Editorial – July 2023

Well that was a month. I made it to Canada, but only just. My flight from London to Toronto was diverted to start from Zurich, and I was up at 2:30am, London time, to get to Heathrow for a flight out to Switzerland. My flight from Toronto to Winnipeg was heavily delayed, meaning that I didn’t get to my hotel until almost midnight. Thankfully I had a night in Toronto along the way, otherwise I would have been travelling for almost 28 hours.

The flights back worked better, but it was clear from what was going on in airports that Air Canada is seriously overstretched for both equipment at manpower. It reminded me of the time that Kevin and I booked to go to the Colorado Springs SMOFCon on Reno Air. We got there and back, but didn’t use any Reno Air aircraft in the process. The airline went bust shortly afterwards. I don’t suppose that the Canadian government will let Air Canada go bust, but something has to give. I may have to fly BA next time I go to Canada.

It didn’t help my mood that I caught a bad cold on the way back. That was presumably either at Pearson or Heathrow, both of which were absolutely rammed with people. I tested negative for both COVID and flu, which was a relief, but I lost a couple of days to feeling awful and I’m still not 100%.

Talking of awful, my Twitter presence is likely to be very minimal from now on. I am on BlueSky, but the iPad app is so bad that I don’t use it very much. I’m on Mastodon, and Wizard’s Tower has an account there as well. I tend to treat Zuck with as much suspicion as I treat Musk, so you won’t find me on Threads.

Later this month I will be heading to Glasgow to give a talk at the university. I hope to have time to visit the Worldcon site and take a few pictures, in which case I will report back next issue.

August is supposed to be one of my off-months in the schedule because of Worldcon. Of course there is no Worldcon in August this year, so I’m not sure what will happen. You may get another bonus issue.