Collectormania 16, I think it is
May. 30th, 2010 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenToday, 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.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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 methathy_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. In case you are not that sort of person, and don't know who she is, she was the actress who played Kathryn Janeway, captain of Voyager. I love her. I mean, on two levels. I loved Janeway - because if a girl can grow up to be a starship captain a girl can do anything. It's more complicated than that, but in a lot of ways, it isn't - I watched Voyager when it was being syndicated in the UK at the end of the nineties, and it used to be on at five. I came in from school to an empty house, put the lights on, made some coffee and watched it, and I was not good at school. I mean, I was smart, but I didn't like the same things as everyone else, I didn't have the same interests, I used to come home and watch Star Trek. She drank her coffee black and I loved her.
And on the other level, Kate Mulgrew looks just the same as she did, she's elegant and so distinguished and her voice hasn't changed - she has the most amazing voice, I defy you not to think so - and her convention appearances this year are for an Alzheimer's charity, after the death of her mother. She's amazing. I am a soppy fangirl, and I got her autograph and I am going to take it with me when I move to America and stick it on the wall. So there.
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. I have this to say about it:
-OMG NASREEN DIDN'T DIE. I loved her! A brown scientist lady who finds love and then makes her choice to go after what she wants, even if it means being under the ground for a thousand years. I loved her.
-Ambrose. Interestingly handled, I think; and I especially liked that the fact she did it for her family didn't get her a free pass on the consequences, but at the same time she isn't an umitigated villain. It's pleasingly complicated.
-Eldane. I absolutely loved him. Elder-statesman Silurian! He and the scientist chap were fabulous, and I do love the diversity of opinion among the Silurians, because they are people too.
-Rory saying "We have to take her back." There's character development for you, right there. Rory who was a bit useless, Rory who takes the responsibility.
-Nasreen and Amy speak for the planet. A brown, scientist lady speaks for the planet. Sorry, my heart. And they are great. "Be extraordinary," says the Doctor, and they are - they sit down to the table and they do what has to be done. I think that's awesome. (Although they do give away the Australian outback. People live there!)
-"I've got to be honest with you, son. We're in the centre of the earth. And there are lizard men."
-And then...
RORY. The whole room of us shouted, "Nooooo!" with one fangirl voice. Rory! I love him, I love how he's been written thus far; as a sweet, little-bit-insecure, loving and brave companion. And Amy forgetting him was so cruel and so sharply, quickly evoked, I thought it was very well done for all I was going "Rory nooooooo!" in my head. I do wonder what they're going to do with this; it seems entirely too cruel to have this be the last we hear of him, and the ring! Oh, the ring. My heart, again.
Colleen immediately declared we should go to the con with t-shirts with "I remember Rory" on the front and "Who's Rory?" on the back. Oh, Rory. Love. Waaaail.
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 the bus stopped for no particular reason that I could see by the side of the road just out of Oxford. I saw a woman speaking to the driver, so for a while I thought that maybe she just needed to make use of nearby shrubbery - it's a long journey, and the toilet was out of order. But the time stretched on and stretched on, the woman's friends also got off the bus, as did the driver, then a bunch of people who just wanted a cigarette. Shouldn't be too long, said the driver, but we have a problem. Unspecified. I read my book and pondered the matter, and at length four burly chaps from Thames Valley Police got on the bus, went to the back and asked a man to come with them. He did, and the five of them departed into the night.
"Do you want to know why we had to wait?" asked the driver, once they'd gone, to a chorus of yes from the whole bus.
The driver looked disgusted. "We had a flasher on the bus. Couldn't tell you before in case he did a runner." And he helped the woman back on the bus to her seat personally, and we got into Oxford only twenty minutes late. I have to say, I was impressed with Stagecoach and I think I might write them a letter. The woman went to tell the driver about the flasher, and he took it seriously, he didn't worry about delays or making a fuss, he stopped the bus immediately and called the police. Nothing more or less than that. I might have been afraid to tell the driver, if that had been me, but in the future I might not be.
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.
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. In case you are not that sort of person, and don't know who she is, she was the actress who played Kathryn Janeway, captain of Voyager. I love her. I mean, on two levels. I loved Janeway - because if a girl can grow up to be a starship captain a girl can do anything. It's more complicated than that, but in a lot of ways, it isn't - I watched Voyager when it was being syndicated in the UK at the end of the nineties, and it used to be on at five. I came in from school to an empty house, put the lights on, made some coffee and watched it, and I was not good at school. I mean, I was smart, but I didn't like the same things as everyone else, I didn't have the same interests, I used to come home and watch Star Trek. She drank her coffee black and I loved her.
And on the other level, Kate Mulgrew looks just the same as she did, she's elegant and so distinguished and her voice hasn't changed - she has the most amazing voice, I defy you not to think so - and her convention appearances this year are for an Alzheimer's charity, after the death of her mother. She's amazing. I am a soppy fangirl, and I got her autograph and I am going to take it with me when I move to America and stick it on the wall. So there.
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. I have this to say about it:
-OMG NASREEN DIDN'T DIE. I loved her! A brown scientist lady who finds love and then makes her choice to go after what she wants, even if it means being under the ground for a thousand years. I loved her.
-Ambrose. Interestingly handled, I think; and I especially liked that the fact she did it for her family didn't get her a free pass on the consequences, but at the same time she isn't an umitigated villain. It's pleasingly complicated.
-Eldane. I absolutely loved him. Elder-statesman Silurian! He and the scientist chap were fabulous, and I do love the diversity of opinion among the Silurians, because they are people too.
-Rory saying "We have to take her back." There's character development for you, right there. Rory who was a bit useless, Rory who takes the responsibility.
-Nasreen and Amy speak for the planet. A brown, scientist lady speaks for the planet. Sorry, my heart. And they are great. "Be extraordinary," says the Doctor, and they are - they sit down to the table and they do what has to be done. I think that's awesome. (Although they do give away the Australian outback. People live there!)
-"I've got to be honest with you, son. We're in the centre of the earth. And there are lizard men."
-And then...
RORY. The whole room of us shouted, "Nooooo!" with one fangirl voice. Rory! I love him, I love how he's been written thus far; as a sweet, little-bit-insecure, loving and brave companion. And Amy forgetting him was so cruel and so sharply, quickly evoked, I thought it was very well done for all I was going "Rory nooooooo!" in my head. I do wonder what they're going to do with this; it seems entirely too cruel to have this be the last we hear of him, and the ring! Oh, the ring. My heart, again.
Colleen immediately declared we should go to the con with t-shirts with "I remember Rory" on the front and "Who's Rory?" on the back. Oh, Rory. Love. Waaaail.
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 the bus stopped for no particular reason that I could see by the side of the road just out of Oxford. I saw a woman speaking to the driver, so for a while I thought that maybe she just needed to make use of nearby shrubbery - it's a long journey, and the toilet was out of order. But the time stretched on and stretched on, the woman's friends also got off the bus, as did the driver, then a bunch of people who just wanted a cigarette. Shouldn't be too long, said the driver, but we have a problem. Unspecified. I read my book and pondered the matter, and at length four burly chaps from Thames Valley Police got on the bus, went to the back and asked a man to come with them. He did, and the five of them departed into the night.
"Do you want to know why we had to wait?" asked the driver, once they'd gone, to a chorus of yes from the whole bus.
The driver looked disgusted. "We had a flasher on the bus. Couldn't tell you before in case he did a runner." And he helped the woman back on the bus to her seat personally, and we got into Oxford only twenty minutes late. I have to say, I was impressed with Stagecoach and I think I might write them a letter. The woman went to tell the driver about the flasher, and he took it seriously, he didn't worry about delays or making a fuss, he stopped the bus immediately and called the police. Nothing more or less than that. I might have been afraid to tell the driver, if that had been me, but in the future I might not be.
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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2010-05-30 03:47 pm (UTC)Personally, I think that Israel has the most tenuous claim to being in Eurovision.
no subject
on 2010-05-30 03:55 pm (UTC)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.
POIDH :P
That is really good news about the bus. Um, relative to how good stories-about-flashers can be, that is.
no subject
on 2010-05-30 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-05-30 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-05-30 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-05-30 04:22 pm (UTC)NO, RORY! I was whimpering with horror when it happened. I'm sure they're going to bring him back (otherwise why involve the crack?), but still. Woe.
no subject
on 2010-05-31 04:56 am (UTC)2. PLS PLS PLS CAN NASREEN COME BACK AS A COMPANION? SHE IS MY FAVORITE SO FAR IN THIS SEASON!
no subject
on 2010-05-31 06:43 pm (UTC)I realised while failing to sleep last night, that we'd all be so upset about Rory that we ignored the problem of the pseudo-Silurians being left with a time crack! Poor Silurians, about to be wiped out of history. (Colleen pointed out that in every episode with Silurians, EVER, the Doctor ends up blowing them up. So having never existed is possibly a kinder way to die.)
Finally, Milton Keynes is EVIL and I had such trouble leaving! I actually drove in a large circle before having to just start all over again. But I made it out in the end!
no subject
on 2010-06-01 04:24 pm (UTC)So much this! I want to be Nasreen when I grow up.
I am very impressed by that bus driver.
no subject
on 2010-06-01 04:31 pm (UTC)Lucy is
no subject
on 2010-06-02 12:26 pm (UTC)