Victoria and Albert Museum

Thursday was our last day out and about of the fortnight, in part because of the weekend train strike.

Our main stop was the Victoria and Albert Museum. I forgot my camera - but my phone worked OK.

This is Ryan outside the Japan area.



Bea and Dom considering architecture.



My favourite bit of the jewellery section. It starts in the middle with diamonds, then goes on to rubies and sapphires and so on. I really liked the non-standard colours.



We bought souvenirs for the first and only time - I got a couple of pairs of earings, Bea a Winnie the Pooh badge and bag and Ryan a Kaleidoscope (we, sort of).

We then had lunch at Thai Square which I recommend. Lovely Pad Thai.

Do You Dream Of Terra Two? and Knights Errant

Do You Dream of Terra Two? is Temi Oh's debut novel. I own a signed copy because she was at the same launch event as Emma Newman and it seemed like an interesting first book. Over the last fortnight I've been reading it (it's a large hardback, so not a commuting book). It's about a group of teenagers who are qualifying for a 23 year journey to a new planet - to be the first inhabitants. It follows the individual characters (six of them) into the spaceship and the start of their journey. I would have classed it as YA (although that doesn't seem to be how it's marketed). It's very readable, a good concept and I like the different viewpoints. However, on the minus side, it doesn't really have a plot (well, until you're three quarters of the way through), the adults come across as a different species, some of the characters are better written than others and, given all the competition over places, you are left wondering just how these were the best qualified six (or, come to that, ten including the adults) people given their varying issues and illnesses. Overall - I'd recommend to anyone who didn't read for the plot and I'd be interested in what she writes next.

A few weeks ago, Dom ran another session of his current campaign Knights Errant (me, Elle, Andy, Martin and Alistair). We continued to pick slowly at using the form of symbol magic we had been taught and decided to travel to London. It turned out to be a bit less weird than expected, but still weird. We met Flo from the previous group who had taken a religious approach to the situation and holed up in Southwark Cathedral. We also met the leader of the first Knights group - staying in the Houses of Parliament. Both had more magical experience than us, but luckily for us it turned out we had been trained to defend against mind magic. We then found the boat that we believe caused the whole situation to start with - holed at the bottom of the Thames (and counts as the Duke of London). We also went back to the Royal Society and discovered where it had been dragged in from. We also witnessed a kidnapping involving portals in St James Park. We're now expecting the next group of Knights to be incoming shortly.