Follow the herd

80s-tastic memeage... gacked from aeia

( Which Tears For Fears song are you? )

Gives me an idea. I might post a series of mopey song lyrics that particularly speak to me at the moment... Hmmmm...

Culture: John Wyndham's Centenary

July 10th 2003 was the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Wyndham, one of the formative figures in Golden Age British SF.

To commemorate this, there was a small event at the closest pub to the White Horse, where London fandom used to meet in the 1930s - as plugged in Ansible:

10 Jul [] JOHN WYNDHAM CENTENARY (he was born 10 July 1903), Walkers of
Holburn, Norwich St, London, EC4 -- site of the 1946-1953 White Horse sf
pub meetings. From 7pm. With WH regulars John Christopher (Sam Youd) and
-- on screen, if all goes well -- Arthur C.Clarke.

Wyndham died in 1969, the same year as the first moon landings, but several of his old drinking buddies were there to raise a glass to him. Arguably the Grand Old Man of British SF writers today, Brian Aldiss, was there, as was another of the great disaster novelists, Sam Youd, who wrote (amongst many other names) as John Christopher, amongst other White Horse veterans.

Arthur C. Clarke was one of these - he commemorated those meetings in his splendid, fictionalised account, Tales from the White Hart. Arthur can't travel now, but he sent a video message.

And from a younger generation of writers, Chris Priest.

At a toddler-like 35, I think I was the youngest person there, closely followed by swisstone and long-haired fishlifter - but Wyndham is not forgotten. His books are still in print, thanks to Penguin, and the NFT is doing a short SF season soon, to include the BBC's version of The Day of the Triffids.

Madness

I have done a very unusual thing. For me, anyway. [Probably for a lot of you lot reading this, ya bunch of lazy geeks. :¬) ]

On the 15th June, I cycled from London to Brighton. It's about 60 miles - 100km. I've done it before, at least 5 times, but this was the hardest. I'm much more unfit than I realised! Still, I finished it, and I even did Ditchling Beacon - the highest point, at 864' in ¾ mile - in one go, on a recumbent bike! (Well, OK, apart from a 2min stop to unjam my gears - but I had to go down a little way and do that bit again!)

I need more challenges like this to get me off my lardy great arse.

So I am toying with the idea of entering the Nike RunLondon 10K run in September. I'm not capable of doing a marathon, but 10km isn't that far, is it? It's only £15 and a fair chunk of that goes to charity.

So I went for a run this afternoon.

No, Liam's Livejournal has not been hacked. It's really me.

I did 3 laps of the local sports field in about 20-25min. By that time, I was getting knackered - but also, my metal hip started to really hurt. Also, I had to get back, as I was expecting a visit from nolley.

I'm hoping the hip (indeed, entire knackered metal leg) will get used to it, too - or that I will get used to the pain...

I don't know how far it is - a kilometre, maybe 2? But I ran for nearly half an hour without difficulty. I'm really quite pleased with that.

If I can make myself do that every other day for a few months, I think it will make quite a lot of difference to me... I could even return to my fencing club without the shame of how sedentary I have become, once again...