Why This Is Hell

Last night I found my copy of The Custodians, so I read "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" in the bath today. I thought I had a copy. It was on my dining table, and bought in Windsor in 2001. I have no memory of being in Windsor then. Ah, Windsor, Melbourne. Good job I checked.

Reading:

LII: Richard Cowper, Twilight of Briareus (1974)
Thriller set before and during a new ice age - more psi powers on display and more time travel ish stuff. Disappeared into a manuscript to avoid a proper ending.

LIII: C.J. Cherryh, Gate of Ivrel (1976)
First of the Morgaine trilogy - with pages that are bad Scrabble hands ("Delo'ruv was in Addhgno..."). Volume two tomorrow, volume three Monday.

I also finished watching season one of The Clangers, which gets political toward the end. I might watch season two next.

Much of today was taken up with London, and a cunning plan to go to a bookshop in Blackheath en route. It would also yield four hours of travelling (and thus potentially reading), plus time in coffee shop. What I hadn't reckoned on was they close Wednesdays - I'd not thought to look for opening times on their website, which are helpfully hidden on their Contact Page. The journey was not entirely wasted as the Oxfam yielded The Shield series two - not that I've watched the first yet, and possibly minus disc two - and NYPD Blue series three and four (which no doubt the rest to collect as and when). Blackheath has the world's crappest Bux, with more staff than seats for coffee drinking, hence I suspect being given a cardboard cup which very soon I was to spill. Train to London Bridge, tubes to Holborn where I walked to a certain architecture museum to see an exhibition of a certain bluestocking. Word of advice - travel light for this as they really don't like bags.

Back to Kingsway and Cafe Nerd, where I indulged myself in my free coffee from a fortnight back, finished a book and was amused by the tale of the amateur sailor who got stuck going round the Isle of Sheppey having decided to keep the land on his right. Smirk. Started second book, then walked via Oxfam Drury Lane and Lovejoys (four more Wordsworth horrors, one a duplicate alas) to Piccadilly 'Stones to wait for Roger in the cafe (which I note is now ruined by Too Much Service). Clarke Award and dash to station - I should have gone to Victoria and waited half an hour, instead Charing Cross train caught with a minute to spare and a taxi home to a bath.

XLVII: Richard Cowper, Domino (1971)
XLVIII: Richard Cowper, Clone (1972)

Both very much of their time - the one apparently a psychic thriller, the other a satire on overpopulation, The EU, and (metaphorically) immigration and race (especially post Planet of the Apes). Clone has aged less well than Domino - as if I recall correctly as had Profundis, but I'm a couple of days away from that. Back to Cherryh at the weekend, but I'll read all the seventies Cowper, even though I think it's going in three chapters by the end. Well, certainly two, maybe three. Stretching geography a little - the secret scientific research unit is where Pfizer is based now (that is if Sandwich were six or seven miles from Folkestone, so very stretched then...). Of course, for strict chronology I should have read Kuldesak, but I jumped the wrong way.