Name that Fruit?

There's an event coming up on the horizon, my sole social event for the whole remainder of 2013, and something so unprecedented in my personal experience as to be a landmark. This coming weekend sees the occasion of the Jasper Fforde Ffiesta 2013! I've never been to anything even remotely like this before, with the closest event perhaps being an academic conference. I'm hoping it will be a fun and entertaining event. Hopefully there will be Sherlock Holmes meetings in the future as well, as I wonder how best to expand social connections. Without going into too much detail, there shall be fancy dress for which I am utterly unprepared, 'Name That Fruit', 'Hunt the lobster', an angst poem contest and many nefarious other activities. What fun shall we have? Well, you'll have to wait until next week.

'The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes' is running as I write, proving to be a more than adequate distraction, although somewhat disjointed. Originally this Billy Wilder movie would have had two additional stories crammed into a running length maybe an hour longer than its theatrical version, but pre-release editing struck - and harshly! - much was lost and now we have a two hour movie which works, sometimes very well, but feels as if there are missing components of which we may never know. It many ways it's much like the long-lost Richard Donner version of 'Superman II' but without the hope of the true version ever appearing, or the cataclysm visited upon Patrick Troughton' and William Hartnell's years in the TARDIS in the BBC wiping debacle.

So, the Ffiesta is coming and I must remember how to speak once again, after a stretch of willing hermitude. Hopefully they'll realise that demented Mathematicians can be rather strange, especially when stranded in future Swindon. People are smart; It will surely be a good time. Except for 'Name That Fruit', of course. For those not in the know, Jasper Fforde is the mind behind the Thursday Next stories, Nursery Crimes mysteries, The Last Dragonslayer tales and Shades of Grey. Allowing some margin for erraticness these are some of the most imaginative, amusing and entertaining stories written in the last ten years.

Between now and Swindon there seem to be a few days left to fill, days of text and coding. Recent leads have led me to believe that there's a great chance of resurrecting the arterial model problem that was in progress last Summer, and that means there's much coding in prospect. And air conducting, of course. There must always be air conducting. And Greek learning.

It's all such fun.
O.