Collectormania 6 - the con report

In Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman write:

“Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be a modern, efficient, healthy and, all in all, pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.”

In short, I have no idea why they host conventions there. But we do not ask such questions, and turn our minds instead to the con report for Collectormania 6. Characters include myself, Colleen (hathy_col), Clare (osiris13), Liz (flickerswitch), and Am-Chau (amchau). We begin at the beginning, as you should, from the moment I wandered into Lime Street to be met with giant, slowly revolving inflatable flowers.

Friday - or, she’s not even half the girl she... oww.

I met Colleen in the station as planned, believe it not; there were no accidents, and I even gave her birthday present, acquired the last time Hannah and I went shopping. It was The Mammoth Book of Vampires, although I now seem to think of it as The Mammoth Book of Vampire Porn. In any case, once Clare had arrived, the three of retreated to Costa Coffee and caught up while waiting for the train.

( It is a truth universally acknowledged )

Saturday - or, the right to go to a party as the punctuation

Colleen was very nice to me in the morning. Passive-aggressively cheerful, as she put it, no kicking me out of bed which is always a good thing, and there was coffee. I drank it without a second thought – for all I know it may have been decaf! – and eventually rolled out of bed in a fairly good mood. Nothing like the first morning of a con. We went down, stole breakfast, and went out to get a taxi.

We waited. We chatted. While we were talking, we could see two (short) people behind us, and they eventually wandered across to where we were standing, because their taxi had arrived.

( At which point the penny dropped )

Sunday - or, soft porn pics of Alyson Hannigan

In the morning, Clare, Colleen and I compared notes on the night before. While I was being blown away by Karma Chameleon, they went for dinner to the Harvester, met Kenny Baker (again!), did homework, and watched The Other Boleyn Girl, historical drama on television. And nothing else. I feel moved to quote from my paper notes here:

Col and Clare met R2D2.
And they watched films and did homework.
We believe.
Thousands wouldn’t.
But we do.
Because I value my SANITY.

And so on, etc. Sunday morning was bright and nice, despite my extreme lack of sleep, I didn’t object that much to Colleen dragging me out of bed. She was in fact very nice about it, and while we were talking I got dressed and packed and shook my head in quiet disbelief at the fact the other two were watching Sunday morning cartoons, i.e. Spiderman and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles again. We checked out of the hotel with me hiding behind a pot plant once again, then stole breakfast and went out to wait for transport.

While we were there, Colleen started to idly ( formulate a plan for world domination. )

Once more, with feeling – and Nobby will not burn!