Harmonies and Counterpoints

Getting from Swindon to Brighton required going through London. Why was I going to Brighton? Well, I watch various musician’s reels. One performer who I’ve found interesting over the past couple of years is Thomas Benjamin Wild and I saw that he was performing in Brighton the day after the Fforde Ffiesta. I’d never actually been to Brighton before, so I figured that going to his show there would kill two seagulls with one stone. (Er, yes, I do have something against seagulls. I grew up having to fend them off when picking berries and having to dodge flying clams that they were trying to crack on sidewalks.)

Anyway, I figured out the train connections. I had booked a room at the Ibis Hotel in downtown Brighton, which proved to be particularly convenient to the train station. (And, hence, to buses that run to other parts of Brighton, which proved to be convenient later on.) I’d paid for early check-in so was able to leave my bag in my room and study a map for a little while, before setting out to walk around the city a bit.

Brighton is quite hilly but, fortunately, I was able to meander mostly downhill to get to the Pavilion. Among the way, there was a lot of brightly colored graffiti.





I also window shopped at various artsy stores before going over to the Pavilion, which is a very striking building, surrounded by lovely gardens. It was a nice enough day out that I didn’t feel like paying to go inside to see the current exhibit, which focused on dragons.



Eventually, I meandered over to the seaside. During the day, there’s a GBP 1 admission fee for the pier, which I thought was worth paying for. There are lots of benches and free deck chairs - and lots of people. The beach itself is meh in my opinion. Personally, I prefer fine white sand to rocky beaches.



The pavilions were crowded and noisy and the rides were primarily oriented towards children. There were various food stands, selling the sort of junk food you expect at this sort of beach. Being England, there were also plenty of alcoholic beverages for sale. Toss in seagulls and jet skis to add to the noise and, overall, Point Lookout / Lido Beach / or even Jones Beach or Rockaway it ain’t. (By the way, it has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to this, but the most beautiful beaches in the world are along the Indian Ocean coast of Africa, e.g. in places like Zanzibar and Madagascar. I really need to get to Mozambique some day.)

As the sun went down, it began to cool off quite a bit. I got supper at a pub and found the venue for the show I was going to. There was some confusion about what time it started. If a show is at 8 p.m., but the doors open at 7 p.m., you should make that clear on the ticket, instead of just listing the opening time. The venue proved to be a gay bar and the only seating was a few rows of steps. It was crowded and uncomfortable and you had to stand if you wanted to see anything. Fortunately, Thomas Benjamin Wild was the first of the three performers. I am still struggling to understand why his web page advertised this as a solo show when there were two other performers, as well, but it’s not as if I’ve never gone to venues who don’t even mention the eight opening acts you have to sit through before hearing the main act you’re there for.



Anyway, he was pretty entertaining and did some of his more popular songs. Some of my friends might find this relatable.



And, of course, he closed with his best known song.



I should also probably mention that, while he is known for playing a (normal) ukulele, he did all of his accompaniment at this show with a banjolele.

I normally would have stayed for the other two performers, but the venue was so uncomfortable that I left after his show. It reminded me of the night one of my friends left a show at The Anthem (on the Wharf in Washington, D.C.) before the Dropkick Murphys. Luckily, the bus I needed to get back to my hotel was right across the street as I was leaving, so obviously I made the right choice.

Since the gentleman with whom I am conducting the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling had meetings the next day, there was no real reason for me to rush back to London. I opted to spend some time at the Toy and Model Museum, which is on a steep street underneath the train station. The biggest collection involves model trains. There were some layouts where you could press a button to see the train move around.



But there were also exhibits of pretty much everything else you might want to see. For example, there were a few cases of board games. Note that “Cluedo” is British for the game Americans call “Clue.”



I bet you didn’t know that Legos were originally made of wood, not plastic.



And it wouldn’t be a toy museum without a collection of stuffed animals.



There were, of course, also dolls, puppets, dollhouses, toy cars, toy planes, etc. Overall, it was worth the GBP 8 admission price.

I had no problem getting a train to Victoria Station and taking the tube back to Earl’s Court Station. We went out to dinner at Reuben’s on Baker Street, which is an actual kosher delicatessen, allowing him to get his pastrami sandwich fix. (I had knaidlach soup, with a side of a small portion of chopped liver.) The interesting part of this is that I had eaten there before - on my first trip to London in 1980. Someday someone will have to teach the Brits how to make proper pickles.

The next day, I was off to LHR. My flight was okay, with a fairly empty plane. Unfortunately, we had a bit of a wait for a jet bridge and an even longer wait for a moon buggy to immigration and customs. So it ended up taking me almost an hour and 45 minutes from when we landed until I got home.

Overall, I had a great trip, seeing a lot of interesting things and having a lot of fun. Which is really about all you can expect out of travel.

As I mentioned before, the primary purpose of this entire trip was going to the Fforde Ffiesta, which is a celebration of the works of Jasper Fforde. The personal back story here is that from the late 1980s through 2002 I more or less commuted between Los Angeles and Boulder, Colorado. I discovered a mystery bookstore in Boulder (Rue Morgue Books, owned by Tom and Enid Schantz) and made regular trips there, especially when they had signings and, hence, stayed open late. A couple of my colleagues were also mystery fans and we spent many pleasant evenings at a Caribbean restaurant a couple of doors away, followed by book browsing. Anyway, they published a newsletter, in which they made book recommendations and one recommendation in 2001 was for a book titled The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. I bought and read this and loved the originality of the concept, so I kept reading the Thursday Next series and many of the rest of his books. A couple of years ago, I had a conference to go to in London and learned of the existence of the Fforde Ffiesta, but the tickets were already sold out. I kept it on my list of things to do. And back in May 2025, I was able to register for the 2026 event, which happened the first weekend of this May (i.e. 2026).

I had a little preparation to do. For one thing, it made sense to reread The Eyre Affair as I had forgotten various things in the past 40+ years. I had ideas for the costume contest, but never managed to complete executing them. I also never quite got around to crocheting a dodo. (Dodos are popular pets in the Ffordean world.) I decided that it would be easy enough to join the Legion of the Danvers, so I did actually do what amounts to cosplay. Mrs. Danvers is the evil housekeeper in Daphne DuMaurier’s novel, Rebecca, and the prototype for evil housekeepers in other literature, e.g. Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein. Clones of her work for the Goliath Corporation in Fforde’s books. Dressing as her just requires a long black dress, a grey wig, and dark glasses. Here I am as Mrs. Danvers, standing next to a cardboard cut-out of Jasper Fforde, i.e. Flat Jasper. (I’ll explain more about this later on.)



While the Ffiesta officially started on Saturday morning, I arrived at the hotel in Swindon late in the afternoon on Friday. I ended up having supper at the bar and didn’t know that two of the people sitting across from me at a table were Jasper and his wife, Mary. (And I got to explain airag, the Mongolian fermented mare’s milk drink, to Mary. It’s actually not bad and, yes, I’ve done some weird traveling over the years.)

Anyway, I picked up my Ffiesta packet and joined a group of people to play the unofficial Friday night trivia. Our team was doing well until a question which required teams to match Shakespeare plays to the number of people who died in each one. I figured that people don’t die in the comedies, but I have pretty much no clue when it comes to the histories. I redeemed myself when it came to some geography related questions and, in particular, got us close enough on listing countries that have capitals starting with the letter “K” for the rest of the team to make a good guess and have us end up in 3rd place overall.

The official Ffiesta started on Saturday morning. There was a Ffordian Fete with several games to play. Two of them stuck in my mind. One involved guessing the contents of three cans with their labels removed. (I didn’t have a clue.) The other required fishing for magnetic word tiles and using them to write a poem. I came up with:

Chant sweet summer death
Her dragon eyebrows can shine.

Also on Saturday morning was a brief opening ceremony, which included singing the song “Leaning on a Lamppost.” The significance of that is that it was originally popularized by George Formby, who is President for Life in the Thursday Next books. But it has some personal significance for me, because it was used in the revival of the musical Me and My Girl in 1986. I saw the Encores production of this in 2018. “Leaning on a Lamppost” is the second stickiest song in its score (behind only “The Lambeth Walk,” which is as much of an earworm as “It’s a Small World” and the Oompa-Loompa Song from Willy Wonka. There is a special circle of hell for the writers of all of these.) There was also an opportunity to sign up for some activities and I signed up for Literary Karaoke, choosing Chapter 12 of The Eyre Affair, which involves Mycroft’s Prose Portal.

The first event of the afternoon was Jasper’s Tour of Swindon. Some people had spent the morning building a cardboard model of Swindon and Jasper pointed out various of the places and people in it. My favorite part of this involved Michelle, Swindon’s only jogger. There was also Michelle’s understudy, her understudy’s understudy, her stalker, her stalker’s stalker, etc.

That was followed by a Q&A. The most exciting thing Jasper said is that there will be a sequel to Red Side Story, which is itself the sequel to Shades of Grey. Yay!

After a brief break, there was Quiz Hour, with three games. I thought I would have been good at Name That Fruit, since I’ve eaten odd things like kiwano melon and tamarillo (tree tomato) but it turned out to include activities like making a face out of a coconut, which I don’t think I would do so well at.

Next was Evade the Question, in which contestants had to talk for a minute without mentioning anything relating to the given subject. For example, the first subject was “elephant” so one couldn’t mention anything like animal, Africa, trunk, grey, etc. My favorite challenge of that round came when one contestant said “I was painting my room” and was challenged because “elephants are notoriously in the room.” By the way, the last round is traditionally “Life, the Universe, and Everything,” and the challenges were fast and furious, on the order of one or two seconds. I may suggest playing a version of this at a Loser event. (For those who don’t know, Losers are devotees of the Invitational, a humor contest that used to appear in the Washington Post. For more information, see The Not Ready for the Algonquin Roundtable Society. Loserdom is a big part of my life.)

The final game was Fforde or Fraud in which two contestants had to guess whether or not characters appeared in The Eyre Affair. The catch was that they were separated by a whiteboard, so couldn’t see each other. The funniest part of this is how much trouble Jasper and Mary had with it.

I also spent some time hunting lobsters. There were various toy lobsters hidden around the public areas of the hotel, each with a tag on them. You had to find them and write down the name on each tag next to the number from the other side of the tag. I call shenanigans as some of them were actually crabs. (And some of us know the sad story of Herman the Lobster and Sally the Crab, immortalized by the Smothers Brothers in the lyrics “crabs walk sideways and lobsters walk straight and we won’t let you have her for your mate.”) I never did manage to find the last few crustaceans, alas.

The evening started with the Fancy Dress parade. (In case anyone doesn’t know, “fancy dress” is British English for “costume.”) My personal favorite was the two people who dressed as “Deleted Characters.”

The day ended with an auction, which was raising money for a literary charity in Swindon. There were several interesting items, but the prices got steep rather quickly. I was seriously tempted by a CD about Swindon and cheese, but wasn’t willing to spend GBP 40 for it. Overall, I think the auction raised about GBP 3000, which is impressive.

By the way, my favorite quip of the day (from Jasper, of course) was “I just learned that microbiologists are the same size as other biologists.”

Sunday morning started with Jasper reading from Dark Reading Matter, the last book in the Thursday Next series, which is scheduled to come out in October. I’m looking forward to being able to read it.

Then it was time for the Legion of the Danvers to meet in the hotel’s quadrangle. There were 81 of us, total, which is impressive given that there were 158 total attendees at the Fforde Ffiesta. There was an oath, a bit of “tutting” and “huzzahs,” drills, marching, and songs. Later on in the day, we got our service and pay books, which obviously need to be kept in a safe place for future events. Here’s a picture of extreme Danversing. (I think you should be able to click on the picture on flickr to see the action.)



I did not stay around for Lobster Space Invaders, since I wasn’t in the mood for a water fight. I used the lunch break to catch up on my travel journal and puzzles and such other mundane activities. In the early afternoon, everyone reconvened to watch the production of Richard III. There were a few people who seemed a bit lost as to what they were supposed to be doing, but it was still entertaining, especially as we were provided with noisemakers to aid us with audience participation.

That was followed by Literary Karaoke. I think my reading went fine and someone did tell me I’d read well. The main thing I’d practiced was making sure I stayed within the time limit.

After a short break, there was a demonstration of dodo whispering. Because, as everyone knows, it does take some effort to train your pet dodo properly. That was followed by prize giving. There were elaborately designed plates for the winners of the big contests and bags or boxes of sweets for the more minor events. Even though there was a brief closing ceremony, there was another unofficial event later on. That was a race night. There were videos featuring races with dachshunds, Shetland ponies, marbles, pigs, sheep, babies, and Fforganizers (that’s the term for the volunteers who organize the Fforde Ffiesta). I used the same approach which I take to actual horse races - namely choosing the contestant whose name I like best. It worked about as well as it does for actual horse races, in case you thought that was a rational approach.

In the morning, I got a taxi to the train station and on to the next leg of my trip, which I’ll write about soon. The bottom line is that the Fforde Ffiesta proved to be ffabulous ffun and I’ll certainly try to go to it again in the ffuture.