Food

Post-Finncon

~ Cheryl

Today we traveled back to Helsinki from Jyväskylä. As usual, my Finnish friends insisted on showing me some of the best parts of their beautiful country.

The day began with breakfast with Irma at a cafe on a place called Women’s Island. I have no idea where the name came from, but the island is in part of the network of lakes and waterways that surrounds Jyväskylä. There are a couple of hydro-power stations on the island: an old one which is now a bat sanctuary, and a new one that actually provides power. There is also a large lock that we got to see in operation as a Finnish family on a boating holiday came through while we were looking around.

While we were eating a red squirrel wandered into the cafe gardens. Wisely it wasn’t going to let the very large cat get too close, but Paula managed to sneak up and get a good picture.

Red squirrel

In the afternoon we took the scenic route back to Helsinki. The road Otto took ran along a narrow ridge between two lakes and had some magnificent views.

Back in Helsinki we checked out some of the new construction by the railway station. It is mainly offices, but several of the buildings have restaurants on the ground floor. A place called Eatos doesn’t sound very promising, but Otto had seen it recommended in the Helsinki Sanomat so we checked it out. The food was seriously good. So if you want Mexican food in Helsinki you now know where to go.

I’m flying back to London tomorrow and will be offline most of the day. Then it is back into the Ujima studio on Wednesday, for which I have an interview with Tobias Buckell.

Finncon – Day 3

~ Cheryl

First up today was my LGBT superheroes talk. I didn’t count the audience, but it looked like at least 50 people. They laughed in all of the right places, which is good.

Then I had a panel on “likeable” characters with Rjurik Davidson, Hannu Rajaniemi & Jukka Halme. I had a bit of a rant about people who pan a book because it doesn’t have any characters that they like. We all agreed that being interesting was much more important than being liked. It was noted that M. John Harrison hasn’t written a likeable character in his life, but that doesn’t stop him being a brilliant writer. And of course one group of characters that everyone loves is the Daleks.

I got taken to lunch at the home of the best cook in Jyväskylä. I never thought that I would have got so excited over spinach soup.

In the afternoon we had the masquerade. That went well in the end, but had a major organizational problem. Against all usual practice the convention asked us to present the contest, judge and give out prizes all in the space of an hour and a half. They told me they had a half time show organized for while the judging was taking place. I pointed out that I could not host the half time show and chair the judging. Jukka Särkijärvi kindly volunteered to hold the fort for me, and I stupidly assumed that the planned entertainment would give us time to deliberate. You know what happens when you assume something, don’t you.

Poor Jukka was left hung out to dry for about 20 minutes. Thankfully something got done to help out (I have no idea what). The first thing I did when I got back was to give a prize to the guy in Cylon armor so he could go and take it off. Otherwise we would have waited until we got to the people in contention for Best in Show.

We had 15 entries this year, including one large group. I actually got to be part of one act. Marianna Leikomaa and a friend had planned to do Emma Frost and Jean Grey arguing over Cyclops. The friend could not turn up, so Kisu made use of a convenient redhead. The jury (without my knowledge) decided to award her the price of Best Use of a Prop.

Some of the entries this year were of very high quality. Petri Hiltunen and Hannele Parviala both had beautiful make-up jobs. There was the aforementioned Cylon. There was a lovely elf costume. Alex Rowland, a young fan of Scott Lynch, had an amazing dress that had around 200 hours of hand-stitching and texturing in its manufacture. However, once again it was Simo Nousiainen who blew everyone away. This year he did Geralt the Witcher from the works of Andrzej Sapkowski.

Hopefully I’ll be able to source some good photos for you over the next few days. I was far too busy to take any.

My thanks to my fabulous jury – Hannu Rajaniemi, Jukka Halme, Tanya Tynjälä and Jenny Teerikangas – to all of the wonderful contestants, and especially to Jukka Särkijärvi for keeping the audience entertained while we did the judging.

After the show we went to Harald for dinner. Hannu and I had one of the set meals that came on a large, sword-shaped skewer. It was fabulous. Bear and Scott were blown away by the wonder of tar ice cream.

In the evening we had the Guest of Honor filks. Those for Jukka and Hannu were written in Finnish, so I have no idea what they were about, but judging by the laughter they were very funny. Bear’s was good too. She will probably blog the lyrics at some point. We also celebrated Toni Jerrman’s birthday. It was a significant one of some sort. I think he might be 25. In duo-years.

That’s it for the day. Tomorrow I have two more panels, and judging for the hall costumes, followed by the dead dog. Given how tired I am, there may be a dead cat too.

24 Hours, 3 Book Launches

~ Cheryl

It has been a bit busy in Bristol.

Last night I was at Foyles for the launch of tqwo books by Rebecca Lloyd: Mercy, and The View from Endless Street. I’ve talked a bit about these already, as I had Becca on the radio show, so all I’ll add is to say that Becca read a lovely story from Mercy in which no one tried to kill anyone. Well, some of the bears might have tried to kill some one of the humans, but it is so hard to tell with bears. They might just have been being friendly.

At lunch time today Joe Abercrombie was in Waterstones with his first YA novel, Half a King. It wasn’t much of an event: just Joe sat at a table signing books for a long queue of people. Then again, he’s on tour. Two stores a day is not unusual these days. Touring is no fun. Still, Joe did pose for me to take this picture of him with Pat Hawkes-Reed who, as is her wont, had brought him cake. Somehow this is all Sarah Pinborough’s fault.

Joe Abercrombie and Pat Hawkes-Reed

Finally Gareth L. Powell’s younger brother, Huw, had a launch event back at Foyles. This was for Spacejackers, which is a middle grade novel about space pirates. From the bits that he read, it is a bit breathless, but that’s what kids of that age like. Huw has been busy working with schools and reading promotion charities. I’ll try to get him on the show in August to tell us more.

One of the women in the audience challenged Huw over whether his book was only marketed at boys. He noted two prominent female characters — one a sidekick of the hero and one a starship captain. That’s good to know given that Waterstones’ science fiction promotion table currently doesn’t have a single book by a woman on it, out of 35 different books. Gareth’s daughters seemed to be keen to read the book.

I note that Huw had some of the best looking cake I have seen at a book launch in a long time. Apparently his wife, Beata, made this. I am seriously impressed.

Spacejackers cake

Yesterday’s Radio

~ Cheryl

Well that was a learning experience.

When I arrived at the studio I discovered that Seth, my usual engineer, could not make it in because of a plumbing issue. As it turned out, all of the potential backups that Paulette phoned were also unavailable. Enormous thanks to Miss Delicious for getting us up and running. Guess who ended up running the desk for most of the show?

Actually operating the desk isn’t that hard, if you know where to find the material. The big issues are a) if anything goes wrong, and b) multi-tasking. Thankfully everything went smoothly yesterday. However, looking back on the show, I’m pretty sure that having to think about the desk as well made me a lot less sharp as a presenter. Doubtless the more you do it the easier it gets. Also if you are expecting to run the desk then you can check out all of your jungles and ads in advance. But I think if I have to do it again I’ll script the show in a lot more detail so that I don’t forget anything.

Anyway, Nick Harkaway and Philippe Bonneau were great guests, and are well worth listening to. My apologies to them for my having been somewhat distracted. You can find the first hour of the show here.

The second hour was much easier as I handed the microphone over the Judeline who ran a fine discussion about being a school governor. Thanks to Christine Townsend for being a great resident expert, and to Jackie from the Outlook team for taking the part of the concerned mother. You can listen to part 2 here.

Most of the music for yesterday was on a summery theme. The songs were:

  • Summertime – Sam & Dave
  • Long Hot Summer – Dizzy Gillespie
  • Heartman Blues – Dan Britton
  • Summertime Blues – Eddie Cochran
  • In the Summertime – Mungo Jerry
  • Boys of Summer – Don Henley
  • Girls in their Summer Clothes – Bruce Springsteen
  • Summer in the City – The Lovin’ Spoonful

Today in Bristol – Harkaway, Chartreuse & Frogs

~ Cheryl

Today on Women’s Outlook I’ll be running the interview with Nick Harkaway that I made last week at Mr. B’s. You can listen online via the Ujima Radio website. I’ll post the Listen Again links tomorrow.

Also on the show is Philippe Bonneau. I so enjoyed the talk about Chartreuse that he gave at Independent Spirit that I wanted to share it with everyone.

In the evening I’ll be off to the theatre. I’ll be seeing a performance of Frogs by Aristophanes, put on my by pals the Hecate Theatre Company.

Mad Beer Update

~ Cheryl

This stuff. Yeah, yum!

It is quite bitter, but there’s a whole lot of complex other stuff going on too which makes it very tasty. The label says there’s a hint of tamarind coming from the cocao nibs. I can see that. Well, taste it anyway. Also it is a beautifully rich, dark color, with a golden head rather than a cream one. I’m not sure that it will replace Wildebeest in my affections, but it is much less deadly.

Mad Beer

~ Cheryl

Caribbean chocolate cake labelOn my way to Mr. B’s I dropped in to see my pals at Independent Spirit. I was planning just to be sociable, but they got me again. Yes, that image is of a beer label. Yes, it does say Caribbean Chocolate Cake. It is by Siren, and you can read more about it here. I will report back when I have tried it.

In Which I Discover Chartreuse

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

On Thursday night my friends at Independent Spirit Bath ran a free tasting for Chartreuse, the famous French liqueur. The event was run for them by Philippe Bonneau who works for Weber & Tring’s in Bristol, but is also a Brand Ambassador for Chartreuse.

Beforehand I knew next to nothing about Chartreuse, but Philippe is extremely knowledgeable and I found myself tweeting a lot of information during his talk. Tradition has it that the recipe for Chartereuse came from an alchemical elixir for longer life which was obtained by Carthusian monks in Paris in 1605. Today’s product, however, dates back only (only!) 250 years to 1764 when Green Chartreuse was first marketed in more or less its current form.

Being an alchemical recipe, Chartreuse is made in a very complicated way. 130 different herbs and other plants are used in its manufacture, and there are many different stages to production. It is very strong. The green variety is normally sold at 55% alcohol by volume.

In 1838 the monks produced a different variety, Yellow Chartreuse, which is less alcoholic (40%) and sweeter. I found it more drinkable neat (which is how we were drinking it), though I suspect that the Green would make a better ingredient for cocktails. Several of the attendees at the tasting found the Yellow too sweet. As ever, your mileage may vary.

The color of the green version comes from chlorophyll in the plants used to make it. The color of the yellow version is from saffron. Apparently the base spirit of the two drinks is different too, but what they are is a trade secret.

Standard Chartreuse is aged for around 10 years but, as it continues to age in the bottle, the bottling age isn’t necessarily a guide to taste. The monks also produce Vieillissement Exceptionnellement Prolongé (VEP) versions of the two drinks which are bottled at round 15 years.

One of the other people at the tasting asked what sort of wood was used for the barrels. Being used to whisky and sherry manufacture, I was surprised when Philippe said they normally used acacia wood.

The 250 year history of Chartreuse covers many momentous events in France, including several revolutions of varying degrees of violence, and two world wars. During that period the monks were twice expelled from France for political reasons, and once their distillery was destroyed by a landslide. For many years Chartreuse was produced in exile at a monastery in Tarragona, Catalonia, but the recipe has always remained in the hands of the Carthusian monks. I suspect that a commercial company would have long ago insisted on a simpler, less expensive production process.

These days only two monks know the full recipe, though a copy is held in the Abbot’s safe just in case and junior monks are ready to take over should one of the chief distillers die. Philippe says that the production process takes place under a vow of silence to avoid disturbing the other monks.

In addition to Chartreuse the monks produce a range of fruit liqueurs. Philiippe brought framboise (raspberry), cassis (blackcurrant) and myrtille (probably bilberry — Vaccinium Myrtillus — rather than blueberry — Vaccinium Cyanococcus — as the latter is native to North America). The monks also do a Mûre Sauvage (blackberry), which Philippe gave me a taste of when I visited his shop today. The flavor of the cassis is amazingly intense and I have bought a bottle because good cassis is one of the finest things in the world.

I note, to the distress of my bank account, that Philippe does tastings at his shop once a month. They are on Wednesdays, when I have to be in Bristol anyway for Ujima. The June event is Appleton rums. Oh dear…

Beer Tasting (and Croatian Art)

~ Cheryl

Bevog Baja - Filip Burburan


I have been saying for some time that Bath has two superb independent bookstores, but it also now has a really good whisky shop: Independent Spirit. Indeed, I will be there tonight for a tasting of Japanese whiskies (so make sure you are following me on Twitter then). Chris and Christian, who run the shop, are super friendly, incredibly knowledgeable, and always happy to chat to customers. If you are in Bath, do pay them a visit.

They don’t only sell whisky, of course. I’ve been trying to learn a bit about rum from then in advance of meeting Karen Lord at Ã…con. I can heartily recommend this stuff. But I can’t really afford to stock up on whiskies and rums, so mostly what I buy when I go into the store is beer. Which brings me to the picture at the top of this post.

Recently the store has started stocking beers from Bevog, a new microbrewery from Austria (specifically a town with the lovely name of Bad Radkersburg) which is making huge waves in the beer community (#3 in this list). They do have a pale ale and an IPA for those of you who like English beers, but much more interesting from my point of view are the oatmeal stout and the smoked porter. They are both delicious (though I do admit that I’m a sucker for anything smoked and your mileage may differ).

What’s more, all of the beers have superb artwork on the bottles. The picture above is from the oatmeal stout. The artist is Filip Burburan who is from Rijeka in Croatia (a city I visited last year). Croatian friends, you need to make more noise about this guy. He’s amazing. The signature character for the smoked porter is below.

Bevog Ond - Filip Burburan

While I’m talking about beer, I can also recommend Floris Mango. It is a Belgian wheat beer stuffed full of fabulous mango goodness. Of course the dudebro real ale fans are going to hate it. It is a wheat beer for a start. But I reckon it is absolutely perfect for a warm summer’s day. Delicious.

Airships Over Bristol

~ Cheryl

While many of my friends were busy celebrating the first day of same-sex marriage (congratulations, Mary & Georgina!), the mad, impetuous fools of the BristolCon Foundation were throwing an Airship Ball. There was a Victorian Picnic (complete with cucumber sandwiches, with their crusts cut off). There were Dramatic Presentations of Strange Tales of Derring Do (freely adapted from originals in Airship Shaped and Bristol Fashion). There was Splendiferous Musical Entertainment by the very talented Cauda Pavonis. And of course there were elegant costumes of various types.

Jo has done a full report on the proceedings, which I recommend to you. She has numerous photos of the finery on display. I’m just going to present one of them here. This is Heike Harding-Reyland dressed as one of the fern people from Deborah Walker’s story, “The Lesser Men Have No Language”. I particularly like the baby fern person buds around the skirts. It is very Jeff VanderMeer.

Queenie Greenie

One thing that Jo doesn’t mention in her report is that she and Roz kindly presented me with a gift of cheese, chutney and chocolate truffles as a thank you for making the book happen. It was very sweet of them, and I shall enjoy it immensely. For those interested in such things, the cheeses are Black Bomber by the Snowdonia Cheese Company and Tomi Twym by Caws Cenarth. The former is a mature cheddar, and the latter a mature Caerffili flavored with sun-dried tomatoes, spices and white wine.

Finally, profuse apologies once again to the fine people of Cauda Pavonis because I had to leave before their set to catch a train home. I did hear them doing their sound check and can warmly recommend their music. Here’s a sample.

JCG At The Bath Festival

~ Cheryl

Jon Courtenay Grimwood, in his cunning disguise of Jonathan Grimwood, made an appearance at the Bath Literary Festival today. Naturally I went along to support him. I am, after all, very fond of The Last Banquet, and I needed to thank him for recommending Archipegalo.

It is good to see some of “our” people getting invitations to more mainstream events, but I do wish that literary festivals who choose to invite science fiction and fantasy authors to speak would provider interviewers who show them a little more respect. Jon was interviewed by a chap called John Walsh, who is apparently a restaurant critic. He began by reeling off a list of Jon’s career achievements, including noting that he had been a Guest of Honour at numerous “horrible” science fiction conventions, and then congratulated Jon on making the jump to writing “literature”. When it came time to go to the audience, I asked Jon a question deliberately designed to allow him to show that much of his science fiction and The Last Banquet shared key political themes. I hope that helped.

I wish they had talked more about the Corsican Republic which, to my mind, is one of the most fascinating parts of the book. Sadly Mr. Walsh was much more interested in that fact that Jon had been a nominee in the Bad Sex Awards (for a passage that pretty obviously wasn’t intended to be erotic). Still, it did give rise to the best exchange of the event, which went something like this:

Walsh: “So how does one go about writing a good sex scene”?
Jon: “Well it helps if you like having sex.”

I’d like to say that I came home to a delicious meal of seared coypu served with a locust and mealworm salad, but actually all I had was a microwaved plate of yesterday’s curry. Sorry.

Cheese Night At Mr. B’s

~ Cheryl

Last night’s reading at Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights was billed as “Cheese Night”, and included a tasting provided by the nearby Paxton & Whitfield. I went for the cheese, which was excellent, but I came away charmed by the book and it’s author.

The Telling Room by Michael Paterniti is in part a tale of a young man in search of of an artisan cheese so rare and expensive that he could not afford to taste it. It is a tale of an artisan cheesemaker who became world famous and then had his product stolen from him by big business. It is a tale of a deadly feud between proud Castilian men. But from listening to Paterniti talk I suspect that the book is mainly about story telling in a village community still small and isolated enough to have a tradition of oral story-telling.

Paterniti is a journalist, and it sounds like he has done a fine job of chronicling the story of the little Spanish village of Guzmán and its world famous cheese. But he has come away from the job fascinated by process of oral story-telling. I couldn’t help, listening to him, wishing that he he had been a folklorist instead. I want to read his book for the insights I think it will have into how people told stories before they were written down. I also wanted to talk to him about books like Cat Valente’s The Orphan’s Tale, in which digression is raised to a fine art. Still, it is always good to find someone who takes pleasure in footnotes.

For those interested, the cheeses in the tasting were:

Today on Ujima РPortland Caf̩

~ Cheryl

Ujima is running a number of staff training days this month and one of mine overlapped with today’s show. Paulette has a big crew so having me out for most of the show is no problem. I’m a bit sad about it though, because from 12:30 to 13:30 they ran an interview with a lady called Di Parkin who has been a feminist activist since 1968. The team was buzzing about the interview in the post-show debrief, so I’m looking forward to listening to it.

I finally got into the studio at 13:30 when I did an interview with a lovely young lady called Salàma Kefentse who runs the Portland Café, just round the corner from the Ujima studios. Kevin and I ate there when he was over for BristolCon and we can recommend it.

The show is available through the usual Listen Again system. You can find the first hour here and the second hour here.

Holiday Prep: Food Bloggery Begins

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The Holiday Season is approaching fast, and as I had to pass through Bath on the way home I stopped off to buy cheese. The folks at the Fine Cheese Company were their usual, helpful selves. Here is what I’ll have on my Holiday Cheeseboard:

Next I had a look into Waitrose to see what they had. I came away with a couple of Buffalo burgers, which I’ll be having tomorrow and Friday, and a pheasant for the Solstice Feast. I didn’t want to get too much as I’m going to try to find time to pop down into Darkest Somerset to see my mum between Solstice and Christmas.

Finally I popped into Independent Spirit Bath to wish Chris & Cristian all the best for the Holidays. Besides being fabulous purveyors of high quality booze, they are also really friendly and I like to spend money there when I can. Sadly I can rarely justify buying whisky, but I did come away with a couple of bottles of beer.

As I whinged to Chris today, the trouble with their shop is that as soon as I find a beer I really love they stop stocking it and bring in a whole load of new stuff instead, which I then have to sample. It is a hard life.

First up was the Einstök Icelandic White Ale. I had two reasons for getting this. Firstly my brain is still on its way back from Canada. It seems to be refusing to leave Iceland, which is entirely understandable, but causes me sleep problems. So I thought I could bring Iceland to it. Secondly I need to read Snorri Kristjánsson’s book before he comes to read at BristolCon Fringe in February, so I thought I should have some fine Icelandic beer to drink while reading it.

I have also decided to try some of the output of the Wild Beer Company. These guys are certifiable. They do all sorts of amazingly adventurous things with beer, and they do it with more alcohol than most other people. The beer I have chosen to try is Wildebeest, an espresso chocolate vanilla stout. They say that it is, “Ideal for contemplation and speculation”. And at 11% ABV it is also ideal for falling over once you have finished it. Happy Holidays, people.

World Fantasy – The Fun Bits

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Like most other people, I had a good time at World Fantasy in Brighton. That should not excuse some pretty serious short-comings on the part of the convention, and I’ll write about those in due course, but enjoyment of a convention depends to a very large extent on the location, and the number of good friends you have amongst the attendees. From the location point of view, Brighton worked very well. I was also fortunate in knowing the city, and in having things I could do there outside of the convention.

Kevin and I traveled to Brighton by rail, and we took time out to take the short detour to Portsmouth Harbour. You can’t see the Victory from the dockside, and we had suitcases so we could not go into the museum, nor indeed did we have time. However, Kevin got to see the Spinnaker Tower and the Warrior, and got to see a little bit more of England.

We had an excellent room in the Hilton, thanks in large part to my having a Hilton Gold Card. That’s not something I earn through staying in hotels. Back when I had a proper job I signed up for an Amex card that gave me Gold status with Hilton. It has proved so valuable that I have kept it ever since. I knew that the Metropole had some enormous rooms, and thanks to the card we got one. This proved very useful as a recording studio as well as a base of operations.

Shortly after arriving we met up with Claire Parker who hosts the Time 4 T show on Reverb Radio, Brighton’s local station. This is the UK’s only trans-themed radio show. Brit Mandelo and I did an interview which I believe will be broadcast next weekend (Sunday 17th). I’ll let you know when it is available. The subject matter is mainly about the place of trans people in SF&F literature, and in the SF&F community.

Brit and her partner joined us for dinner at Dig in the Ribs. I was pleased to be able to take folks from Kentucky out for barbecue in the UK and have them enjoy what they ate. Well done, Vanessa & co. After that Kevin and I headed into town for Hallowe’en. We hung around in the Marlborough for a while admiring the costumes, then met up with Sarah Savage and moved on to the Queen’s Arms to check out the local drag queens. Kevin proved quite popular. Sadly Fox wasn’t well and could not get out to join us.

My Hilton card also entitled us to free breakfasts, which was very useful (and more than paid for the card’s annual fee right there). We were able to spend part of Friday morning checking out the convention, then I had a meeting with the PR people from Jo Fletcher Books, Jukka Halme and Snorri Kristjansson. We talked about the visit of Karen Lord to Ã…con, and introduced Snorri to the possibilities offered by Finncon. Hopefully good things will come of this. I also got to meet another one of Jo’s authors, Amish Tripathi, who is from Mumbai and therefore an Indians fan. We did not come to blows over this year’s IPL semi-final, even though the wrong team won.

I took Kevin out for lunch to English’s Oyster Bar, and then we visited the Pavilion, which is pretty much a must-see tourist trap. It is hideously over the top, and yet there are parts of it that are extraordinarily beautiful. In particular I love the centerpiece of the dining room ceiling. I wonder how they managed to persuade Temeraire to pose for the sculptor.

Brighton Pavilion chandelier

My one panel of the convention was at 5:00pm on Friday. The less said about that the better at this point. After that we had a lovely Thai dinner with Rina & Jacob Weisman at Giggling Squid. The evening was given over to the mass signing, which I spent introducing people I knew to other people I knew. Hopefully they all found that useful.

On Saturday morning Kevin and I were hoping to play the lovely Pirate-themed crazy golf course that I had found on the front right by the Metropole. I was a little worried that we would find it closed for the season, but I was utterly gobsmacked to find nothing but a building site. Instead we wandered along the prom as far as Brunswick Square, then up onto Western Road to buy cheese at La Cave à Fromage.

We had lunch with Kameron Hurley and her partner, Jason, Foz Meadows and Lizzie Barrett. It was an official Angry Feminist lunch, and we plotted World Domination. Foz had asked for sushi, and in the morning I had spotted a place called Sushi Garden on Preston Street just round the corner from the hotel. It turned out to be so good that I tweeted Neil Gaiman with a recommendation.

On Saturday afternoon Kevin and I did an interview with a young academic from Sussex University who is writing her thesis on LGBT families and their representation in the media. We were delighted to be able to participate in her research. I hope she manages to find some more families containing trans people to talk to.

After that we managed to get everyone together to present Karin Tidbeck with her Translation Award plaque. Special thanks are due to Ellen Klages who quietened the bar and got everyone’s attention so that Gary Wolfe and I could make the necessary announcements, and Karin could give a speech.

That evening we had a dinner date with Scott Edelman, Ellen Datlow and Pat Cadigan. Pat didn’t make it — she had stayed behind in London to look after Bob Silverberg and Karen Harber. Bob had suffered a heart attack shortly after arriving in the UK, and both he and Karen needed help dealing with the NHS and general emotional support. It was really good of Pat to give up her convention for them.

Scott is quite the foodie, and he wanted to visit a place called Graze which offered a 7-course tasting menu. All of the courses were, of course, quite small. Even so it took us 3.5 hours to get through the meal. It was expensive, but well worth it for a one-off experience. I’m not sure I would recommend an additional £30 for the matched wines, especially as you’d be well pickled by the time you got to the end of the meal, but the food was really good. The company was too.

Sunday was mainly about packing up and moving out. We ate some of the cheese we had bought for lunch, and sat in the bar watching the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with Jukka. Sadly Kimi did not exactly cover himself in glory.

After the awards we headed off to Camden in the company of Gary Wolfe who was staying with the Clutes overnight. Our hotel was just round the corner from Chateau Clute, so we were able to travel together and catch up on industry gossip.

Monday was spent doing tourist things in London. I took Kevin to see the Old Operating Theatre and to the Museum of London to see the Cheapside Hoard (though I was actually much more pleased that he got to see a short clip of The Flowerpot Men).

In the evening we did some scouting for Scott in advance of next year’s Worldcon. We ate at Archipelago, managing to try zebra, python, locusts, crickets, mealworms and alpaca for the first time. I was particularly impressed with the alpaca. I don’t know what the meat is really like, because it was cooked Mexican style rather like a barbacoa. Mexican slow cooking is designed to make best use of cheap cuts of meat, so alpaca steaks might not be up to much. Then again the cooking style might just have been a cultural decision. I’d like to find out. What I can say is that the dish as cooked was spectacular. I definitely want to go back. Many thanks to Jon Courtenay Grimwood for the recommendation.

All in all it was a great weekend. It was rather expensive, but we knew that going in. I didn’t get to talk to nearly as many people as I wanted to, but thankfully most of them will be coming back next year for Worldcon. I did also talk to a few people about future Wizard’s Tower Press projects, including Grimpink. I’ll have more news on that in due course.

What’s more, I managed to enjoy myself despite all of the ugly looks I got from the convention’s senior management throughout the weekend. I guess they really wanted me to have a horrible time there. I’m sorry to disappoint them.

BristolCon Weekend

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Kevin and I spent much of Friday in Bath, showing Mary Robinette Kowal around the city. This naturally involved visits to the Georgian parts of the city, as opposed to the Roman bits that Kevin and I tend to frequent. This meant visits to the Assembly Rooms and to the Jane Austen Centre. We had Cream Tea, which was OK, though it is just as well that Emma Newman was otherwise engaged or she would have turned her fine Cornish nose up at it. However, we were not there for clotted cream and jam, we were there for research purposes. Special thanks are due to Martin from the Center’s staff who clearly knows his stuff when it comes to Regency clothing.

In the evening Kevin and I went out for dinner in Bristol. It was a (very belated) birthday present for Kevin, so I took him to somewhere rather special: Meluha, Bristol’s top Indian restaurant. Chef Stephen Gomes has won Best Chef in the English Curry Awards three times, most recently last year. I have had a better Indian meal before, but it was here, which is pretty stiff competition. Kevin, having never been to India, was well impressed.

We were up very early on Saturday morning as some hotel issues caused us to have to do most of the art show set-up then rather than Friday night. That made it a very long day. Thankfully the con seems to have gone OK. I won’t relax until I have seen a few online reports, because sometimes people who are unhappy aren’t willing to complain at the time, but I think we did OK.

My panels went OK, I think. I was particularly pleased with the comics one because KT Davies and Su Haddrell were awesome. Mark Buckingham was too, of course, but it is always a pleasure to be on panel with people I don’t know who turn out to be really good.

I’ll try to write more about the con later, but this week will again be very busy so it may take a while.

In the evening Kevin and I had dinner in Turtle Bay. I know it is a bit of a tourist-trap, but it does decent Caribbean food and I’m happy to eat there.

On The BBC

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

As some of you will be aware, the radio interview that I did with my friend Jools for Ujima has got a lot of great feedback. First it got picked up by Shout Out, the LGBT show on BCFM (the other community radio station in Bristol). Then I got contacted by the team who do the Best of BCFM show on Radio Bristol. They ran the interview on their show today (around 20 minutes in, after Tina Turner). It will be available for another week on the BBC’s Listen Again service here. Huge thanks to Harriet Robinson for giving me, and Jools, that opportunity.

By the way, each new show that picked up the interview wanted it shorter. Shout Out wanted 15 minutes, the BBC wanted just 10. It is surprising how much time you can save by ruthless editing out of hesitation and repetition, and I think I kept the majority of the content even in the 10 minute version, but if you want to listen to the full thing it is available here.

On the back of all that, I have been invited to appear on Radio Bristol’s Richard Lewis Show tomorrow. My slot will apparently start around 12:15. That too should be available on Listen Again if you can’t tune in live. Hopefully we’ll get to talk a lot about books and BristolCon as well as about trans issues.

If you are local, or going to be in Bristol soon, I recommend that you also listen through the end of the Best of BCFM where they have an interview with Stephen Gomes from Meluha, a new Indian restaurant in Park Street which has been getting a lot of attention. Emily at Bristol Bites (who I’ve had on Ujima) is a huge fan. And Stephen has recently been voted the best Indian cuisine chef in the UK. Kevin dear, I think we need to go out for dinner while you are here.

Of course I had put the weekend aside to clean the cottage in advance of Kevin’s arrival next weekend. I guess I need to do that all today. At least the Japanese Grand Prix will be just about over when I have to leave to get the train. I hope it isn’t a tight finish.

The Great Croatian Chocolate Tasting

~ Cheryl

On my way back from from Zagreb I discovered a huge variety of interesting chocolate bars on sale at the airport. Although I had already bought a few bars in town, I felt honor-bound to try all this new stuff. I also felt I needed help, and a second opinion. It has taken this long for my friend Marjorie and I to find a time in our busy schedules when we could get together to do this.

I have to confess that we were perhaps not in the best condition to do a chocolate tasting as I had also brought back a bottle of Istrian wine (it was a Koslovic Teran, and very nice indeed), which we had consumed with dinner. However, we carried on bravely all the same.

I know this is very bad of me, but I’m actually more of a milk chocolate girl. The serious plain chocolate doesn’t agree with me. So I want to start with the Vitlov bars, because their chocolate was delicious. I had two flavors, one with sour cherries and one with almonds and cinnamon. The bars had a really lovely design on the top. The flavored stuff was on the bottom. The cherries were nice, but I’m not sure how well they worked with milk chocolate. I’m used to cherries with plain. The almond and cinnamon flavor was also very nice, but the crushed nuts provided a very different texture to the milk chocolate and the two didn’t work too well together.

Mikado provided some much more serious chocolate. I had two bars, both 72% cacao. One was orange flavored (with added orange peel) and the other mint. The orange was a bit of a disappointment as it didn’t have much flavor, but the mint was very nice. Marjorie described it as “what After Eights want to be when they grow up”.

Kraš is probably the biggest chocolate company in the country. They too do serious bars, though in their case only 60% cacao. I had plain and orange varieties. As you might expect, the Mikado chocolate was better quality, having 20% more cacao in it, but the folks at Kraš know how to make a chocolate bar taste of orange.

Finally I had four bars from Adria (the website appears to be down right now). They appear to be 72% cacao, though the text on the boxes is only in Croatian so I’m not certain. Their orange was as disappointing as the Mikado bar. The red pepper was much better if you got a big bit of chili in the piece of chocolate, but it was fairly unevenly distributed. The lavender was by far the strangest thing we tasted, and it did indeed have lavender in it. However, we finally decided that it smelled better than it tasted. Finally there was a bar with “flower of salt” from the Nin saltworks. Both chocolate and salt were delicious, but somehow they didn’t seem to quite support each other. The salt chocolate that I got from Mercedes in Ã…land was better.

Overall I felt that there was nothing spectacular, but a lot of promise and some very interesting ideas. Also, there was lots of chocolate, which is pretty much impossible to complain about.

Where Has She Been?

~ Cheryl

Yes, it has all been very quiet here for a while. What have I been up to? Well, a couple of my fabulous Finnish friends have been visiting the UK, and I took time out to show them around Bath, Bristol and London. Here are a few observations that resulted from that.

Jim Burns and Gary Erskine are very fine fellows and it was a pleasure to catch up with them at the Bath Comic and Sci-Fi Weekender. Thanks also to Andy Bigwood for his generosity. He’ll know what I mean.

The Bristol Museum and Art Gallery is bigger and more extensive than I thought it would be. Most of it is free too. Well worth a visit. Some of the stuff in there is now a little embarrassing, such as the tiger personally shot and donated by King George V, but they have done a good job of putting most of their older material into context. I was particularly interested to discover Rolinda Sharples who is the best of the local artists on display.

We had dinner at Harvey’s Cellars and very splendid it was too. The goat curry, ribs and creole prawns were particularly good, and I loved what they did with Bristol Cream — adding a touch of orange does wonders for it.

And finally, I am still very fond of the Old Operating Theatre, where we launched the Thackery T. Lambshead Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases. As London museums go, it is affordable and delightfully eccentric. Hopefully being right next door to The Shard will get it a lot more visitors.