If I seem to have been quiet for the past few days, it's because I was away over the weekend at the Diana Wynne Jones conference in Bristol. I had a lovely time, met several of my old friends, met some on-line friends for the first time and made some entirely new friends. I also found a new LJ community that I intend to join.

I had planned to keep up with everything on-line while I was away because I had my Eee with me, but the promised Internet access didn't actually work. A very few people managed to log in with the usernames and passwords provided, but most of us couldn't and the IT staff don't work weekends, so they couldn't sort it out for us. It was rather frustrating as I had thought I could keep an eye on my students while I was away and I hadn't even looked up the times of trains for coming home because I'd thought I could do it from the conference. However, I did get home safely (despite the engineering work that meant that the "train" was actually a bus for the part between Hereford and Shrewsbury) and I've caught up with the most urgent student queries this morning.

Anyway, the short version is that I had a great time and there was lots of interesting and gently thought-provoking stuff that has had the side effect of progressing the new novel idea a bit further. I also (ahem) bought a few more Diana Wynne Jones books to add to my collection.

The conference was small and low-key and DWJ's books and writing are diverse enough that even though there were many papers, it was never boring as people found different aspects to examine or took a different slant on the source material. I found everyone very friendly, even though I wasn't a member of the mailing list and therefore completely unknown to most people there.

A big thank you must go to the organisers and I hope there is another one, perhaps in 2011? :)

Current Mood: cheerful