While I was away

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I spring-cleaned my house, wrote a grant application, helped spring-clean my parents' house and prepare a multi-course seder meal for a dozen while getting filmed, led first night seder with family, travelled to Sweden first thing the next morning, led second night seder for a group of fifty, had a couple of days' holiday in Sweden, returned to England, attended a small portion of Eastercon, attended a teaparty with MK, and finally made it back to parents' late last night. And all this fuelled only by matzah.

This has been the maddest Passover yet. Lots of the family had commitments until right up to Monday evening and first thing Tuesday morning, and in addition Screwy is having a film made about his life and the director decided that Passover would be photogenic. So we had the usual panic of getting everything ready with the festival, plus the film director with her enormous camera and the sound engineer with his microphones, but minus some of the people who normally help (no P'tite Soeur until late Sunday, no Thuggish Poet until the night itself). We wanted to keep things fairly low-key this year, except that with Granny, two parents, four sibs and our various SOs, the smallest possible seder meal is about a dozen. And it wouldn't be Passover if we didn't have several courses with several alternative dishes for each course (eggs, soup, salmon, vegetarian fake lasagne, several different salads and vegetables, several different Passover desserts). jack was marvellous, providing crash space for the film crew and a calming presence during the last part of the preparation.

The other problem is that in spite of all our efforts at efficiency, Granny can't really cope staying awake much later than about 6. That meant that we had to start without Thuggish Poet and his partner who were coming directly from work, and we had to rush through the service at breakneck speed (less than half an hour from sitting down to starting the meal). Even then Granny was overtired and ratty and gave up after the soup course. But still, racing through the service was amusing in its own way (goodness only knows how it will come out on camera!) and we had some good discussion during the meal part and afterwards. OK, quite a lot of it was about interpretations of the book of Genesis, and the etymology of various non-Passover foods like flapjacks, but still good fun. I know Passover can be an ordeal for lots of people, but I'm very lucky that for me it's a real treat to spend an evening with my large and raucous family.

I had to leave at 7:30 the following morning, and jack joined me on the train to Stansted. The trip to Sweden was thankfully uneventful, because I hadn't really left any margin for any sorts of events! It was very beautiful if somewhat disturbing to fly over Sweden late enough in the year that it was daylight all the way, but still see all the lakes frozen over and most of the ground under snow. Anyway we made it to the venue with plenty of time to spare, and there was a bit of a muddle about the food but it all worked out ok in the end. The service was very successful, got lots of discussion going in spite of the fact that Swedish people can be a bit reserved in large groups. Between the dense discussion and the catering problems, we got rather behind the intended tight schedule. I'd intended to cut some of the liturgy, of course, but I wouldn't normally leap right over the four sons! Anyway lots of people were very complimentary about it, and it was lovely to see my Swedish community again.

After all that we took things pretty slowly for the next couple of days. But I made it to my old college to see some colleagues, and we had lunch with SA at Lao Wai and then visited the Rubens exhibition at the National Museum. Now Rubens is famous for painting plump women, but I found his men almost more interesting. And lots of fascinating formal portraits (fully clothed) and other contemporary Dutch works showing Rubens' influences and followers. The sun finally came out while we were in the dim galleries, so we emerged into Stockholm at its most exquisitely sparkly. And dinner with EBH, where we chatted until after midnight. She invited us back for brunch the next day to continue the conversation, but was called away so just provided us with a magnificent and Passover-suitable breakfast. Spending some extended time with her while not in the middle of organizing stuff was a really special treat.

Since Eastercon is in Heathrow again this year, jack persuaded me to attend. But it turned out that my dear friend MK is over here on one of his rare visits from Australia, so I didn't want to miss him. The best compromise was to spend Friday night and Saturday morning at the con, and then head out to New Cross to see MK and co. My impression of Eastercon was generally positive, though I am not really keen on spending the weekend in a fancy hotel; I find the atmosphere unpleasant and it makes the event pricier than I'm really comfortable with. But when we arrived it was lovely to see the whole place full of obvious geeks, and within a few minutes I was greeted by lots of people who were pleased to see me. Even though it would obviously be more expensive I think I'd enjoy it even more if I stayed longer and had time to just be there and spend time with people.

I went to a couple of panels which were disappointing, one on women in space opera which devolved into very general and very elementary discussion about feminism, and on one the use of disabled characters as villains which again ended up being a not very meaningful or focused exchange of views about disability issues. (We weren't quite debating whether disabled people are really people, cos most people who bothered to attend the panel were a bit more on board than that, but pretty much everything short of that.) There were some good points made, particularly by mirabehn, and some of the panellists sounded like they would be interesting to listen to in a more sensible format.

So after that disappointing experience, I very nearly didn't bother going to the panel that turned out to be outstanding: the discussion of Lab lit, defined as mimetic fiction (as opposed to non-fiction and SF) where scientists actually doing science play a major role. I hadn't been sure I was interested in the topic, but it was narrowly defined enough to work really well. The panellists were Jenny Rohn, who seems to have invented this genre, and Henry Gee (who recognized me from a Jewish conference years ago), and a couple of people I know from general overlapping geek circles. We spent most of the time discussing the issue of why there is so little fiction that fits into Rohn's definition of "Lab lit", having dismissed the idea that it's because science is too dry and technical for fiction, because if that were true there would be no police procedurals or legal thrillers. Very interesting, and very much tied up with general issues around public perception of science and bad science reporting in the mainstream media and so on. I talked a bit too much, but enjoyed myself hugely and came away all bouncy and happy.

I also attended two talks, an interview with Guest of Honour Iain M Banks, and a talk by Ben Goldacre whom I hadn't yet managed to hear in person. The latter was something of a disappointment; really, a talk like that should have been addressed to an audience who are already aware of his brilliant writing exposing bad science stories, it should have been designed to entertain rather than inform. Instead he sort of tried to condense all his research into false science reporting into a one hour session, while keeping his tone humourous and informal. He's one of those people who struck me as not as funny as he thinks he is, though he was not totally unfunny either. He also cursed a lot, including swearing at members of the audience rather than just using bad language in general, and came across as a bit of a prima donna. I wanted to note for future reference his point about the science story framework of miracle cures and hidden dangers, where in fact there has been exactly one true miracle cure story (antibiotics) and exactly one true hidden
danger story (smoking and lung cancer). Banks on the other hand was very impressive, pitching his talk exactly right, for an audience who were already fans of his writing but wanted to know what this admired writer is like as a person. He has a great line in doing imitations of people responding to him in various ways, and I found him really funny as well as astute.

Also, I had lots of fun just bumping into people in corridors and having good conversations. It was particularly good to see owlfish whom I like very much but whose circles don't quite overlap with mine enough to see her very often. And in general it was really wonderful to be surrounded by lots and lots of people, many of whom seemed keen to interact and socialize. It was an experience which really recharged my extrovert energies. If I'd been there longer, and if it hadn't been the middle of Passover making eating really complicated and annoying, (actually it would help if the event were in a town rather than stuck in the middle of an airport, cos then I could escape from the con from time to time to get cheap food or even fresh air), I'd have had the time of my life just getting bouncier and bouncier. So yes, I can totally see why people do stuff like this for fun.

Getting across London turned out to be really really slow and annoying, taking nearly three hours to reach New Cross (which is somewhat cut off from public transport at the moment), and nearly two hours to get back to Liverpool Street from there. But anyway, it was worth it to get a chance to see MK (and we've arranged to spend proper time together before he returns to the other side of the world). Mrs K had very thoughtfully made some chocolate mousse as well as cake, so that I was able to join in the party. And there was yet more conversation and I should probably stop referring to the Adorable Boy as such given that he's nearly eleven now.

Anyway, Happy Easter, Christians! (I have just about caught up with DW but not really with LJ, so let me know if you have any important news from the last couple of weeks.)

Comments

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I have finally worked out who you are, which is unpardonably slow of me. That is, I know perfectly well who you are, I just wasn't connecting online ID to IRL person. Sorry about that!

But anyway, yes, thanks very much for doing that LabLit thing, it was ever such good fun. Interesting that Goldacre is normally a better speaker than that; he's obviously a very entertaining and erudite writer, which is why he has such a following.