Collectormania 16, I think it is

Today, I am having a quiet day doing nothing very much. The sun is emerging slowly and it's good.

This is mostly because I got up yesterday at the crack of dawn, dragged Shim out of bed too, filled my bag with water bottles, cereal bars and Haribo, and got the X5 - for the first time! how can I have lived in Oxford five years without ever going through this particular rite of passage - to Milton Keynes. I have been to Milton Keynes on three previous occasions, all for the same reason - conventions. I am not cool, okay. Never have been, never will be. Moving right along. I didn't go to any for four years until last year, and this is my second within a year. Maybe it's indicative of how you can take the girl out of geekland, etc.

So, I got the X5 into Milton Keynes, which is still total hell - the city, not the X5. I mean, seriously, I know it's a cliché to talk about how awful it is, but oh, so many roundabouts, such a total lack of being able to walk anywhere, and yes it's lovely and green but so is the countryside. I mean. Sometimes in cities you like to be able to walk places without walking boots and a crook, or the benefit of an internal combustion engine. Argh. hathy_col got really rather stressed out round about roundabout number 355, which seemed to me be a very restrained response to all the endless revolving through Dantesque circles.

ANYWAY. The Collectormania empire has been ousted out of its usual location and been stuck in a football stadium in Bletchley, so accordingly I skidded up around lunchtime and met hathy_col, tau_sigma, stupidore and ann_pan and Lucy-who-is-not-on-LJ in the queue to meet Chris Barrie, and she - Lucy - explained in hushed tones that she'd loved him since the age of thirteen and then went an endearingly brilliant shade of pink. I had never met her before, but decided she must be some type of kindred spirit. After this we went to the dealers' room to look around and warm up a little.

Yes, about that. From the purely logistical standpoint, this was one of the worse conventions I'd been to - it was all arranged in a long line, so you had to walk for miles to get from one end to the other; it might be a day in late May, but the rain had been driving all day and the whole place was exposed to the elements, except the dealers' room which was too cramped and stiflingly hot; and the stewards were mostly all stuck on the one setting, which was "irrationally angry", and on the whole there was no food to speak of, and no coffee. I was a little frustrated by it, but the company made up for it, as usual. I love conventions of this type, where you wander around in a big gang of other women and don't feel obliged to attend any particular panel or go and see any particular guest or do anything

I missed going to meet Patrick Stewart, on account of not having been enough of an early-bird to get tickets, but I went to meet Kate Mulgrew instead. ( about that )

At length, the party acquired food and retreated to the hotel room to eat and vegetate in peace, with the help of three gigantic pizzas and garlic bread, potato wedges and what the Domino's pizza menu described as "chicken strippers".

("Oh," said Tali, whose sense of humour gets charmingly cutting at unexpected moments, "do they do a little dance, do a little twirl, then pluck their own feathers off?")

In the meantime, Ann and Lucy had decided that what I really ought to do was try on their Star Trek dresses. (Katie had been searching vain for one all day.) The first one, Ann's, was a little red number with jaw-dropping cleavage (it came from Ann Summers!) that I liked a lot, for all I had to wear it without a bra and looked rather nippletastic. The second one was an "official", a little blue science dress which I also loved. I now want one of my own, so I can wear it with amazing high-heeled boots and have a fancy-dress party just to do so.

And then we watched Doctor Who. ( Cold Blood )

The BBC, with its inimitable talent for scheduling, then segued into Eurovision with scarcely a pause. I stayed for the Azerbaijani entry - okay, I have said this before and I'm going to say it again, Azerbaijan is not in Europe, and please no one comment to explain it, I prefer having it as a delightful mystery - and also the Spanish entry (there was a pitch invasion! Random chap ran on, did a little dance in the middle of the Spanish act, was dragged off by security), and paused for the amazing Moldovans (with the chap who was greatly sexually attracted to his own saxophone) before finally, with great regret, departing. I caught the last bus back to Oxford and thought that my adventures were over for the day.

( but they weren't - er, this might be triggering for some )

So I returned, fell asleep almost instantly, and I have to say, it was a very, very nice day. Thank you to all who made it so! And today I do nothing but sleep and write.