And what was she, the fairy Melusine?

Books on pre-order:

1. Queen Demon (Rising World 2) by Martha Wells (7 Oct 2025)

Books acquired in June:

• and read:
  1. Playing for Keeps by K A Findlay (Kim Findlay) [7]
  2. The Charlie Method (Campus Diaries 3) by Elle Kennedy
• and unread:
  1. Dying to Meet You by Sarina Bowen
  2. Sort Your Head Out by Sam Delaney
  3. The Pairing by Casey McQuiston

Borrowed books read in June:

1. Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
2. The Domino Pattern (Quadrail 4) by Timothy Zahn [8]
3. Judgment at Proteus (Quadrail 5) by Timothy Zahn [8]

Annoyingly, when I thought I'd cancelled my KU subscription in May, Amazon thought I'd suspended it for a month, so I got charged again in June. And as the above makes clear, I didn't really get my value for the month of it. The Timothy Zahn Quadrail series is really fun (Trains! In Space! And also galaxy-spanning conspiracy and action adventure with really interesting aliens!) and I'm glad I got to finish it, but I have now definitely and for real cancelled the subscription until further notice.

I don't expect to read much this month either, with the women's football Euros running most of the month. Farocation is running again and I didn't yet get through all the books from last summer, so I'm being even pickier about which ones I decide to pick up this summer.

[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[3] Physical book
[4] Crowdfunding
[5] Goodbye read
[6] Cambridgeshire Reads/Listens
[7] FaRoFeb / FaRoCation / Bookmas / HRBC
[8] Prime Reading / Kindle Unlimited

Regrettably, we have to go home again this afternoon. I am packing with the intention of leaving our luggage at the hotel while we do one last amble along Southsea beach.

Swag count:

• 11 pens
• 9 commemorative guidebooks (to the various ships, museums, and the dockyard as a whole)
• 2 notebooks
• 2 postcards
• 1 travel mug
• 1 fridge magnet
• 1 birthday card from the Spinnaker Bar staff

Also some chocolate from the Lindt outlet store. My suitcase was fairly full when we came. I'm sure I can make it all fit ... somehow.

The seed for choosing Portsmouth for this getaway came from seeing a sign for "Explosion Museum" while driving a bunch of hockey players to Gosport rink back in May. I'm very glad I went with that impulse, it's worked out well.

Friday:

• Mary Rose, worth the admission fee all by itself, thoroughly absorbing exhibition of the many many objects found within the wreck, and amazing to see the preserved timbers themselves from lots of different angles.
• lunch
• dockyard boat tour, including a good look at the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier currently in dock (I cannot look at aircraft carriers without Danger Zone playing in my head)
• HMS Victory, audioguide version with dramatic retelling of the battle of Trafalgar. Very absorbing, impressive amount of the ship available to visit even while restoration is ongoing, very tiring.
• back to hotel and flop for a little
• walk, ferry, bus to Gosport ice rink, disco skate, bus, ferry and walk back to hotel; ice is rather worse than Cambridge, but ferry+bus beats 2x Cambridge buses any time

Saturday:

• sauna and swim for me
• walk to the dockyard, waterbus to the Explosion Museum of Naval Firepower
• lunch
• walk ~2 miles to Submarine Museum
• walk through of HMS Alliance, also a look around HMS Holland 1 (the first ever Royal Navy submarine)
• my body in full rebellion against "museum walking" by this point, we took the waterbus back to the main dockyard, got cold drinks, and got back on the dockyard boat tour - different guide, different focus, well worth it
• little wander around Gunwharf Quays and a little shopping in the outlet stores; having forgotten to bring my ereader, I resorted to buying a newspaper and we sat quietly ignoring each other in a curry gastropub for a while. Eventually we ordered some curry, which was really rather good, and then toddled back to the hotel
• I decided I'd had enough moving for the day, so now I'm lying on the hotel bed with Glastonbury on the TV, life is good

Tomorrow I think we'll do a couple of brief museum things at the historic dockyard, and then perhaps go for a wander through Southsea. I'm going to watch England v Jamaica tomorrow afternoon (I think R has less than zero interest in football, women's or otherwise) and we've a reservation in the Spinnaker Tower for sunset cocktails tomorrow evening.

I have been resisting buying a number of great hoodies from the assorted Historic Dockyard museum shops, on the grounds that I already have More Than Sufficient Hoodies, related to either ice hockey or musical theatre. R said obviously I need to wait for an ice hockey musical and get that hoodie.

Suggestions welcome for the topic / plot of such a musical.

Uni buddy R and I made it to Portsmouth last night, despite the best efforts of signal failures to scare us off. (Half the trains were showing as cancelled around 3pm; by the time we actually got to Cambridge station at 5pm things were looking better; by the time our train got to Finsbury Park it looked like service was nearly restored and we continued to change at Three Bridges as originally planned.)

I was working up until about 4pm, with a couple of colleagues very amused that a) I didn't start packing until a gap between meetings at 2pm, and b) my "girls weekend" consists of naval museums and ice skating.

We had an easy walk to our hotel in the midsummer twilight, and settled in to our respective rooms. I'm doing admin until R texts me she's ready for breakfast. And then: the Mary Rose! (who else has formative childhood memories of watching it being raised?)

You may have noticed it's been hot in England. So a lot of this week has just been the extra routines to cope with that (airing out the house at night / early morning, extra hydration, more naps).

It was a three-day week at work for me, with Monday my travel day back from Prague, and Wednesday a multi-errand day. Tuesday was a hectic day at work, but a rare evening with very few plans, so I actually rested. Wednesday had EHCP review for one child; a lunchtime skating lesson for me; a school bowling trip, hospital appointment and shopping all with the other child; and then Kodiaks practice in the evening.

( lots of ice hockey )

This week and next are 4-day weeks at work for me; I am having a long weekend away in Portsmouth with one of my oldest friends from university. Probably my only trip away this year that isn't directly about ice hockey. (But there is a rink in Gosport and both of us skate.) We plan to visit the Mary Rose, and I at least want to visit both the Submarine Museum and the Explosion Museum. I have been intrigued by the latter since I saw a road sign for it on the way to Gosport rink last month, but haven't yet found anything else about it apart from name and location. No spoilers!

(I forgot to mention that for about twenty minutes of the day I flew to Prague, I couldn't find my passport, because it was not in the box where it normally lives at home. That was not a fun twenty minutes, and much love to both Tony and Charles for joining me in the search. We found it eventually, it had fallen down the side of the shelf on which the passport box lives, in a way that meant you could only see it from one specific angle. Thankfully, I eventually stood at that angle and spotted it.)

The ice hockey camp continued to be excellent and very hard work, and I feel like I learned a great deal (and now I need to remember to keep using everything I learned and not fall back into bad habits). The coaching was very supportive and kind while pretty much pushing me to my physical limits. I very much hope to return on future camps.

The Saturday evening we went into central Slaný where there was a kind of beer festival happening, lots of different beer stands around the town square, a live rock band on stage, and a bunch of fairground rides. Sunday lunchtime, after the camp was finished, the original three of us got an Uber into Prague in the gloriously hot and humid afternoon. The other two had been to Prague before so I went off on my own to do some tourist things (boat tour! historical tram! walking across the Charles Bridge!) and messaged them when I was ready to meet up again. Turned out we were about five minutes walk apart at that point.

I took a load of photos but actually this random selfie for my family is one I'm really happy with:

We had dinner in Prague, during which time the hot weather broke into torrential downpour, and did a bit more walking around once that tailed off into intermittent showers, but eventually got back to Slaný for the evening. We got packed up and out of our rooms as requested in the morning but were able to leave our kit in storage while we had a leisurely walk and hipsterish brunch in Slaný before it was time to head to the airport.

Getting home was tediously delayed by train cancellations but I still got home in time to put the first washload on and repack my kitbag for Warbirds practice Monday evening.