| Croydon Meeting tomorrow 8 May |
[07 May 2012|06:20pm] |
Post-bank holiday pub meeting tomorrow at the Dog & Bull in Surrey Street, Croydon from 8 'til late (depending on how decrepit everyone's feeling).
See you there.
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| Croydon meeting tomorrow 10 April |
[09 Apr 2012|10:24pm] |
If I've even vaguely recovered from Eastercon, I'll be there. If not, I won't.
Usual place & time - Dog & Bull Surrey Street from 8.
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| Croydon Christmas pub meeting |
[12 Dec 2011|11:10pm] |
Croydon pub meeting tomorrow from 8 at the Dug & Boll on Surrey Street (or the Dog & Bull if you're sober or able to type.)
Come & see what we discuss when the politics is too depressing & there's no Formula 1 on. Could it be Science Fiction? Well there's always a first time for everything :)
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| Croydon Pub Meeting |
[09 Oct 2011|06:00pm] |
As usual, Dog & Bull Surrey Street, Tuesday from 8.
To be discussed, Sebastian Vettel, the next Michael Schumacher? Terra Nova, Doctor Who, etc
See you there.
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| How not to run a quiz night |
[03 Oct 2011|04:06pm] |
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1. Have no alcohol allowed on the premises.
2. Have a range of questions that are ridiculously easy or impossibly hard (not a range, one or the other.)
3. Have questions that can only be answered by children & then count the points in the teams' totals.
4. Have answers marked by other teams.
5. Add a question off the top of your head when you're a question short.
6. Have a different scoring system on the last round that completely distorts the results & then don't bother to explain it properly.
Bitter? Me? Not really, as the prize was a bit token, and I suspect we'd have come second anyway, but what a farce!
To illustrate the last point - the questions in the other rounds were worth 2 points, usually 1 point for each half. In the last round on the Olympics, questions were worth 10 points. The first question was name the 5 sports in the original Greek Pentathlon & the 5 sports of the Modern Pentathlon, 5 points for each half, but only if you got all 5. So minimum points, if any, was 5. We scored 3 (despite me knowing Phidipedes). Hmm. The other questions were about the reigning Rugby 15-a-side & Cricket gold medallists (last competed for in 1900) - all common knowledge.
Described by a friend on another team as "shambolic". I think that was probably a bit generous. At least the company was good.
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| Croydon Pub Meeting |
[09 Aug 2011|09:45am] |
I'd suggest we cancel it. I certainly won't be going.
I know it's giving in to the morons/anarchists/malicious short-sighted bastards/whatever, but I don't think it's a sensible thing to do tonight.
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| Croydon Pub Meeting |
[11 Jul 2011|06:58pm] |
I know it's only the warm-up for the main event this year (i.e. R&H's BBQ), but it's tomorrow night at the usual time (8-8.30) at the usual place (Dog & Bull, Surrey Street).
It's just possible that we might venture into the hitherto unheard-of realms of 2 successive times in the garden, but that's not looking likely from the weather forecast. Nevertheless, it's worth a look if you can't see anyone in the bar.
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| June Croydon Meeting |
[14 Jun 2011|09:30am] |
Croydon meeting at the Dog & Bull in Surrey Street tonight from 8.
I promise that we won't talk about F1 for longer than the race took, but some mention is inevitable given the quality of the race.
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| Croydon Meeting |
[11 Apr 2011|10:34pm] |
From 8 at the Dog & Bull, Surrey Street, tomorrow evening, Tuesday.
The opportunity for those of us not going to Eastercon to make up for our non-attendance in one night & for those who are going to have a practice.
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| Palimpsest |
[16 Mar 2011|07:16pm] |
Can't remember if I've ever written about books on LJ, but given one of the themes of this one, I thought I'd make a few comments.
Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente
( Various ramblings )
[The trains] do not run on time: rather the commuters of Palimpsest have learned their habits, the times of day and night when they prefer to eat and drink, their mating seasons, their gathering places. In days of old, great safaris were held to catch the great trains in their inexorable passage from place to place, and women grappled with them with books and tridents in order to arrive punctually at a desk in the city.
And,
To ride them is still an exercise in hunterly passion and exactitude, for they are unpredictable, and must be observed for many weeks before patterns can be discerned. The sport of commuting is attempted by only the bravest and the wildest. Many have achieved such a level of aptitude that they are able to catch a train more mornings than they do not.
( Summary )
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| Croydon SF Meeting Tonight |
[08 Mar 2011|03:23pm] |
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mood |
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Croydon SF Meeting tonight 8pm, Dog & Bull, Surrey Street, where will discuss, amongst other things, the Clarke Award shortlist and how none of us have ready any of them (for once not true, since I have actually read Monsters of Men), how many pancakes we had, how terrible it is that the Formula 1 season was delayed by a 2 weeks and many such, or hopefully more, exciting topics - and how long a sentence is permissible in LJ.
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| Croydon Pub Meeting |
[07 Feb 2011|03:56pm] |
Just a reminder that the next pub meeting is tomorrow, 8th February, at the Dog & Bull, from around 8 until late (or at least until the geriatrics decide that it's past their bedtime!)
Lots of thrilling discussions on politics & motor racing (& anything else that takes our fancy, probably including Science Fiction) guaranteed!*
*(When I say, "thrilling" and "guaranteed", I mean "vaguely interesting" and "possibly")
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| Eastercon Again |
[21 Nov 2010|03:45pm] |
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I've been checking out alternatives to the main hotel. The only one that looks remotely feasible is the Crowne Plaza, which appears to be in walking distance.
Has anyone got any thoughts about the CP? Is it really in walking distance and is the walk OK at night?
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| Illustrious 2011 |
[19 Nov 2010|12:25pm] |
Well it looks like we won't be going to next year's Eastercon.
After the clarification of the costs on Wednesday, it now looks as though the cheapest way to do this is for the two of us to share with C in a separate room. This will cost us £120 for the two of us, plus another room at half-price, i.e. £36 per night.
That's a massive £468 for three nights. I'm not prepared to pay that - we could have 3 nights in some of the most luxurious hotels in the country for less, albeit without the entertainment.
I'd rather go to Eastercon as we don't have much contact with fandom outside of it, but not at that price, especially when none of us are particular fans of military SF - and yes, I do go to cons at least as much for the programme as for the social interaction!
What a mess! After all these years of going to conventions, I've never seen the hotel bookings so completely screwed.
[Update] I've heard from Richard who has taken over the hotel responsibility. Apparently the cheapest way of doing it is for the child to share with an adult. This makes it £430, which is marginally less. There were supposed to be family rooms, but the hotel has conveniently forgotten about those in its rush to fleece fans for as much as it can.
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| Croydon Pub Meeting |
[08 Nov 2010|02:00pm] |
Tomorrow night from 8.
Be there or miss the sight and sound of people talking about anything other than Science Fiction, though you never know your luck.
Anyway, I hear rumours that it's a certain someone's birthday, though he hasn't bothered to promote the meeting as he promised last month :)
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| Formula 1 shock horror |
[29 Jun 2010|09:29am] |
Well, according to Ferrari boss, Luca Di Montezemolo, in this article, "That is a very serious and unacceptable event that creates dangerous precedents."
It's clear that he talking about the fact that the stewards only paid lip service to Ferrari's demands and did not fall over backwards to accommodate them.
I haven't rewatched the incident in question in detail, but it seemed clear that Hamilton was actually telling the truth when he said that he wasn't sure what to do & the distance concerned was minimal.
And was it really necessary of The Metro to use the phrase "up in the air" when talking about Mark Webber's chances of the World Title?!
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| Croydon meeting tomorrow |
[07 Jun 2010|04:32pm] |
Let's have another big turnout for the Croydon Politics Society (aka Croydon SF, where SF is more likely to refer to Sinn Fein than Speculative Fiction).
8-ish Dog & Bull, Surrey Street for those who've forgotten :-P
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| Election - local results |
[07 May 2010|12:24pm] |
I actually went to bed last night rather than sit up watching results, though I did get up in the middle of the night to watch for half an hour before deciding that sleep was more useful.
For all the importance of the election & the likelihood of a hung parliament, it all seemed terribly boring. perhaps this is because it's the first time since I was an adult that the Conservatives have gone from being the second party to being the first - and when it happened last time (1979), I was a Tory (in Newcastle this was rather against the tide), though too young to vote.
Anyway to the local results. I'd gone to bed with a heavy heart having seen Lembit Opik's defeat & the swing to the Conservatives in Guildford, convinced that Tom Brake (Carshalton & Wallington) was going to lose his seat & probably Paul Burstow (Sutton & Cheam) too.
When I got up, I was over the moon to discover that both MPs had survived, with Tom Brake getting the largest majority since he was elected in 1987 - up from just over a thousand to over 5,000. He's a very hard-working and trustworthy local MP and his challenger is a unlikeable man who has tried to take credit for any good news in the constituency and smear Brake with any bad news - even by implication the MPs expenses issue in which Brake was one of the few not implicated in any way. However, I still expected the Conservative to win & I'd love to know why people voted for Tom Brake.
In Sutton & Cheam, the Conservative candidate, Philippa Stroud had been reported in the local press as having founded a church which tried to "cure" gay people with prayers to "cast out their demons". This probably lost her the election, thank goodness.
As for the overall situation, I think that the Lib Dems have to do whatever is necessary to secure electoral reform.
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| First Lines Quiz |
[01 Apr 2010|02:26pm] |
Those of us who go to regular pub quizzes may have an advantage here, but for those who are suffering that Friday afternoon feeling on a Thursday, here's the Guardian's First Lines Quiz
I scored 15 out of 20, surprisingly, and that really should have been 16 as I got one of the SF questions wrong (oops!)
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