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May 30, 2003
Alison Rediscovers Her Inner Brainless Bimbo
[originally written on my PDA, on the very wonderful Pocketop Keyboard.]
I got up at the crack of dawn, because I had to get all the way across London to catch the 7.45 from Paddington to Birmingham. I was in plenty of time, so as my train wasn't yet advertised, I looked round the bookstall a bit and got some coffee. I finally smelt a rat about ten minutes before my train was due to go.
Euston. Birmingham trains go from Euston. I knew that.
So, of course, I missed that train, but I caught the next one; and it turned out to get me to my exciting day of developmental activity in the nick of time. So that was all right.
Some of you may remember the Birmingham Metropole from the 1987 Eastercon. If you don't, then well done. At the time, they kept an entire extra hotel full of single rooms. They now pretend it's all one hotel, but I can confirm that the singles are still shabby and small. There's huge quantities of function space; it could swallow an Eastercon without even a burp.
Posted by Alison at May 30, 2003 09:23 AM
Comments
I have the Stowaway and it's nice, but I'll get one of those lovely Pocketop's when I finally get around to upgrading, since it looks like it should work with PDAs for a while to come (unless everything goes 802.11b/g or Bluetooth before then!)
Birmingham Metropole, yes, Concourse (2004) looked at the Metropole and got offered pretty good room rates (we didn't take it to a final quote but the rough prices were fine) it's just that in combines the remoteness of Hinckley with some vastly over priced restaurants (something like 7.50 for a burger in the main bar) and it was indeed shabby, so we dropped it from our short list. Still, if someone wants another Eastercon venue sometime, it would/should work fine (it is too big, and if there's an event on in the NEC it's possible that the hotel would be full of bikers/fashion/home/car/computer/whatever fanatics and businesspeople!)
Posted by: Chris O'Shea at May 30, 2003 11:23 AM
And if you think the keyboard is cute and plan on getting one, consider giving Alison ten dollars by getting her to place the order through this link!
Posted by: Chris O'Shea at May 30, 2003 02:19 PM
Huh. Shame I bought mine from Dixons, really; the offer doesn't apply.
Posted by: Alison Scott at May 30, 2003 03:34 PM
Ah, if only they shipped a Dvorak layout. With funny shaped keys, I don't fancy popping them off and rearranging them.
Posted by: Damien Warman at May 30, 2003 05:16 PM
It's not hard to do Paddington to Birmingham, usually have to change at Reading though.
Posted by: steve davies at May 31, 2003 02:23 PM