![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ZZ9 Reading slouch
I'd been hoping to go along on the Reading slouch (for the non-Hitchhiker fans among you, the title comes from a line of Zaphod's when he says he'll just go and slouch around for a while) but the after effects of the virus still hadn't cleared up.
Saturday morning dawned and I was still 50/50 about going. Richard departed to Southamption for a day's work and Henry looked at me and said: "You'll feel better if you go." So, I went.
Departed home at 9.30 on bus. Arrived at railway station with ten mins to spare. Queued 10 mins while people ahead messed around with some incredibly complicated pre-booked seat reservation. Saw train pull into station and decided to buy ticket on train.
No ticket inspector on the entire trip to Basingstoke. Changed at Basingstoke (luckily being able to slip through the luggage gate after someone else, otherwise the lack of a ticket would have stopped me going through the barrier) and bought a single to Reading.
Arrived at Reading almost on the dot of 1pm and looked around the concourse. Spotted![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alexmc (I love people who use personal photos as their icons - it's incredibly useful and it also makes you feel you alredy know them when you meet up properly). With him were dougs, redbrown(Ian) and hddod (Poppy).
We hung around the station for half an hour to see if anyone else turned up, but they didn't.
Poppy, being the local, kindly acquiesced to my request for waterways. We went for a stroll canalwards, admiring several coot's nests, and a black swan (they're native to Western Australia, but have been introduced to several parks over here), and ended up at Blakes Lock which is just below the start of the Kennet and Avon canal.
The lock (being on the Thames rather than the canal) is operated by the Environment Agency rather than the British Waterways Board. It has really unusual paddle gear (I was hoping to find a photo on the web to explain what I mean), but couldn't find one. Still, it's probably only interesting if you're a canal buff like me.
Being a canal buff, I once wrote (as far as I know), the only Blake's 7 shirt story set on a narrowboat. As I happened to set it at Blake's Lock, I include the link here for your amusement.
http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7/Library/DispStor.cgi?DD=0&ST=0006&COUNT
After we'd enjoyed the lock, and speculated as to why the kick bars (brick ridges to push against when pushing a gate open) were only painted on one bank, we crossed over the river to visit the Blake's Lock museum. There's a very nice gypsy caravan there and some information on the history of them. There's also a small working model of a mill. Turn the handle to rotate the pit wheel which turns the lantern wheel which turns the millstone. Ian and Douglas were having problems getting the wheel to turn properly until I figured out the obvious solution as to why the cogs weren't meshing.
We stopped at the Bel and Dragon, by the museum, for a pint (well, half of cider in my case) and a general relax and natter. We'd been lucky with the sunshine while walking. I took the chance to give Richard a quick call. He'd phoned me while I was on the train, souding pretty low as the venue he'd been working at was a total dud and he was intending to go home and call it a day after only a couple of fruitless hours. We'd passed through an Oxfam bookshop on our way to the lock (SF fans and bookshops go together like SF fans and pubs.) and I'd had the good luck to find two books from the Collins New Naturalist series. Excellent books - written for the intelligent layman. They assume very little prior knowledge in the relevent fields (which could be anything from heathland soils to the anatomy of bats), but also assume that they don't need to explain terms like Ph and that you're capable of understand detailed statistics and complex research. They're expensive new, and hold their value for a very long time. I was really happy to find these without the dust jacket as it meant they were going to be a price I could afford. They were 4.50 each and I was a happy camper. (I've given him one already to cheer him up - I'm saving the other for a birthday or suitable occasion)
Anyway, after a long relax at the Bel and Dragon (Douglas told us the name comes from a book in the Apocrypha) we strolled back into town. I valiantly resisted spending money in various tempting bookshops, music and video shops. Three conventions in less than two months have left the bank balance a little depleted.
We found another pub anddel_c joined us. The background noise here was louder than where we'd previously been, so I pretty much gave up talking, relying on hand-gestures and dougs lip-reading skills. I'd brought a notebook along and found it handy to be able to fall back on that on occasion.
When we were proposing whether to move on,del said this was a good idea as he hadn't been able to hear a word I'd said. This provoked moderate laughter as, of course, he hadn't been aware of the fact that I'd been having voice problems. (He'd attributed it to the fact that he has problems hearing in a noisy room - I have that problem as well)
Having eaten in the pub, we drifted towards the station and sat down there for a while outside a coffee shop before Dougals and I had to leave to catch our respective trains.
It had been a good day. I couldn't tell you for the life of me what we talked about (Douglas Adams came into it briefly when we passed all the Hitchhikers books in one of the bookshops), but the job of being with fellow fans is that the common interests tend to extend way beyond the one that you theoretically have in common. ZZ9 are a group I find I get on with very easily. Even on short aquaintence, I find them people I can relax with. I only wish that the sheer distance of Dorset from everywhere else didn't make it so difficult to get along to the meetings.
I guess I should also say in passing that the slouch helped one of my ghosts to rest a little more easily. Rosalie and Reading are always close in my mind. If my voice had been normal rather than a whisper, I would have probably gone and stayed overnight with my brother in law. But then I'd have been unable to resist reading stories to my nephews and that would have been the voice wrecked for another week.
Visting Reading in a non-Rosalie context, and walking different parts of the river from the parts I used to walk with her was good. Other associations are good. They give me memories that I can use to buffer the painful ones. Remembering good times with other people will help me recall the good times with her.
And finally, I must have been really good on the voice front - a day later, the voice is still rough, but is improved rather then worse after a day with friends. That's a compliment to a group of people who are good at listening and who can interpret a whistle and a wave of the hand to mean: "I really like the look of that building" or "Isn't that an interesting plaque in the pavement" and pause to look/comment themselves. That means a lot to me.
Saturday morning dawned and I was still 50/50 about going. Richard departed to Southamption for a day's work and Henry looked at me and said: "You'll feel better if you go." So, I went.
Departed home at 9.30 on bus. Arrived at railway station with ten mins to spare. Queued 10 mins while people ahead messed around with some incredibly complicated pre-booked seat reservation. Saw train pull into station and decided to buy ticket on train.
No ticket inspector on the entire trip to Basingstoke. Changed at Basingstoke (luckily being able to slip through the luggage gate after someone else, otherwise the lack of a ticket would have stopped me going through the barrier) and bought a single to Reading.
Arrived at Reading almost on the dot of 1pm and looked around the concourse. Spotted
alexmc (I love people who use personal photos as their icons - it's incredibly useful and it also makes you feel you alredy know them when you meet up properly). With him were dougs, redbrown(Ian) and hddod (Poppy).We hung around the station for half an hour to see if anyone else turned up, but they didn't.
Poppy, being the local, kindly acquiesced to my request for waterways. We went for a stroll canalwards, admiring several coot's nests, and a black swan (they're native to Western Australia, but have been introduced to several parks over here), and ended up at Blakes Lock which is just below the start of the Kennet and Avon canal.
The lock (being on the Thames rather than the canal) is operated by the Environment Agency rather than the British Waterways Board. It has really unusual paddle gear (I was hoping to find a photo on the web to explain what I mean), but couldn't find one. Still, it's probably only interesting if you're a canal buff like me.
Being a canal buff, I once wrote (as far as I know), the only Blake's 7 shirt story set on a narrowboat. As I happened to set it at Blake's Lock, I include the link here for your amusement.
http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7/Library/DispStor.cgi?DD=0&ST=0006&COUNT
After we'd enjoyed the lock, and speculated as to why the kick bars (brick ridges to push against when pushing a gate open) were only painted on one bank, we crossed over the river to visit the Blake's Lock museum. There's a very nice gypsy caravan there and some information on the history of them. There's also a small working model of a mill. Turn the handle to rotate the pit wheel which turns the lantern wheel which turns the millstone. Ian and Douglas were having problems getting the wheel to turn properly until I figured out the obvious solution as to why the cogs weren't meshing.
We stopped at the Bel and Dragon, by the museum, for a pint (well, half of cider in my case) and a general relax and natter. We'd been lucky with the sunshine while walking. I took the chance to give Richard a quick call. He'd phoned me while I was on the train, souding pretty low as the venue he'd been working at was a total dud and he was intending to go home and call it a day after only a couple of fruitless hours. We'd passed through an Oxfam bookshop on our way to the lock (SF fans and bookshops go together like SF fans and pubs.) and I'd had the good luck to find two books from the Collins New Naturalist series. Excellent books - written for the intelligent layman. They assume very little prior knowledge in the relevent fields (which could be anything from heathland soils to the anatomy of bats), but also assume that they don't need to explain terms like Ph and that you're capable of understand detailed statistics and complex research. They're expensive new, and hold their value for a very long time. I was really happy to find these without the dust jacket as it meant they were going to be a price I could afford. They were 4.50 each and I was a happy camper. (I've given him one already to cheer him up - I'm saving the other for a birthday or suitable occasion)
Anyway, after a long relax at the Bel and Dragon (Douglas told us the name comes from a book in the Apocrypha) we strolled back into town. I valiantly resisted spending money in various tempting bookshops, music and video shops. Three conventions in less than two months have left the bank balance a little depleted.
We found another pub and
del_c joined us. The background noise here was louder than where we'd previously been, so I pretty much gave up talking, relying on hand-gestures and dougs lip-reading skills. I'd brought a notebook along and found it handy to be able to fall back on that on occasion.When we were proposing whether to move on,
del said this was a good idea as he hadn't been able to hear a word I'd said. This provoked moderate laughter as, of course, he hadn't been aware of the fact that I'd been having voice problems. (He'd attributed it to the fact that he has problems hearing in a noisy room - I have that problem as well)Having eaten in the pub, we drifted towards the station and sat down there for a while outside a coffee shop before Dougals and I had to leave to catch our respective trains.
It had been a good day. I couldn't tell you for the life of me what we talked about (Douglas Adams came into it briefly when we passed all the Hitchhikers books in one of the bookshops), but the job of being with fellow fans is that the common interests tend to extend way beyond the one that you theoretically have in common. ZZ9 are a group I find I get on with very easily. Even on short aquaintence, I find them people I can relax with. I only wish that the sheer distance of Dorset from everywhere else didn't make it so difficult to get along to the meetings.
I guess I should also say in passing that the slouch helped one of my ghosts to rest a little more easily. Rosalie and Reading are always close in my mind. If my voice had been normal rather than a whisper, I would have probably gone and stayed overnight with my brother in law. But then I'd have been unable to resist reading stories to my nephews and that would have been the voice wrecked for another week.
Visting Reading in a non-Rosalie context, and walking different parts of the river from the parts I used to walk with her was good. Other associations are good. They give me memories that I can use to buffer the painful ones. Remembering good times with other people will help me recall the good times with her.
And finally, I must have been really good on the voice front - a day later, the voice is still rough, but is improved rather then worse after a day with friends. That's a compliment to a group of people who are good at listening and who can interpret a whistle and a wave of the hand to mean: "I really like the look of that building" or "Isn't that an interesting plaque in the pavement" and pause to look/comment themselves. That means a lot to me.
no subject
no subject
Thanks.
I quite enjoyed the day even though there wasn't a big turn out. I had stayed in for the last three days and was in danger of becoming a hermit.
no subject