Monday morning- the latter hours of the con. One thing that has been a constant for the last week or so is not getting enough sleep- I got to bed at a much more reasonable hour last night, but still only managed about five hours. As a result, my decision to stick around until about 2.30ish and then head for home is now feeling even more sensible than before (the fact that my throat feels somewhat appalling certainly helps). Yesterday was another good day, and I managed to catch more panels- the GoH speech from Charlie Stross (where, to nobody’s surprise, the words “computers” and “Open source” were used quite frequently) which was very interesting and info-heavy, the GoH speech from Neil Gaiman which was incredibly different in style (readings and an informal chat about Eastercons past, including one very entertaining tale about John Jarrold and a 48 hour stay in a bar…), one about politics in YA novels (with some great input from China Mieville and Cory Doctorow), one about writing gritty fantasy, one about collaboration in comics, plus a very entertaining music quiz. I was one of the contestants on a three-man team (we were ‘The Atonals’), and it was a kind of odd mix of Name That Tune and Never Mind The Buzzcocks (although they tried to do the ‘intros’ round without actually checking if the people doing the intros knew the tune. I mean- could you hum the seriously nondescript theme tune to Life on Mars just from memory?) which went well, even though there were technical hitches, with many of the clips either being too quiet, or sounding like they were emanating from some distant underwater kingdom. Anyway, our team won by a serious majority, so all ended well, and I finished the night taking it easy in the bar, chatting about comics and bonding with China Mieville over the joys and tribulations of having an odd name. There’s a couple more panels to go, and a chance to do a final crash dive on the Dealer’s Room, but leaving mid-afternoon will give me the chance to spend some of the evening recovering, before I have to hurl myself back out to do another three days subbing.

At some point, I’m actually going to get some rest…