A weekend in the country
Mar. 27th, 2023 09:07 amOne of the great things about having a car and being licensed to use it is that I can go off and do all the interesting things that are difficult to access by public transport.
Take the Clunes Booktown Festival, for example. Every year, this tiny country town shuts down its main street and opens itself to booksellers and authors. By all accounts it's a complete omnishambles behind the scenes and every single local author I know has A Clunes Story. But I like books, authors and quaint country towns, so I was excited to finally go.
First of all, I had to get there. The other great thing about being The Driver is that I can stop whenever I need a bathroom break. Which is often. And I'm getting much better at overtaking slow cars. The speed limit is 110kph, grandma, not 90! On the other hand, I wish I knew how my car's cruise control works, because after an hour my leg started to cramp.
Clunes is in a nice, hilly area where lots of houses have signs protesting the erection of 5G antennae. Unrelated: the place has terrible mobile reception. I was on 3G most of the time, which was a challenge since I tend to run my finances on the assumption that I can always move money between savings accounts as needed. I had to get cash out, guys. Cash. I haven't handled physical money since March 2020.
I was in town for all of five minutes before I found and bought a bunch of 1980s Starlog magazines, and wound up exceeding my pre-set book budget by $10. (Please do not ask how much my book budget was.) Mostly I hung around the secondhand stalls and filled gaps in series I already owned part of, but I wound up buying a bunch of new books as well. And also The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander, the exact edition I had when I was eight, so I guess I'm buying the rest of the Prydain books now.
But actually I was there for the panels. ( This got long and features Soviet history, middle grade fiction, and some racist museum nonsense. )
Take the Clunes Booktown Festival, for example. Every year, this tiny country town shuts down its main street and opens itself to booksellers and authors. By all accounts it's a complete omnishambles behind the scenes and every single local author I know has A Clunes Story. But I like books, authors and quaint country towns, so I was excited to finally go.
First of all, I had to get there. The other great thing about being The Driver is that I can stop whenever I need a bathroom break. Which is often. And I'm getting much better at overtaking slow cars. The speed limit is 110kph, grandma, not 90! On the other hand, I wish I knew how my car's cruise control works, because after an hour my leg started to cramp.
Clunes is in a nice, hilly area where lots of houses have signs protesting the erection of 5G antennae. Unrelated: the place has terrible mobile reception. I was on 3G most of the time, which was a challenge since I tend to run my finances on the assumption that I can always move money between savings accounts as needed. I had to get cash out, guys. Cash. I haven't handled physical money since March 2020.
I was in town for all of five minutes before I found and bought a bunch of 1980s Starlog magazines, and wound up exceeding my pre-set book budget by $10. (Please do not ask how much my book budget was.) Mostly I hung around the secondhand stalls and filled gaps in series I already owned part of, but I wound up buying a bunch of new books as well. And also The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander, the exact edition I had when I was eight, so I guess I'm buying the rest of the Prydain books now.
But actually I was there for the panels. ( This got long and features Soviet history, middle grade fiction, and some racist museum nonsense. )