Here are a few photos from Sydney when Kevin and I visited in 2010.
The Aquarium deserves a photo set all of its own (yes, I’m obsessed with fish, I have an oceanography degree, it is allowed).
Here are some photos from the trip that Kevin and I made following the World Science Fiction Convention in 1999. First up we have the Puffing Billy Railway, which made Kevin very happy.
And second, one of the best ways to get up close and personal with Australian wildlife, Healesville Sanctuary. (Sadly digital cameras back then had little in the way of zoom so these are the only good shots I have.)
As usual, click on any photo for a bigger image and slide show.
G’day possums, here I am in another one of my favourite parts of the world. Let’s kick things off with a brief introduction to the wonders of Australia.
And of you like what I’m doing here, please consider donating to help One25.
It has been another busy day at the fundraising coalface. So far so good, I think. I hope people are enjoying it.
There was also WiFi SciFi #3, for which I was a panelist. We had a great time. Thanks to Anne, Kevlin and all of the team.
As with yesterday, it has also been a busy day on social media. We’ve had the brilliant Guy Gavriel Kay’s #CocktailHour, where we all dress up and post selfies with a drink of our choice. And we’ve had #StayAtHomeDisco run by my lovely pal Laura Rawlings from BBC Radio Bristol. Conviently they were on at the same time so I was able to make one outfit do for both.
Out in the “real” world today there have been “anti-lockdown” protests in major British cities. No automatic weapons here, but doubtless the same far-right funders behind it all. Today was also the first day in around 3 weeks that the 7-day rolling average of deaths in the UK ticked significantly upwards. Cummings and his pals will doubtless be pleased with a job well done.
For me one of the most fun parts of the #GiveItUp125 challenge has been getting together with Kevin over Zoom to reminisce about our various tourist trips. This one is long, because Kevin was born in California and I spent a long time there. We hope you enjoy it.
As always, we are doing this in the hope that you will donate to help One25.
Here’s another tourism post from Emerald City. This time Kevin took me to a horticultural theme park with an interesting history. These days they have re-named themselves Gilroy Gardens, but the famous Circus Trees are still there.
I did a little write-up in the ‘zine, and took some photos.
I don’t have a lot of photos of my time in California because smartphones hadn’t been invented back then and digital cameras were still a bit dodgy. Also I seem to have spent most of my time photographing visits to science fiction conventions rather than tourist spots. However, there are a couple of records of tourist trips in Emerald City. This is one of them.
Kevin took me up into the Sierras to visit his mother. We timed to visit to coincide with a local Blues Festival, which I wrote about here. There are also photos here and here.
These days you can find good musicians on line, so here’s Craig Horton in action:
And here’s Steve Gannon:
Here we go again. Today I am in Virtual California. There will be music, science fiction, and tourism. Later on I will be joined by Kevin, and by Nalo Hopkinson. But for now, here’s an introduction and some food.
There’s a mistake I noticed in that video. Thanks to Bozo and his jolly chums doing such a good job of destroying the UK’s economy, California now has the 5th largest economy in the world.
And here is Nigella’s recipe for Roquamole. You’re welcome.
Well that was an exhausting day. And I have five more to go. Of course it didn’t help that I had the #QBLockdownHunt thing to do as well.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it all. Please to tell your friends if you did. There must be some more people out there who would be willing to give a few pounds to help One25.
Here’s the link to the fundraiser.
I have no idea what is happening back in the UK. I hope Bozo doesn’t manage to destroy the country before I get back.
A quick break from Virtual Italy to note that there’s another charity campaign going on today. Queer Britain is a wonderful project that aims to create an actual bricks & mortar exhibition of LGBT+ life in the UK. Today my friend Dan Vo is running an awareness campaign on Twitter and is asking people to find t-shirts and fliers that relate to queer history and post about them. He’s also interviewing a whole bunch of fabulous people. I have rather a lot of material, so I decided to channel my inner Dan and make a video. This covers a lot of my work with OutStories Bristol, how I got involved in doing LGBT History Month Events (sorry Sue, you are stuck with me now), and a little bit about the tragedy of the UK’s lost trans history archives. The latter is an excellent example of why Queer Britain is so badly needed. There’s also a little bit of science fiction in there.
Today started well. The weather was fine, the pollen count was low, and there were no urgent emails from clients. So I decided to go in search of hormones.
The car was a bit reluctant to start today, so I took a very circuitous route into town to get some charge into the battery. That’s probably contrary to one of the ever-changing Lockdown regulations, so if any of the “Gender Critical” mob are reading this, there’s your smoking gun. You can report me to the Authorities and have me taken away for re-education.
Boots was very quiet and the staff were very helpful. However, as all I had was an email copy of the prescription, they couldn’t fulfill it immediately. They need to phone my doctor and confirm that they are the only people I have approached. When they get that confirmation, they can order the hormones. But in order to find out if they have had confirmation I need to be able to get through to them on the phone, which is easier said than done. If I can’t get through after a few days I will have to go back and see them.
For some unexplained reason there was a massive queue at Tesco when I got there. It took forever to get in. They still didn’t have any flour, but I got a few things I needed for the Canada and France food list. There were a few more people wearing masks this time, including me, but we were still very much in the minority.
When I got back home there was a cement mixer blocking the road. I now have one neighbour and two people immediately across the road all having building work done. Being a builder is clearly a key occupation.
As you may have noticed, I reached my initial fundraising goal of £250 yesterday. It is great to know that I have something in the bank before I have produced anything. From tomorrow, however, the content should start streaming out, and that means plenty of opportunities to get people to contribute. So I have raised the target to £750.
Now that may seem a lot, but we are 33% of the way there already. And last year I raised £600, so I’m sure we can do it.
You may be wondering why there is a picture of bananas on this post. Well, last year Meghan & Harry Sussex made a Royal Visit to One25 (when they were doing such things) and Meghan decided to write “positive affirmations” on some of the bananas in the centre. That got all over the news. The folks at One25 have been a bit obsessed with bananas ever since, and several of them will be doing this year’s challenge dressed as a banana.
I do not have a banana suit.
But I have bananas. Six of them: one for each day of the challenge. So each day I will be channeling my inner (ex-)princess and writing a message on one (before eating it). For this I need your help. Each day I will be asking for ideas for that day’s message. It needs to be something short enough to fit on a banana, and sufficiently clean to be tweeted out. Tweet me ideas with the hashtag #GoBanana.
There’s more.
I’m delighted to announce that for the California and Canada legs of my tour I will be joined by the wonderful Nalo Hopkinson. Nalo currently lives near Los Angeles, but still calls Toronto home. Tune in to find out what she thinks of both cities.
And finally, when should you do that? Here’s the schedule:
Content will roll out here, on YouTube and on Twitter through each day. Enjoy!
Well, that was another day of doing day job stuff and not getting out to hunt for hormones. Still, earning money is good.
On which subject, the government has launched its scheme for helping self-employed people through the period of Lockdown. They told the BBC that most people eligible for help have been contacted and invited to apply. But my tax account wrote to me this morning to say that no one is being contacted and we should get on and apply. So I thought I would give it a try and see what happened. Needless to say, I was found to be ineligible, and the reasons that they gave for turning me down were very obviously incorrect. Anyone who has had dealings with the Department of Work & Pensions over the last few years will not be in the least surpised. These days trying to get money that you are entitled to out of the government bears a striking ressemblance to trying to get an insurance company to pay out on a claim. I suspect that a lot of middle class people will get a terrible shock.
Anyway, as I said, I am getting some income. So no panic just yet.
Meanwhile I am pleased to say that I have met my initial target for the One25 fundraiser. I’ll be announcing a new target for the 6 days of the campaign tomorrow. In the meantime I should get back to developing things to entertain you good people.
Well, that plan didn’t last long. I got an urgent request from a client this morning, so I spent the day earning money rather than going out to search for hormones. Tomorrow, maybe.
Given that there is no football, the most popular sport in the UK at the moment seems to be competing to find how many times you can catch government ministers contradicting each other in one day. The official government strategy appears to be that if you give as many different pieces of advice as possible then one of them will turn out to be right and you can claim that was what you meant all along.
Another radio show has gone off to Ujima and should be with you at Noon on Wednesday. Enjoy!
I’ve also done some hours on the day job and more work on the One25 fundraiser, which I am pleased to see is now at 34% so we are one third of the way to the target. Keep it going, folks!
I got a paper acceptance for an online academic conference on queer history, which is also good.
And finally I have done an important piece of self-care. I have got a new prescription for hormones. I have a little while before I run out, but given the difficulty I had getting hold of them last time I’m taking no chances. Of course this means that I have to go to a pharmacy. Tesco do have one, but unless the woman pharmacist is on duty (and she seems to only do Mondays) I’ll probably get told that there’s nothing available. That means that I have to go to town tomorrow, for the first time in 60 days. I wonder if it will still be there?
I also wonder what the rules are. As someone sagely noted on Twitter this afternoon, the UK has gone from “masks are a waste of time” to “masks are compulsory” without the intervening step of “here are some masks you can buy”. I have scarves. It will be interesting to see what people’s attitudes are out there. Or, for that matter, whether any pharmacies are open.
Guess who almost forgot to do a post today?
In my defence, it has been a very busy day. I’ve had a radio show to produce, and I have been doing a lot of preparation for the One25 fundraiser. Both are going to be fabulous, even if I do say so myself.
I gather from the fury on Twitter this evening that Bozo the Clown has made some sort of announcement about getting the UK out of Lockdown, and that it is nonsensical PR spin rather than anything approaching a plan. No one should be surprised. The only way that Bozo could organise a piss up in a brewery is if he had a bunch of servants he could get to do the work for him. Which, of course, is often the case. Unfrotunately in this particular case all of the (civil) servants likely to do the work are telling him things that he doesn’t want to hear, so he’s having to sort things himself, with predictable consequences.
Thankfully I do not have to go back to work while maintaining social distance and avoiding public transport. I have plenty of work I can be doing at home. Those of you who are being sent out to die for the sake of Bozo’s stock portfolio have my deepest sympathy.
Huzzah! I have water again.
What I had forgotten since last time this happened is that the water main, although it is in my driveway, doesn’t just affect me. It affects the landlord’s house too. So he had a vested interest in getting things fixed. The deal was that he by-passed the letting agency, who are not answering their phone, and I managed the leak until an emergency plumber could get here. I ended up having to switch bowls every 15 minutes to avoid a flood, for four hours. But once the plumber got here it was simply a matter of experience and the right tools and he was done in 10 minutes. Phew!
Anyway, I have been doing some preparation for the One25 fundraiser, including recording a few things in advance and sorting through my photo library. I do hope you enjoy it (and please pledge). I’m certainly enjoying the food (by which I mean that I have TimTams).
Well, today has been additionally interesting.
First up I had to deal with a support question on one of the websites that I manage. It turned out to be much more complicated than I’d anticipated, and I’m currently waiting to hear back from the hosting service. Thankfully they are in the USA where it is not a bank holiday.
While I was in the middle of that I took a break to wash up after lunch and found a large puddle on the kitchen floor. It turned out that the cold tap on the kitchen sink was leaking. This is a known problem. It has done it before and the only way to fix it 100% would be to replace the entire sink unit, but the landlord is unlikely to want to pay to do that, so every so often I need to get a plumber to fix it.
The last time it happened was over Christmas in 2018. This time it happened on a bank holiday. This is a clear sign that Eris loves me.
It is relatively esay to deal with. I fill up some jugs with water, and turn off the water at the mains. The leak isn’t so bad that I can’t turn it back for an hour or so a couple of times a day when needed. The only issue is that the stopcock is outside, but at least the weather is decent. Doubtless a plumber will be round in a few days. Hopefully Monday.
It is unlikely to be earlier because of the aforementioned bank holiday. The country is apparently celebrating something called VE Day, which used to be about the end of WWII in Europe but is now something entirely different. These days we are supposed to celebrate something called Victory Over Europe Day. As I understand it, this is to commemorate the glorious victory in which the British, led by Winston “Boris” Churchill, single-handedly defeated the Evil forces of the European Union lead by Hitler, Mussolini, De Gaulle and a bunch of faceless bureaucrats from Brussels.
With the government planning on loosening the Lockdown restrictions and me needing a few bits and pieces for cooking for the One25 Fundraiser, I decided to go to Tesco today while it is still comparatively safe to do so. I was quite late getting there as I had to wait in for an Amazon delivery, but I only had to queue for around 20 minutes to get in. Everyone was well behaved, and this time I saw four people wearing masks (out of 100+).
There’s still no flour. Not even rye flour. I’ll cope.
But they did have Welsh Cakes!
This is beginning to feel entirely like normal. I attended a meeting (albeit by Zoom) for a couple of hours in the morning. I listened to my radio show. I did some Day Job work. And I attended a feminist book club in the evening (I have persuaded them to read The Calculating Stars. Result!)
Of course I am entirely unhappy about all this work because all I wanted to do today was sit and read Network Effect, the new Murderbot novel. Fortunately there have been meal breaks. I’m about half way through and absolutely loving it.
Apparently the government is talking about relaxing the lockdown constraints. I’m considering going to Tesco tomorrow so I can get some shopping done before the stores are full of sick people.