Picture by Courtesy of Henry ireport

CNN island is closing in SL soon, there will be a final party tonight at 2pm(slt), so we’ll go along and say our farewells to producers Nicole and Henry’s avatars, as they won’t be coming into the virtual world officially as reps of CNN any more.  A decision I think, which may have been made some time ago and finally it’s come about.  It doesn’t really make a lot of difference to me, as I will go on uploading stories and still have contact via the website if there is a problem, so it’s really only the meetings that have stopped, the articles will still be vetted by CNN who will still have  SL Assignments on the site.  It’s been a lovely time for both me and friend and writer Hibiscus Hastings, we met at CNN and formed a great friendship; we were both there from the very beginning when ireport started out in its Beta form back in 2007. We have contributed our own little bit of virtual history to the internet with our stories of what a real community SL is, complete with all its wonderful population of designers, artists, theatre people and creators of what ever you can imagine in the real world being brought into the virtual one.  It’s been an honour for me to meet so many clever and interesting people and I’ve enjoyed every step of the way writing about them!   So I will carry on and want to thank Nicole, Henry, and all the CNN peoples I met who came in world to chat to us mere mortals! lol!  Looking forward to the party tonight, so just type CNN island on your map in-world and pop along tonight and have some fun!

Nicole ireport

It was lovely of  friend Eliza Janus to visit Jamaica Inn to see our Christmas display and I saw that she had her own little winter wonderland where she lives in SL, in Bay City, so I went over for a look!  Eliza is very artistic and she has made a beautiful job of her Christmas scene.  Well done Eliza it really feels like Christmas now and I hope you have a brillaint festive season!

Eliza also sent a notice round with Christmas wishes in all different languages, I hope she doesn’t mind me repeating what she said here, as I think it’s a lovely idea being that we share our Second Life with people from all over the world:

“I wish you a blessed and peaceful Christmas, may the peace and joy that only the Christchild brings be with you and your family always.

 Niech czas Bozego Narodzenia uplynie w atmosferze radosci i milosci, a Nowy Rok spelni wszystkie Wasze marzenia. Wszystkiego najlepszego.

 Gesegnete Weihnachten und ein glückliches neues Jahr !

 Glædelig jul og godt nytår !

 Veselé vánoce a šťastný nový rok !”

I love SL at Christmas time and this year I had a bigger piece of land than I had ever had before with friends Hibiscus Hastings, Drax Ember, Whisper Fearne and Cliff Chesnokov as neighbours.  Hib and I decided to make our parcels into a winter wonderland this year and I started back in October to get organised.  Hib has done a great job, she has a bob-sleigh run, a horse and sleigh and lots of other pretty bits as well as the ever popular Greedy table.  I asked Drax if I could extend the Christmas bits to his land too and he kindly agreed, so it’s quite an area, with some freebies included too!  I’ve written about it all on CNN as well and it was with great delight that we got accepted for the Destination Guide, so we’ve had a fair amount of visitors popping in already!  So pop over to Jamaica Inn and have some fun!

Of all mornings, when I wanted to put a message on Virtually London (lite) the blog site isn’t working and I can’t get into it!  So I’m starting here.  You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting quite so much lately, which I’ve hated, but I just haven’t had the time to do so much because of real life stuff.  So I’ve decided to have a break for a little while.  I’ll still be putting stuff on this blog occasionally, but the London blog and Our Virtual Trilogy will stop for a while until I get more time.  I plan to come back soon, as I know I won’t be giving up writing, which is a big part of my life.  However, I’ll still be in SL, but having fun, and catching up with my friends for the time being.

Well no one said ‘I like your hair’ not that they should have done, but you know the sort of thing, you instantly think it looks horrible.  Hibiscus arrived and she did say it looked nice though, she is a good friend!  She looked lovely in her sleek evening dress!

Actually it is very nicely made hair and it has a re-sizer with it, so maybe I needed to shrink it quite a bit, hmmm, might try that next time!   Both Hibiscus and I went to the CNN meeting this week with Nicole the CNN Producer dropping in, yet no one else was there, very strange, maybe people are on holiday etc, but we seem to have lost some good writers.  It was a shock to see Any1 Gynoid had cancelled her CNN account, I hope she decides to come back, ireports are a lot duller without her!  In the meantime I’ll carry on as usual although real life is so very busy lately!

There seems to be so much happening with politics in the UK and all around the world come to that, as people are beginning to find money a problem, I’ve heard even retailers in SL have not been making so much.  Kat and Laredo in the New London Village have always been up to date with what’s going on in real life with the cut backs in the UK and they decided to put on a demonstration concert to show how they feel.  I’ve been getting involved in real life politics too, so I’m devoting some of my time to work there, but I couldn’t resist making my own personal statement to the government when I covered Kat and Laredo’s demonstration for CNN.  Of course, I’ve always been quite political, even back in SL when I met a Daily Mail reporter pretending to be Peter Mandelson and voiced my opinions as people round me told me in IM that he was the real Mandelson, either way it had been fun (shame it wasn’t the real Gordon Brown, I just read to my astonishment, that when he was Chancellor and he sold the UK’s gold at the time when the market for gold was at its lowest, he didn’t even  use the money for Britain, he used it to invest in and prop up the Euro! Plus Europe have a claim to our gold and dollar reserves since the Maastricht treaty was signed!).  The demonstration concert in New London was great as well, because dj Garf Serpente played some brilliant music, so even demos can be good entertainment!

On a lighter note, Hibiscus has installed a game called ‘Greedy’ in her gardens and she and Ed have really got to grips with it.  I tried to play it when Brie and Seany showed me ages ago, but I couldn’t pick up what was happening.  Well Drax and I decided to learn together and went over to Hib’s place, which is next to mine, and we had a go.  Of course Drax shone, running away with the points! but I managed to grasp enough to play the game.  (thick or what!).  So when Hib and Ed came on line Drax and I went over to play them.

We had a really nice time, but I still gambled too much and lost, it was more lack of knowledge about the points than me taking risks.  Drax won again, so he did very well.  I had a game with Hib when the others left, but she beat me hands down!  I really must practice some more!

I put some great romantic poses in the caravan at the end of Lover’s Lane and decided to put another caravan near the houses I built, so I just left the doorway sitting poses in that one.  I also bought some gorgeous fairylights from Lilith and Dolly’s Heart VR garden centre and the sim is looking very pretty with those installed. 

Later I went over to see Up4 and Rux in Old Europe, Up4 is kindly letting me have a stall in his Easter Market.  The sim is looking absolutely beautiful with all the Spring flowers and stuff.  Up4 had a special Easter crocodile, not a rabbit you understand, but a croc with rabbit ears and this one flies too!.  We climbed onto the croc and Up4 took me all around the sim, luckily the croc must have had his dinner because he didn’t bite!

Up4 gave me my own Easter Croc, so I can fly around and scare people, it did make me laugh, although it was sort of cute!  After seeing Up4 I made it to the West End club where Clive Hissop had built the most magnificent set I’ve ever seen in SL, he turned the inside of the club into the Titanic and it looked amazing.  He is so clever,  at the end of the evening the floor tipped and we started to sink, sliding into the sea!  It was a night to remember and Hibiscus will be writing it up for Virtually London (lite) this week, so don’t miss it!