Disclaimer: I’m writing this under the influence of a heavy cold with ambitions in the direction of bronchitis and the weirdass Japanese medication I’m taking for it. The only thing I could find with pseudoephedrine in it also contains belladonna alkaloids. I decided to give it a go, since I really needed the PE to stop my nose gushing (it’s impolite to blow your nose in public here - argh!). Never again. The last time I felt this stoned was on hash brownies. The belladonna shit might be a substitute for codeine, which isn’t an otc drug here. I hate it when governments restrict a useful drug so that pill makers raid a witch’s garden for legal alternatives. So I might write things that sound odd(er than usual).

So, yeah, Worldcon. The catering’s great. In the con suite there’s nigiri, inarizushi, savoury crackers, and - big win - Pocky. The Green Room has similar stuff, with the addition of M & Ms. I’m on a panel asking ‘What do you read passionately besides SF’? with Kelly Link, Marianne Plumridge-Eggleton, Grant Carrington, Susan de Guardiola and Carolina Gomez Lagerloff. It’s in a big room with a small audience, and the general discussion brings home to me just how much of an SF fan I’m not. When I was a kid I read it passionately. Now I tend to go for 1920s-40s social novels (I find in the audience a fellow devotee of Anthony Powell, and another who will introduce himself later - is there a quiet, underground Powell fan culture?). For cheap thrills I read lowbrow Japanese fantasies. The only SF I read passionately is Sanzen Karasu o Koroshi, because it’s pure crack with bishounen. I do watch SF on TV - Firefly, Lexx, Babylon 5, reliable old Stargate - and love it, but I don’t read it much anymore. Why don’t I? It’s hard to say, but perhaps it’s because when I was a child I believed there was a chance we’d get offworld in my lifetime. I dreamed of being a space explorer. I remember watching Columbia blast off and being so excited. I assumed FTL travel was a problem some clever person could solve if only they put their mind to it. I thought we’d at least get to Jupiter and find out if there really are strange beasts living in its clouds.

Then, I think, I realised that manned space travel to any place I might want to go was not just around the corner, or even around the next corner. Science fiction stopped speaking to my dreams because there was not point having those dreams anymore. However I wore my hair, I was never going to be Princess Leia. Somehow, though, it doesn’t matter when it’s on TV - maybe because it has always seemed improbable when you see it on the screen.

The panel discussed the appeal of the exotic. Books that were not necessarily fantastical but had a historical setting had fans, as did glossy magazines on food, gardens, clothing and home renovation - and in Carolina’s case, digital camera catalogues. None of us seemed terribly interested in actually cooking, gardening, renovating or shopping. Rather, the attraction seemed to be in the effect such magazines have of transporting you to another, rather limitless world - or at least a world with a limitless budget. This point wasn’t made at the time, but I wondered afterwards if there mightn’t be something more exotic than Jupiter about the world inhabited by those hypothetical people (Italian countesses, perhaps?) who actually do dress fabulously and have huge gardens with pleached allees and marble bedrooms with carpets from Isfahan, who live on chocolate champagne pate and never get fat.

It occurs to me that I never read SF for the science. When I want to read about scientific concepts and discoveries I prefer non-fiction articles and books. I always read it for the sense of wonder and adventure, and I can’t help noticing that since I’ve taken a bit to travelling I’ve developed a taste for novels set mainly in domestic interiors (not necessarily of the rich, though if I open a book and see a word like “epergne” or “Meissen” I’m more likely to buy it, I confess with all due and proper shame). A case of the grass is always greener, perhaps.

All this talk of la bella vita sends me back to the art show, where I haggle with Akio, in the end getting my two desired Amano prints for basically the price I want, with a big glossy book of his art thrown in. Not that I have anywhere to hang them, unless our landlord lets me put hooks in the walls - or, even better, have a picture rail installed, since there are all those etchings from Prague and Romania that also need to be housed somewhere other than their current location in a cupboard. But he is French, so he might perfectly understand the need. Of course, when I have my Palladian villa they will go on the wall on either side of the huge mullioned window (affording a view over beautifully arranged cypresses and fountains) facing my desk across the floral Axminster, and I shall have footmen in powdered wigs and pale blue livery with silver lace codpieces to dust them with peacock and flamingo feathers.

I read to a very small audience later in the afternoon. Thank you to Preston, Don, Edward, Kari and Cat! Edward wondered if Reason has an ambition to be a librarian - which he then had to explain to me. I must be the only person in the world who hasn’t read The Colour of Magic. It made me think, though, that Reason ought to have a goal, and I poked my brain until it came up with something appropriate.

I had dinner with Farah, Edward, Kari, and some others, including Chris O’Shea, aka The Magician, who started flirting, then sort of apologised - but I told him to go ahead and flirt like the wind, saying that I was firmly married, so there was no danger of it leading to complications. He went ahead and told me I have beautiful eyes, which put me in a good mood. I think the last person to say that was my mother. When I was little girl I used to ask her if she thought I was pretty and she always used to say, “No, you’re not pretty, but you have beautiful eyes and hands and a very sexy bottom.” Mothers, when your daughters ask whether they are pretty, just say yes, even if all your daughters look like Benny Hill.

By then I definitely had this cold, though it was only in the sore throat, stuffy head and achey joints stage. Luckily my nose didn’t open its floodgates until after the con. Speaking of matters physical, the toilets at the centre featured three different bidet settings: To Wash the Bottom; To Wash the Bottom Gently; and For Ladies. They also had buttons for playing fake flush sounds as needed (or just for fun), and, for all I know, one to play the “vincero” part from Nessun Dorma at the completion of activities.

While my mind’s on it, some other unusual renditions/presentations of Nessun Dorma:

The Redneck Tenors
Sarah Brightman (lovely as her voice is, I’m not sure it’s an ideal song for a soprano - though I can understand the great temptation to sing it)
Aretha Franklin
Manowar, of course
As a soundtrack to Harry’s crush on Snape (if that description alone is not a warning, I can’t help you)
and my favourite, Joe.

EDITED two days later: Luciano Pavarotti died today. I had no idea.