allow maximum attendance by desired guests. Despite the snow, a great group of people turned up. Gary K. Wolfe flew in from Chicago, and a bunch of famous writers dropped in, including Robert Irwin and Brian Aldiss.

On Sunday I was back in Camden so that Gary, Clute and I could record an episode of the Coode Street Podcast (otherwise known as “Live with Gary K. Wolfe”, but as will become obvious it is by no means live).

I provided the tech at our end. Initially I connected to the Clute home network, because I expected it to be the most stable option. Unfortunately Skype kept cutting out on us. I didn’t have time to diagnose why, but was able to switch to using the MiFi. That did the job just fine.

I’m listening to the podcast now (you can find it here). It sounds like Jonathan wasn’t able to save anything useful from the failed attempts to record a discussion, which is a shame because there was some good stuff in it. I did précis it at the beginning of the recording we have, but I’ll write more about it tomorrow.

Clute and Gary got a bit animated at times, and I found myself wishing that I had the means to do sound effects so that it sounded like they were actually slugging it out. You’ll just have to imagine it.

I did also record an interview with Gary for Salon Futura. That won’t be online until February, but I needed to get it done now because Gary has to go back to the US and I may not see him again for a year or more.

I’m now back home and looking forward to watching the cricket from Australia, where it will be much warmer than it is here.