Collectormania 6 - the con report

[raven]

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 that Clare and Colleen are now ClareandColleen, later described by Am-Chau as the Lesbian Odd Couple, which seemed to me to ring true, but they had resolved to behave themselves throughout this trip and keep me from ripping my eyes out Oedipus-fashion. This actually worked out quite well.

Everything going to plan, we went and found somewhere to sit on the train, thoroughly scaring the man sitting with us. The seats are arranged in groups of four around a table, so it was the three of us , plus this guy. He fell asleep eventually, probably in an attempt to escape us. We weren’t being all that violent, I should point out – we were working. Clare was doing Maths (and occasionally yelling about factorisation), Colleen was underlining bits about the American constitution, and I was stuck with the decidedly unglamorous topic of urine production in the kidney.

We arrived in Milton Keynes at about eight thirty and got a taxi without the panic of last time; once again, the three of us were sharing a room designed for two, and thus I had to hide behind a pot plant while Clare and Colleen checked in. I am useful for some things, however, so they retrieved me at length and we went off to find our room, eat Pot Noodles and generally make a mess. We spent most of the night rewriting the lyrics to Once More With Feeling for the Discworld characters, which is one of the things you do when you’re getting ready for a convention. Going Through The Motions fits Sam Vimes without any change to the lyrics at all (except possibly “she’s not even half the girl she… oww!”)

Clare provided the best line of the evening. “And we will walk through the fire, ‘cause Nobby will not burn!”

I giggled. At length, we went to bed, three of us sharing as usual with me falling down the crack in the middle. According to the other two, I stole everyone else’s blankets. Yay me.

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 for Colleen. “Were you in Star Wars?” she demanded.

“Yes,” answered Kenny Baker (for it was he), and I think my mouth dropped open. He asked us if we were going to the convention, and then if we wanted to share a taxi. We were all for it, but nasty mean taxi driver wouldn’t let us all in.

So off he went, and we three took deep breaths and kept our silence until the taxi had definitely disappeared around a corner. Then we turned to each other.

“We met R2D2 in a car park!”

“Squee!”

Because yes, we did. We totally rock. If anyone’s wondering, Colleen only recognised him because of that Sky One special on ultimate sci-fi robots. All I can say is that it’s a good thing one of us watched it, because think of what we would have missed. Hee.

Later, we saw a couple walking out into the car park in costume. The guy was wearing a leather jacket and boots; the girl was wearing a low flowing dress and carrying a doll. “It’s Spike and Drusilla!” I exclaimed, and the guy pretended to combust in the sunlight. Good times.

We arrived at the con at about ten or so, and were pleased to find everything was just as we remembered it. I wondered whether we’d meet Claire-the-dealer again, and we did! She was there in the same place, and as we came near I was all ready to start explaining who we were, but her eyes lit up when she saw us. “It’s the three students!”

I was partly impressed that she remembered us and worried that we stuck in her memory. To prove that we still have a tendency to buy things, Colleen bought a Hufflepuff patch. She’s decided to stop denying it to herself and embrace her Hufflepuff heritage. She’s offered me the Ravenclaw one. I have decided to see about getting myself Sorted before taking her up on the offer.

Then we we went to Costa (the same one, still doing good business) and went to meet a girl in a pointed purple hat. “It’s a very Hannah hat,” someone said, and I privately agreed. The best thing about the hat was the way it proved unequivocally that this could be no-one but Am-Chau. We ended up calling her that in real life too, because of Emma Wood and Emma Lenfestey and all the many other Emmas I seem to know.

Yay for Am-Chau. Complete with hat and fannish disposition, she fitted right in. I introduced her to Clare and Colleen (not that they need introduction, really), and took her to buy cookies. This was a thing we had to do – offering cookies to everyone we met – and involved buying one cookie of every flavour except oatmeal and raisin, which is a waste of a cookie. While we were at it, we met some Imperial Stormtroopers, at which point Colleen made the best comment of the weekend.

“I think they’re just men in costumes.”

Am-Chau and Colleen bothered them. Thankfully we got a photo of them doing it. And then we went to Costa (again!) to introduce Am-Chau to the concept of raspberry-based dairy products, and meet Liz. Some time passed in general chatting and acceptance of fannish environment (and stealing a wooden spoon, which we secreted in Liz’s bag) but this being a convention, we did have to think about meeting some of the actual con guests.

The first of which was Tom Lenk, Andrew in Buffy, and he was hobbitishly cute and rather adorable, but cold. Similarly with Nicholas Brendon, who was very blah about the whole thing. While we were queuing up to see them, we glared across at Adam Busch (Warren) because Hannah had said we must.

In actual fact, the first guest we met whom we really liked was Sam Jones. Now, if I’d recognised him at all, it would have been as Aris Boch (the bounty hunter in the Stargate episode Deadman Switch), but this, ladies and corvids, is Flash Gordon. And he was charming. Insisted on talking to us all, rearranging us so we could have photos taken without Am-Chau’s hat in the way, made sure we were enjoying ourselves, took a cookie (double chocolate!) and sent us on our way with goodwill. He was a very nice man indeed.

Which brings us nicely to lunchtime, penniless-students-at-the-chippy style, and Am-Chau’s unexpected purchase of five Star Wars figurines – two Qui-Gon, one Obi-Wan, one Mace Windu and one Han Solo. Liz approved of this, because it means she can pose the figures. I don’t need to know.

There was singing, after that. There’s always singing. Anyone who has ever heard me sing (which, to be frank, means everyone who has ever met me) knows that I tend to make up in enthusiasm what I lack in tunefulness, and that probably applied to everyone present. We did Going Through The Motions, and the Mustard (it was the only one Liz knew, having only been given the songs on Thursday) but we missed Under Your Spell because none of us can go high enough, and Clare said at one point that she couldn’t ever sing Under Your Spell/Standing because it’s my song, mine and Hannah’s, and this was a thought I found touching and horrifying in equal proportions.

All of this preamble is to establish that we ended up singing I’ll Never Tell, and got told to shut up by the local scally variant! Achievement!

All told, it was a good day. We bid goodbye to Am-Chau at about four-ish, with rather a great deal of reluctance, and went back to the hotel for general recharging of batteries. I accomplish this by reading, and I wasn’t the only one. We had cookies and coffee, and Colleen was reading vampire porn, Clare was reading The Truth (my favourite Discworld book) and I was reading Head Over Heels In The Dales, a hysterically funny memoir of life as a Yorkshire school inspector (would I make this up?). It was relaxing, until there came the moment I realised I needed to wash my hair and then dry it with a criminally anaemic hairdryer. While I swore at it (the hairdryer, and also my hair), Clare told me lightbulb jokes.

It was fun. Not so fun when I realised I had the cool Beatles-patchwork skirt, and a top to wear and everything, but the only shoes in my possession were the big fuck-off boots. “I look like a tit,” I bewailed.

“I think you look Bohemian,” Colleen said. “Although Bohemia no longer exists, it’s now Germany. You’re making a statement.”

“It’s smart casual slash fancy dress,” I said. “Which am I?”

“The slash,” Clare said. “You’re the slash. That’s appropriate.”

“Making a statement,” I agreed. “The right to go to a party as the punctuation.”

Eventually, I bid them goodbye and went. The party in question was the Collectormania VIP party, which we weren’t supposed to be going to, only Liz texted me a couple of nights before to say mettanna’s grandmother had passed away, so she wasn’t coming and there was a spare ticket. I was initially more aggravated about not seeing Sidg to think too much about the party, but I agreed to go in the end. The understanding was that I’d go to the party in order to give ClareandColleen some alone time. The unspoken understanding was that they’d never tell me what they did with said “alone time.”

I met Liz at the place, and we went in. Now, I was rather reluctant to go to the party. I’m not good at parties because I don’t drink and can’t mingle. It’s difficult. The first couple of hours, I lingered in a corner morosely drinking peach schnapps. It wasn’t going well. But eventually, Liz and I ventured outside to find people getting excited about the Batmobile, of all things, and also the car from Knight Rider which I have temporarily forgotten the name. However, it took the Gran Torino to make us start getting overexcited. By dint of raffle tickets, standing in strategic places, and when all else failed, pushing other people out of the way, we both got a ride.

It was too much fun. I sat in front and got to be Hutch – the driver was an insane Kiwi for whom pavement was just an obstacle to be driven over. The car handled like a couch on wheels, and took corners like one too. It seems dreamlike, now I look back, but it happened. Heh. It was something to chalk up as an experience.

After we’d done that, Liz and I attempted to get drinks, with no success. I started feeling out of place again, but somehow or other, we ended up in front of the fancy dress, and that was certainly fun. There were some people in cardboard boxes dressed as the Batmobile, lots of elves, someone else dressed as Xena and three Queen Amidalas. The winner, however, was my personal favourite, and I think garnettrees is going to love this – she was dressed as insane!Rimmer, complete with gingham dress and Mr Flibble hand puppet! I thought it was hilarious.

And when that was over, there came the band, and my night started getting a lot better.

The audience seemed divided between die-hard fans and people who were just here for the ride. I think everyone went home happy, with the possible exception of the sound techie we overheard as saying, “Fuck the band and fuck the horse they rode in on!” Possibly in agreement with him was one guy standing near me and Liz, who wouldn’t stop heckling. Finally, Adam said, “There’s a new word I’ve learned over here.” He played a chord. “Wan-ker.”

That shut him up, and made me giggle.

And when they’d gone through their repertoire, and I had found I was enjoying myself hugely, there was something of a political rally. As Adam Busch himself put it, “We’re here tonight, we’re in London on Monday, we’re in Manchester on Tuesday, then we’re going to Scotland and Ireland, and then we’re going home. To vote.”

Not to induce heart failure in anyone, but it would seem most of the people at the con were pro-Kerry. They had finished their set, but they came back on for one more song:

“Who keeps on trusting you
When you've been cheating?
God does, but I don't
God will, but I won't
And that's the difference
Between God and me.”

Only, the next line was: “Who will want you after you lie about weapons of mass destruction-”

And the audience pretty much exploded. It was the best gig I’ve been to in a while, and once the band went off, they started the party with that song from Nerf Herder. I love fans; there couldn’t have been a single person in the room who didn’t have the urge to play air guitar to the Buffy theme.

That eventually segued into the Village People, and Liz and I went to meet the band, who were lovely. They gave me their autographs on the back of a flyer, and signed the CD Liz bought. I felt like I was betraying Hannah, but they’re such a good band! And he can’t help playing Warren.

Liz and I eventually retreated to a corner where she drank Bailey’s and Coke (not together, but as good as) and snarked our way through the other guests. One woman in particular – we couldn’t believe what she was wearing. A pink PVC bikini, no more, with a pink PVC dog collar, and no, it wasn’t fancy dress. We snarked. While we were doing it, we spotted the Phelps twins (Fred and George), who were easily the
nicest of the guests. The others were all scallies.

Then, we went out and tried to get a taxi with middling success. I eventually got back at about half one, waking up Clare and Colleen in the process and feeling quite the rebel. I went to bed in the dark without tripping over anyone, and generally considered it was a good night.

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. Cheethamist political theory involves first-born children being the superior classes and all other children being the uber-mensch, condemned to working in treadmills their entire lives (á la the Stargate episode Beneath the Surface). Thankfully, she was distracted by the fact she’d forgotten her phone. As I put it later: world breathes sigh of relief as dictator distracted by something sparkly.

We reached the con forgetting about the late Sunday opening time, and while Colleen was quite ready to lurch at the glass zombie-style, Liz informed us to come to Costa and get in that way. So we did, and Liz and I squeed a bit about Common Rotation before we were let in.

Sunday was a day of Quests, or alternatively Missions from Glod. Clare wanted patches, Liz wanted a print of Jonas Quinn, and I wanted one of Amber Benson. The shared desire was for another print – of Anthony Stewart Head in drag. And we also had more guests to meet. Traditionally, we do Lord of the Rings guests on a Sunday, the first one of whom was Billy Boyd (Pippin). He was lovely, and he chatted and signed autographs, including one for Clare’s sister. Clare is afraid her sister won’t pay her for it, and my suggestion was if she doesn’t, to just take it off her and send it to Am-Chau. We all agreed this was a good idea.

Following that, Liz filmed us. She has aspirations of directing, and filmed first Billy Boyd, then us, all of which was fun but made me despair about my voice – do I really sound like that? – before we went back to questing.

Most of the Quests had little success, though we did have fun going through the dealers’ fair. Once again, we met Dibbler, and had to drag Colleen away bodily from the stall that sold swords.

But one Quest was successful. From a distance, Liz spotted the relevant print, and we all jumped up and down about it. The dealer, bless him, thought we were getting excited about James Marsters. We weren’t. ASH in drag, specifically Rocky Horror drag, actually did happen and now we have the photographic evidence. The print is strangely compelling. You can’t help but stare at it.

The last guests we met were the Phelps twins (Fred and George), whom Liz and I had met at the party. They were very, very cute. They do things at the same time unconsciously, and they even sign autographs in tandem. Everyone liked them.

Then it was just Quests. Liz found her Jonas one, and while I didn’t find an Amber Benson one until later, I did find a very nice Willow/Tara one. While we were looking, I commented, “There seem to be a lot of soft porn pics of Alyson Hannigan.”

“Because a lot of people fancy her,” said Colleen decisively. “Of which you are one.”

“Yes, I do!” I said, realising. “I really do!”

I got teased about it consistently afterwards, but I didn’t mind.

And that was that, really. Further highlights included our accosting one of Dibbler’s employees to tell him he was one of Dibbler’s employees, and learning that Emily has a boyshape! She phoned, and we teased her a little before breaking out into a more or less spontaneous chorus of a vague disclaimer is nobody’s friend. In short, we threatened to beat him to death with a shovel.

None of us has met him yet. Dear me.

And in the end, we had to leave. We went to pick up our stuff, and as we got to the station, Colleen had the blonde moment to end all blonde moments. She was convinced she’d forgotten the train tickets, and was just explaining this to the taxi driver when the missing bag turned up. The confusion added twenty pence to the fare, which she paid Clare for the principle of the thing. It amused me.

And this probably would have been the end of the story, if we hadn’t been an hour early for the train (the ticket guy who told us this turned out to be a fan, too, talking happily about Flash Gordon). We sat down in a corner, perched on our bags, “looking like hobos,” and settled down to wait. But as we sat there, we became aware of people close by, singing.

Specifically, they were singing:

“She is the one, she’s such wonderful fun, such passion and grace,
Warm in the night when I’m riding her tight… embrace, tight embrace!
I’ll never let her go, the love we’ve shared can only grow,
The only trouble is… no. I’ll never tell.”

We waited the requisite pause, working out the verse, and as they went silent, we joined in.

“He snores,
She breezes,
Say housework and he freezes,
She eats these skeezy cheeses that I can’t describe!”

Needless to say, we got their attention, and moved across to meet them and have a good old singalong. It was, as I said later, what we’d been waiting for the entire time – for someone to join in! And we were the ones actually joining in, for once. It was probably the best ending we could have had.

The train journey was Not Of The Fun, seeing as we had to sit on the floor for part of the journey, but it had its moments – Colleen carping about my pronunciation again, for one, and trying to set me up with… um, someone – and ended in the usual dimly-lit goodbye at Lime Street.

And that really is it. No more cons until after exams are over, sadly. But this one was wonderful, and could only have been made more wonderful had Hannah come or Am-Chau stayed longer.

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

Comments

[mettanna.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, that was a wonderful report, it almost makes up for not being there. I so wish i could have seen you all again, and you can bet that i'm going to be there for C7!

[bekkypk.livejournal.com]

my boi went to a convention in milton keynes on saturday O_o;;
I don't know why people are so keen on it for a conventuoin centre, my uncle lives there so i know it well, and its a dump.
xx

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Heh, the exchange about being Bohemian/punctuation cracked me up. You people are too clever for me. :)

Keep the Kerry faith over there. We had our the vice presidents' debate tonight, and it was disheartening. If only there weren't that silly law in place about needing to be American to vote....

Anyway, missed you madly. One of these days, I have to find my way to a con.

[hathy-col.livejournal.com]

You know you'll be voting for a change as political scientist Ivor Crewe put it voting for Cheethamist policies in the late 2030s!

As always, your convention reports are so the best.

[amchau.livejournal.com]

Arr, that be a fine con re-porrt. I only wish I'd still been there when you met the other singers. And that we were still there now...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*grins* I'm glad I could help. I really did wish you were there, it wasn't fair!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Sure it wasn't the same one? I mean, how many could there have been on one weekend in one place?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heh, we are not. We just have a tendency to get off the point.

You know, Time are making noise about non-Americans being allowed to vote, simply because America affects our politics, too. I would vote if I could, trust me. At least it's only three months till I'm legal.

Missed you, too! I want desperately to drag you first to Exeter and then to wherever I happen to be at the time, so we can do the con thing and generally squee and consume raspberry-based dairy products.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I daresay you're right. And having got into power, you'll pass an Enabling Law and get yourself firmly entrenched as dictator.

And, hee. Yay for conventions.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*grins* If only, indeed. I've been told I sing too much. This is probably right.

[bekkypk.livejournal.com]

well it depends, was some people from star trek (data and worf) there?
xx

[amchau.livejournal.com]

I don't think you sing too much. This could be a skewed opinion, but it's mine and I agree with it.