Blog

Podcastcon: and the difference between Smithfield and Billingsgate.

This morning, bright and early, I went to Podcastcon.

I was really keen to get there early, and it was a lovely day. From Stoke Newington, you take the 141 bus to London Bridge, and walk about 300 yards along the Thameside Walk to Billingsgate conference centre - the site of the former fish market.

When I got there, there was no sign of the convention, and so I asked security staff where they thought it might be. They said: "Oh, it'll be in our other site, over by Canary Wharf!" as if any fool knew that.

So I hopped onto the Tube at Monument.

Except, I didn't, because it's closed. So I walked up to Bank and threaded my way through the tunnels to the Dockland Light Railway or DLR, and caught the first train to Canary Wharf, where I discovered that the first train doesn't go there. So I changed trains, and got there OK, having missed the morning sessions of Podcastcon - and could I find New Billingsgate?

Well, yes. I did. And it's a fish market, pure and simple. It smells of fish; it is full of fish, and nobody there does anything except buy and smell - sorry, sell - fish. So finally, I rang home to see if anybody there had the programme, and could tell me whether I had the day wrong.

Nobody home. And by now I was really hungry, and getting cold, and I'd had a rough journey, what with roads up for cranes which were moving other cranes, and roads up for road diggers, and just general Saturday traffic, so I went to find lunch. At home.

And here at home, I found the Podcastcon web site, and realised that whoever told me Billingsgate was mad. Smithfield, where Podcastcon was held, is actually quite close to me, by comparison, so I set out again...

...into the teeth of today's Arsenal football match at the new Highbury stadium. I couldn't get a bus, or a taxi.

After freezing my arse off in the rising wind for half an hour, I came home. And that's all I can tell you about Podcastcon.