He traveled about the world giving lectures and after-dinner speeches, receiving honorary degrees, inaugurating railroads, and granting interviews. He fulminated against sloth, socialism, immorality, general mediocrity, labor unions, Irish nationalism, the eight-hour working day, women journalists, and American hotel servants (“untrained, undisciplined, loutish and ill-bred”).

Tower Bridge has recently added a glass floor so you can look down on the Thames River.

Some of the street art near Brick Lane was inspired by Terry Pratchett and Josh Kirby.

On the way back to Australia I had a stopover in Singapore for a couple of days. I stayed at a really nice hotel as a way of relaxing after a couple of months in a tent. I met up with a friend and we visited some of the gardens and tried some of the street food.

Lucasfilm has opened a studio in Singapore and their building is built in the shape of a sandcrawler and includes a garden with a Yoda statue.

The Supertrees and cloud forest are relatively new attractions. Giant trees that light up at night.

http://www.gizmag.com/singapore-gardens-by-the-bay-supertree-cloud-forest/33590/

Each Supertree is designed to mimic the function of a real tree, with photovoltaic cells to echo photosynthesis and contribute energy to run the park. The trees also collect water during Singapore’s frequent heavy rains and channel it throughout the park wherever irrigation or fountains are needed. Some are also used as exhaust flues for the Gardens’ underground biomass boilers.

Next door to Bletchley Park is the National Museum of Computing, which houses a rebuilt Colossus, one of the very first computers ever built.

Then I spent a few nights in Brighton. Although Brighton is probably the most famous of British beaches, it not particularly impressive by Australian standards. It is lacking in sand for one thing.

But the beach does include more mirror balls than most Australian beaches.

Although it was raining and windy, a sign on the pier urged visitors to “Brighton Up Your Day”. Fortunately I spent most of my time indoors at  the World Fantasy Convention, a four-day writer’s conference. In contrast to the board games convention in Essen, this was a much smaller convention around 1000 attendees, mainly writers. There were panels on topics related to writing science fiction, as well as a mass signing session, where I got to meet lots of my favorite writers, such as Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, Tim Powers and Neil Gaiman. I also met up with some online writing friends and made some new friends.