Sunday 12 July 2009

Fear and Loathing in West Kirby

Just a quick note to say that I survived the brush with fame that was the Hadley Rille event in West Kirby - and although I'm now officially a celebrity I swear I haven't become even remotely big headed.

Truth be told, we had the relative bad luck to clash with the only nice weather of the week and - given that the beach was all of five minutes away - it's perhaps no surprise that the authors nearly outnumbered the audience. From my point of view that wasn't entirely a bad thing, since I'm crap at reading loudly and mainly went to say 'hi' to a few like minded folks anyway. On that note, a big thank you to fellow attendees Adrienne Odasso, Rob Haines and David Clements (listed, of course, in the order they arrived in the pub beforehand) for their company, further thanks to Adele Cosgrove-Bray for organising the whole thing, and a belated hello to late arrival Hazel Dixon, who I never actually got to speak to.

The two things I took away from the event were the general high quality of the readings, both in terms of material and presentation, and the fact that Hadley Rille are putting out some really nice books. I also learned a little about the Herschel and Planck space research missions, thanks to David Clements, who came armed with brochures regarding his day job - which is about nine million times more interesting-sounding than mine. All in all, a good day, and I look forward to next year's.

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