Eastercon Part IV

[vyvyanx]

(I really will finish it off in this one.) Tuesday morning I got G out of bed with great difficulty, since he'd got back from the Dead Dog party about 4-5 am the previous night. We went down for breakfast, where John Bray helpfully gave us directions to a prehistoric monument I wanted to see later that day. We packed, and checked out by 10 am. We wandered into town and lurked for a while in a cafe until the bus to the monument (La Hougue Bie) arrived.
La Hougue Bie is a very strange place. It's a prehistoric burial mound, with a stone chamber inside, reached by a very low entrance tunnel. Inside it's quite creepy. Apparently it was built with enormous stones from distant parts of Jersey, that must have been quite challenging for Neolithic people to transport. The tunnel is constructed so that the rising sun at the equinox strikes right to the end of the central chamber. On top of the mound is a medieval chapel, reached by a staircase which spirals around the mound. The chapel contains a fake crypt intended to impress worshippers. Underneath the mound is a WWII air raid shelter, and nearby is a German command bunker, which has been turned into a moving memorial to those who were brought to Jersey in the war to be forced labourers for the Germans, and rarely lasted more than nine months due to harsh treatment and near-starvation. All in all, quite a historic place! After wandering round for a bit, and looking in the museum, we emerged to see IWJ, C and OSD just arriving. We spoke briefly, and discovered that IWJ and C were getting the same plane back as us. IWJ looked particularly irritated by this, and we left them at this point, and hung around in the sun reading until the bus back to St Helier arrived. Just as we got on the bus, we saw John Bray getting out! Clearly La Hougue Bie was _the_ place to be for ex-con-goers.
Back in St Helier, we went to the Lido restaurant again, before getting a bus back to the airport. Hung around reading Baxter's Icebones for a while, then went through security (where the X-ray machine guy recognised Rex from a TV program filmed during the con!) and got G lots of duty-free tobacco. Ran into lots of fans in the airport - Sue Mason, and Tim the penguin-fancier, who was also on our flight. Flight was unremarkable; then back in Gatwick hung around in coach station for some time. When the coach to Cambridge arrived, the driver insisted he was only going as far as Heathrow, and drove off. Bemused, I went to the information booth, where the guy looked alarmed and called up the driver to tell him to come back. He returned shortly, insisted it wasn't his fault, and so we embarked.
Dozed most of the way back to Cambridge; arrived c. 12.30 (rather too late to go to the Calling), came back to college, dumped stuff, and crashed out.
Since then, G has been looking for a job a bit, and playing lots of CounterStrike after a week's forced abstinence, and I have been, um, writing lj entries, playing games, and succumbing to a curious illness.
All in all, I think it was just about the best Eastercon I've been to (though my first was jolly good too!). Am now paid-up member of the next two Eastercons: 2003 will be Seacon, in Hinckley (where we were last year); 2004 will be Concourse, in Blackpool. Everyone come! Hurray!

Comments

[zotz]

That mound sounds interesting. There's something a bit similar in Irelnd (Newgrange, in the Boyne valley - turn inland at Drogheda, halfway between dublin and the border) with the passage aligned with midwinter sunrise. Allegedly it's the oldest surviving building in the world (c3000BC?) and the roof has never leaked. Some lessons there for modern builders. I believe there's another one in Orkney, also, but I haven't visited that one.

http://www.knowth.com/newgrange.htm

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

It was interesting. I've seen various hill-forts in Ireland, but not the mound you speak of. There's a particularly nice prehistoric construction on a small island off the coast of Co. Galway; I remember being very impressed by that when I was there learning Irish a few years ago.