JOHN MEANEY

12.7.10

PENNY FROM HEAVEN

Spent yesterday morning in the Hampshire sunshine (or maybe we were in Oxfordshire) supporting Penny Hill as she took part in a Race For Life and came in with a 5K PB. (That's Personal Best in runnerspeak.) Chris, Yvonne and I supported by, er, eating ice cream and watching the runners.

In other news - I've not blogged for a couple of weeks, mea culpa - the very end of June was spent at Imperial College, London (that's the UK's premier science university) attending an event called Science for Fiction, organized by physicist and writer Dave Clements. Al Reynolds, Pippa Goldschmidt, Geoff Ryman, Molly Brown and Pat Cadigan all attended. There were 8 lectures on string theory, cosmology, bioinformatics and loadsa good stuff. Had a great time. If it happens again next year as planned, we could do with more writers there!

I ended the event by having lunch with Pippa, Molly and Geoff, where I had a Jaffa Cake milkshake. Mmm.

My gym/dojo in the back garden has seen a lot of use, and I'm getting back to what I consider a decent level of fitness. Every time I go out for a run (bearing in mind the valley slopes) my hamstrings talk to me. Things like: Hey, remember us? See how useful we are? Never neglect us again...

The 6ft punch bag is humbling and excellent. I've always done bagwork in shoes - my old garage dojo had a concrete floor, the kickboxing gym I trained in required everyone to wear taekwondo-style shoes, and karate clubs don't come equipped with punch bags in this country. (They use space in sports centres, school gyms and church halls - full-time dojos are rare.) I'm only doing one round barefoot and barefist per workout for now - after the 1st round I slip on the shoes and gloves, cos I iz delicate, innit?

In writing news... Well, I'm working on Transmission every day. One day at a time.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey, John! Actually you were in Berkshire!
It's was great to see you guys and hope to see you again soon.

Regards,
Chris

July 12, 2010 at 7:41 PM  

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