Yeah, I know, I have been a Very Bad Blogger recently. That’s partly because I have been traveling a lot, and partly due to what appears to have been a particularly bad allergic reaction to something that flowers in Finland in June (I’ve not had a problem in May or July). Those of you wondering what Zombie Cheryl looks like should have been at the Helsinki Mafia meeting in St. Urho’s (it’s a pub) on Thursday night. For those of you with an interest in Caribbean folklore, the way to making a living person seem like one of the walking dead is to feed them anti-histamines. Or at least it is in my case.

I am now in London, despite the best efforts of Frankfurt airport to do impressions of Chicago O’Hare. Today I will be doing a presentation skills training course at the Central School of Speech & Drama. Because it is all very well being confident enough to stand up and blather on in front of a few hundred friendly fannish folks at a convention, but if you want to keep the attention of a very large and potentially hostile audience then you need to learn about things like posture, intonation, pacing and so on. Thanks to the good folks at Gendered Intelligence I am getting this course for free, for which I am duly grateful.

Of course it is not exactly ideal to turn up at such a event with a head and throat full of phlegm. Thankfully I no longer sound like a bullfrog talking from the bottom of a pool of sludge. I kid you not. On Thursday I was actually gurgling when I tried to talk.

Then tonight I get to go home. I plan to spend tomorrow horizontal, and paying no more attention to the world than is necessary to cheer on Lewis and write a report on the race for Kevin who will still be asleep when it happens.