Belfast
Bad News
Well, I got some bad news today. I’m hoping that it doesn’t come in threes!
The Meadow bar, one of the few pubs in Edinburgh with a FREE function room suffered a pretty major fire recently. That means that the ORC Saturday games are now without a venue (ORC is the Edinburgh RPG community website I run). However, given time I’m pretty certain we’ll find another venue: after all, there’s money to be made on approximately twenty gamers who’ll buy food and drink. I’m hoping that I’m not going to have to do too much about it: I’m a little worried that I’m getting too involved in things, and that it won’t function without me (“man under a bus” syndrome).
Oh, and it looks like the main door of the block is knackered again. This time I think I’ll get it fixed without waiting several months while the council faffs about. Again, I don’t want to be in that situation where I’m the only person doing something.
Given that I’m on a fortnight off, I’ve not really done much with my time: but then, we don’t always need to do a thousand and one things. Sometimes it is nice to kick back and veg out (or how I’m justifying my inner lazy). At least LSD has had a good birthday – we’re off to Belfast on Saturday for a few days.
London Calling
As you may seen from my Facebook status, LSD and I were in London for a week, then in Belfast.
It was good to get away, but there were a few hiccups on route. The train we took down to London got stuck in a cutting outside Durham for an hour and a half while the police cleared a train full of Newcastle supporters – I had a vague feeling that something was going to go wrong, and I was right. We were shattered when we go to my sisters place in Hackney.
We spent a lot of time walking the streets of London and seeing the sites, including: visiting the Thames Festival (which was just too busy), climbing the Monument to the Great Fire, seeing Nicholas Witchell in the Pall Mall, watching the Fun Loving Criminals play live at Shepherds Bush (bloody good gig – they were on stage for 2 hours), and generally covering a lot of ground.
Later in the week, our flight to Belfast was cancelled. We got a later flight from Stanstead which is a real hole of place, and took forever to get through security. However, the weather wasn’t too bad and we got around a bit, including climbing up Napeolon’s Nose to the Devil’s Punchbowl. When we got back the plane was delayed for 30 minutes after some idiots at Edinburgh Airport had decided to avoid Immigration and go out through a fire door, meaning everyone had to go back through security there. Belfast International airport was practically empty - our flight and one to Izmir were the only planes leaving that night – so despite the terror threat we were through security in less than 5 minutes and didn’t need to queue!
Anyway, the photos from the holiday are up on Facebook.
High up in the sky
I went to Belfast with LSD last weekend – the city has changed a lot since it used to appear on the news, but it still has some way to go. The various flags you see in any street are testimony to that. The scenery was amazing though. Eire is so green. We took a drive up the coast to Glenariff, which is spectacular and the waterfalls there are very impressive. LSD’s father and I took a hike down and I’ve got some pretty nice pictures that I will upload later. We also visited the shipyard where the Titanic was built. The funny thing is, it looks a lot smaller than I expected, but it had a very narrow hull. Judging by some of the cruise ships, they can be massively tall!
I’ve just seen a big passenger plane fly past escorted by a couple of fighters. Dunno who it was but it was pretty low, and not on the normal approach – possibly under the radar? Maybe Obama is in the country – the fighters were pretty damn close, and passenger jet looked like Air Force One… If Gordon Brown is in Dunfermline where his constituency is, that’d make sense. Interesting.
Tonight, I’m relaxing after a pretty heavy four days at work. What a wimp. I’m currently watching the Star Trek: DS9 episodes of the “Way of the Warrior”, and it’s one of the better ones. A Star Trek episode with Klingons is always worth watching. And Gowron has crazy eyes!
I’ve committed myself to a number of games at ORC in October and beyond. I’m running an eBranch game “Blood-dimmed tide”, the second Dark Heresy game of “Shadow on the Warp”, and a Cthulhutech game set in Tokyo with Tagers. Hopefully I’ve not over-committed myself, as I’m also considering relaunching Ashes of Freedom…
I’ve edited a few parts of the website and added a Coppermine gallery area. I’m planning to upload my various photos soon, along with the black-and-white pictures I took in Prague on my first trip. I’m kind of proud of them – they look sepia-toned. It’s going to take a little time, but I’ll get there. The host provider I have, Fuzioned.com, is brilliant – I’m able to create sub-domains and it’s a lot easier to maintain things.
