the London marathon...

It's taken me a week to recover, but here's the news on the London Marathon (and of course, it doesn't need saying that it wasn't me that ran!).

It was held last sunday - starting at Greenwich, going through Canary Wharf, across Tower Bridge, along the Embankment, past the Eye, St James Park, Buckingham Palace and down The Mall to the finish. 26 miles, 42 kms.

Our friend Damo was running (most runners had to raise money for a charity to be able to enter, Damo had to raise £1600!) - and again we were proudly part of Team Damo - this time with proper printed tshirts! The London marathon was waaaay more crowded than Leicester (by about a million), and there were 25,000 more runners.

Team Damo met at the 9 mile mark, and we waited for him to run past. He'd been running for well over an hour, and we were the ones starting to feel woozy, searching through the fast moving sea of jumbled sweaty faces, looking out for him. Tania was the first to squeal, and Damo pulled over to see 5 women wearing his name on their tshirts, jumping up and down and cheering. He didn't look at all puffed - he high-fived his fiance, and took off.

We battled the crowds and the tube to the 16 mile mark, but we must have missed him. So we took a tram to the 22 mile mark and managed to see him there. He looked positively radiant (not at all shagged) . Unfortunately for him - and the other runners! - it started to hail when he had 2 miles to go - and he made it over the finish line in 4hrs, 23mins. If it were me I'd still be running....or dead.

He had benefits of running for a charity - namely a 40 min massage at the end, and by the time we caught up with him at a pub near their place he looked tired but immensely happy. I was just plain knackered, and was only part of the cheer squad!

Pic of us at the pub, with the green sign overhead pointing to the runner!

the (very) unofficial UKSG report...

I said I was only joking about a report, but here it is - with no depth or seriousness!!

The 11am train to Torquay apprently went via Turkey, it seemed to take forever. It also had the Best of British - a guy who was so drunk he could barely lift his 600ml beer can, and another guy who had a jacket over his lap, hand underneath, (doing what, I didn't want to contemplate).

Torquay was ok - if it's part of the so-called English Riviera it has alot to answer for! The murky brown sandy beach was only about 40m long. Can't imagine summer, you'd be like sunbaking sardines. Torquay was also very hilly (unexpected), and their seagulls are the size of small dogs.

UKSG was 2 1/2 days of speakers on various topics, and 4 extra sessions of your own interest. Topics ranged from relevent and interesting (digitising collections; 3 views on usage stats for online journals [impact, behaviour, abuse] - strangely interesting) - to ephemeral and pompous. The consensus was that many speakers aimed their talks at publishers rather than librarians, which was disappointing.

There was also a trade exhibition area so I went around and met suppliers (collecting free pens!). Dinner on monday had a theme of Around the World, and afterwards there was a quiz of the same theme. I'm relieved to say that I was able to help our team answer most of the Australian questions correctly - and in fact we came 2nd out of 37 teams!

Although - trust me! - at dinner I managed to offend a major supplier. Catrin and I sat between Cambridge Uni Press and Ex Libris. No problem there, except that I introduced myself to a guy from Ex Libris and he said 'ah yes, King's uses Aleph', to which I replied 'unfortunately'. He sniffed and turned away muttering 'surely not'... [Ex Libris produces Aleph, a library management system, and it's truly awful]. Catrin thought it was hilarious. Whoops....

Tuesday's dinner had a theme of Mostly Red - I went Mostly Black with a Tinge of Red. Red bangles and red nail polish - which made me feel as though I should be standing on a street corner!

The conference ended after wednesday lunch, and overall it was an excellent experience. I do have to write a real report but it won't include my thoughts on seagulls and red nail polish!

more magical snow...

We've had relatively warm weather all week - between 12 and 17 - and I woke on sunday to the most awesome snow fall! This weather is crazy. So, more pictures from the front and back of our place...

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm actually wishing it hadn't snowed today. I'm heading off in a few hours to sunny Torquay, down on the south west coast. For those in the know, I'm off to UKSG! (that's the terribly exciting sounding conference for the UK Serials Group!). I am actually quite excited about going, lots of suppliers to meet who I've been talking to over the year, and I've never been to Torquay so the conference will get in the way a bit of sightseeing.

But, apparently transport tends to slow down - or shut down - when it snows, so I hope I get there.

I'm also going to miss book club today - the book is One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was hard going, as it was written as a metaphor for the growth of Columbia and South America, and all the characters of the 5 generations are basically called the same names!

Next weeks blog will come attached with a report from UKSG - nah, just kidding!

guitar hero...

Nah, I haven't had another celebrity sighting. We were invited out on saturday night - to a party to play board games! Despite the low key image that conjures up - it was far from it! There were heaps of people, food and loud music.

While I was playing my first ever game of Boggle (and sucking at it), there was an extremely rowdy game of Uno on the next table. Khanh tried to get everyone to play Pictionary, but after the first roll someone lost the dice and the game had to be abandoned (it was later found in the kitchen in a bowl filled with beer on ice!).

But the best game of all was on the Wii. Mike and Anna have one where you can bowl or play golf - but this one was Guitar Hero and you play a Wii guitar to rockin tunes (and score points etc). It was absolutely awesome fun!!! After a few go's I really had the hang of it and was rocking out to Gunners, Heart, Pat Benatar, Alice Cooper and Santana (I thought you might be amused by that last one, Dad!).

Damo took the attached picture, calling me a rock goddess. If only....! Real guitars don't make any sense to me....

We stumbled home at 3am, which due to daylight saving was really 4am - so that fits the rock goddess lifestyle!