Fabulous Weekend!

Was going to write the Collectormania report for the CCs first, but have decided to get everything down here first and sort it out a bit, then post on the group tomorrow. So here's What I Did This Weekend:
Friday - Had a nine o'clock Russian oral, then nothing until two, so I got up nice and early, then when I got back from that class I spent some time deciding on my outfit for the Collectormania party. I eventually settled on my little black dress, with black sandals, black elbow-length gloves, my long string of pink pearls and my black scarf. Then I decided on my outfits for the con itself, and then I actually packed everything. I think I was quite restrained, because I've been known to take an entire huge rucksack for a two-day trip, and I only took my fabby purple trolley-case, and didn't even use the 25% extra luggage space. After that, I finished off my fanlisting and submitted it, checked my mail etc and added another episode guide to my M*A*S*H site. Lectures that afternoon were quite interesting, but truth be told I just wanted to go. I finished at about five, went home, had a bit of tea and set off to catch my train.
Once I was on the train, I got talking to a very nice guy who had just finished an Economics degree in Nottingham and wanted to move to Canada to be closer to his girlfriend. Managed to get an earlier train than planned and arrived in Milton Keynes a little after ten. A very nice and helpful taxi driver took me to the B&B, which was run by a Chinese couple. It was amazing to have a TV in my room, since I haven’t had one for two weeks. It was surprising how nice it was to just sit and watch Jonathan Ross – didn’t think I was missing TV that much, but it was cool to have it!
Managed to read a bit of my Russian novel before going to sleep – I’m actually quite enjoying it. It’s ‘We’ by Zamyatin – I can see now where George Orwell got many of his ideas for 1984.
Saturday – Woke up very early, seeing as I had to be at the shopping centre where the convention was being held for quarter to eight. As I got there I saw Kym arriving too – it was nice to see a familiar face! Went in and got my crew T-Shirt and badge/pass. When they were announcing who was doing what jobs, we were all standing where Billy Boyd was going to be signing later on, and a load of fans came in (don’t know how they got in!) and presumably they thought Billy was there, because they rushed at us screaming! It was like the wildebeest scene in the Lion King! So we had to tell them all to go back, because it was just the crew briefing!
I got assigned to ticketing for Danny Strong. Basically I handed out tickets with numbers on, and checked tickets and let people into the queue when their ticket numbers came up. Eleven hours of doing this have blurred together slightly, but here are a few incidents I remember from the day:
Kym explained to me how you can sing Sala Baker’s name to any tune. We tried it out. Lots of times.
Danny was off to lunch, and due to be back soon, so a queue was already forming for when he got back. He came and joined his own queue!
The Faerie Hobbits came and had a picture with Danny, but they came back later and asked to take another one, because he looked bored in the first one.
Several people got in a stress with me for asking them not to film – can I help it if that’s the rule?
Some people came up to me and asked who these people were. I explained that they were the Trio from Buffy. They went ‘Oh, I don’t watch Buffy. Can I go talk to them?’ Wuh? They didn’t even know who they were. Oh, the lure of celebrity.
I did a stint ticketing for Stacy Keibler (a WWE Wrestler, apparently) and she had gone off for a break and not told us when she was coming back. Two guys came up and asked where she was. I said she was on a break and I didn’t know when she would be back. They said ‘Oh, it’s ok, we know her personally, just take us to her.’ And I said, ‘No, seriously, she has gone on a break, I don’t even know where she is. Try back in quarter of an hour.’ And they were like: ‘No, we know her. Go get her, she probably wants to see us.’ Yeah. Whatever.
So after all that, a girl called Naomi who was also crewing said I could come back to her hotel to get ready for the party, since my B&B was a bit far and I’d just been planning to change in the loos. So once we’d picked up our gratitude money for crewing, we got a taxi with Kym and her roommate Skid, and got ready for the party.
We got there at about nine, and entered the VIP area, which was quite dull, actually. Upstairs had the disco so it was slightly better, but it wasn’t fantastic. Adam Busch’s band, Common Rotation, played, and it was ok. The disco was after that, so I Timewarped and Cha-Cha-Slid and Saturday Nighted for a bit, then about midnight I called a taxi. While I was waiting I looked at the exhibition of (3) famous cars – Knight Rider, the Batmobile and Starsky and Hutch’s car. That was mildly diverting. Overall the party wasn’t fabulous, but I got in for free and I didn’t have anything else to do, so it was ok.
Sunday – Didn’t have to get up quite so early today – had breakfast at nine, caught a bus at about ten and met Amelia, Mel and Ellie at just gone half past. We went right away for a look around the dealer tables (after I’d got a ticket to get Marina Sirtis’ autograph later) and saw lots of interesting stuff. Since I was going straight to the station afterward, I had my trolley-case with me, and it was really crowded so I kept banging into people with it. So I went and put it in the crew room, which was much more satisfactory.
After we’d looked around a bit, Amelia, Mel and Ellie went for lunch and I went to chat with some of the people I crewed with yesterday, and got Marina’s autograph and a picture taken with her. I asked about Spectres and apparently it will be going straight to DVD in the UK, but she didn’t know when. She had quite a bad cold, but she was still lovely to everybody.
After that I went for a bit of a shop at the dealer tables. I bought various things at various stages of the day, but here is a list of everything I got:
Marina Sirtis’ autograph
A pic of Troi in ‘A Fistful of Datas’, which, had I found it before I got my autograph, I would have had signed, because she rocked in that episode
Two Rocky Horror Show postcards
A Michael Shanks fridge magnet for my sister
An X-Files vid, which cost only £2
The Complete Illustrated Xena Companion
The African Queen on DVD, for only £2.99 (Hooray!! No more African Queen withdrawl!)
Dogma on DVD for £4.99
The Wormhole X-Treme patch I’ve been coveting for ages
Some Millie’s Cookies
Some sweets for the train home

After that I met up with the Trio (Amelia, Mel and Ellie, not the Buffy Trio!) again and we went for a look around the shopping centre itself, mostly HMV (where I got the DVDs) and Waterstones (where we sat on the floor of the SF&F section and had a chat). We saw Kate that I crewed with yesterday, and helped her fetch some coffee for Nicholas Brendon.
Then we went for another look around the dealer tables, generally mooched about and talked. We sat down for a while and a nice guy took some pictures of us, and a little boy surveyed us for a school project, about what kind of biscuits we liked best.
At about half four the Trio went home, and I went to get the aforementioned sweets for the journey home, and fetched my case from the crew room. Chatted to various people for a few minutes, then went to get the bus to the station for the train home.
My booked train wasn’t until gone eight o’clock, and it was only half five, but because I had a saver ticket I could get any train I liked and so I decided to get the ten past six train. To pass a bit of time I called my Mum and Stepdad. My Step-Gran was rushed into hospital the other day, and they were just off to visit her. Apparently she is much better now, and she’s having a pacemaker fitted. So that was good to hear.
Then I called my Dad, and talked to my sister for a bit. I am planning on taking her to Collectormania 7, since Michael Shanks is going and I said if he ever came to the UK I would take her to see him. Naturally she was happy to hear about it.
After getting off the phone, I saw two people in Middle-Earth costumes standing around. One of them had her back to me. Assuming (correctly) that they had also been to Collectormania, I went over to say hello. The girl with her back to me went: ‘Oh my God hi!’ and I realised that she was a friend of mine from ages back! We were friends in Primary School, and even though we went to different junior schools we were friends while we were in the Red Cross, then when that finished we sort of lost touch. We would smile and say hi if we saw one another, but we haven’t spoken properly for about seven years. I had seen her twice earlier at the con, but the first time I only saw her out of the corner of my eye and just thought it was someone who looked similar, then the second time I thought it might be her but I didn’t want to go up and say in case I was wrong, but it definitely was her.
It turned out that we were getting the same train to Birmingham before changing for our respective unis, so we sat together on the train and had a nice long chat about cons and fic and all that kind of stuff.
Got home a little before ten, it was quite a relief to be back! But I have had a great time. It was really interesting to crew one day and just attend the other – the day I crewed I was on my feet all day, it was mostly very boring, just handing out tickets, and I didn’t really see anything apart from my own little section, but there was a sense of camaraderie, I felt like I was part of it, plus I got money! Today I really enjoyed going for my autograph and looking around properly, but part of me wished I was still crewing. I think doing both is probably the best way to do it.
Well, it’s time I wrapped this up! There may be supplementary posts when I remember other exciting stuff that happened!