Whats Made your day or not.....

Past two days I’ve gone to my first actual convention! MCM in London. My girlfriend loves going and as there was panel on Ghosts this year which intrigued me and she was entering her cosplay in the masquerade, I took the plunge. A lot of fun was had, so maybe, just maybe, I’ll do it again sometime.

Also on a Who theme, Paul Cornell had an interesting Q&A to himself. He seems quite happy to have stepped back from Who to allow newer writers to come through and build out his own catalogue, but wouldn’t say no if the call from TV show came.

I have been to Timelash VIII (the German Who convention) all of the weekend.
It was a great change of scenery for me.
I just love all the creativity with the costumes, meeting fellow crazy people and all the wonderful interaction with the actors.
On Friday night, we fans had organized a get-together via the Facebook-group in a restaurant, it was great to sit together with all the other fans and geek out completely over the fandom, Big Finish and the actors. It was great to just sit together with like-minded people and sharing a meal and some drinks.

The convention happened in a small rural town this time, at their town hall. The previous venue at the much larger city of Kassel did not want us back, so we went full rural.
Around 700 fans were present, and many were in costumes, so we completely stunned the small town tranquility.
During lunchtime on Saturday, many the dressed up people made their way to the market in the search for food. We were THE event. I arrived there in my headless monk costume and immediately, I had a large following of curious retirement age people, to whom I explained the event, gave them some performance and generally told them what was going on. There was a food truck of a Greek guy, where I bought some pita with sheep cheese, and he was totally "in the know" since he had read all the local newspaper articles and he even knew the TV series!

We cosplayers also had pictures taken and short interviews for a variety of social media and the local newspapers. People just came up to us and asked if we wanted to be part of an article, some Instagram page, the official advertising flyer.... and so on. I said yes to everyone who asked, so I might be featured on Instagram or similar (not being there personally, though). I think showing some enthusiasm and representing the fandom is important and I just took my cosplay seriously (as both the headless monk and the Sixth Doctor, I wore both costumes).

The convention also featured a heavy contingent of ESA (European Space Agency) people since the ESA control station is just 25km away in Darmstadt. This is where they control all the satellites and the deep space probes. It was AWESOME!!!! I spend 5 hours (!!!) of the convention with ESA. I went to their talks, the workshops, discussions and also asked around a million questions at their stall in the trading / exhibition hall. So awesome! There were the scientists who built and control the weather satellites, and the deep space probes like Hera and the Solar Orbiter.
They all geeked out so much about their work, and they were so proud and enthusiastic about their "babies", it was like talking to the guys from "Big Bang Theory". International team, too, so the talks / discussions were mainly in English (Greek, Spanish, Italian and UK scientists, besides a couple of Germans).
I absolutely LOVED it.
I hope they are back next year, because this was fantastic.

The convention itself-
The actors were a delight and sharing their stories and doing little performances and just being around to chat to was great. This is why I love this little, personal convention.
Guests were Wendy Padbury, Gary Russel, Tommy Knight, Katy Manning and Sylvester McCoy.
Sylvester and Katy ruled this convention.
Especially Katy was like a whirlwind of activity and she is such a huggy person! Seriously, she hugged everyone. I myself got 3 hugs from her. She was the life of the event.
Gary Russel talked at length about his time at Big Finish and how BF got the rights and all the history, basically.
The others also talked about their BF work, but nobody spilled any beans that we haven't heard of, yet.
I think they are by now keep a very tight lid on things.
Gary Russel however said that he is very happy with the Gallifrey anniversary stories that he wrote, where he puts Narvin through the wringer, because he really wanted to make Sean Carlsen work for his money. Both stories, while years apart in the timeline, will work together and there will be a big pay-off at the end. I am tempted to get this release now, even if I am not the biggest fan of Gallifrey personally.

As of convention loot- since I am broke due to my car issues, I was on a tight budget.
I allowed myself one autograph (from Katy) and one photograph (also with Katy).
The Who Store also had the DVD box set of the latest TV season, so I got that one, too, so I can finally watch the episodes.
And I got the convention exclusive comic book.
Even with this, I had spent more money than I had planned. Oh well.

I had great fun with Katy Manning-
I had the picture taken dressed up as a headless monk, and she loved the costume- in the end, the picture showed her peeking under my monk hood. Adorable. And I got my first hug!
Then I had her sign one of my favorite audios, "The Wormery".

On a personal level, the whole event was VERY exhausting for me. Currently, I am pretty much burned out, emotionally and physically. My heart was not completely with it at the start of the convention, and while I did enjoy it in the end, I did not get as much enjoyment out of it as previously. Saturday night, I was so exhausted, I fell asleep at 8pm, and on Sunday, I left 2 hours early, since I still had to drive home 150km- so I missed out on Sylvester's second panel. But my body just could not deal with more.

you going?

 Health always 1st   

Invite them back to yours for tea & Tim Tams. 

It's 7:50PM and there is a bunch of early teen trick or treaters walking up and down our road..

HHMM..

Halloween at work yesterday.
Sadly, we were so understaffed I could not stay for the lunch-time festivities and competitions.
But I haunted the labs doing my rounds as the headless monk.
Funnily enough, although nobody could see my face, EVERYONE greeted me by name.
I asked: "How do you know my name if you cannot see my face?"
The answer: "Because there is only one person who would do this, and this, sadly, is you."

After work, we had gaming night playing some horror / mystery board-games with some colleagues. We ordered pizza for it.
I really enjoyed it, however, come 10pm, I was just so exhausted, I had to leave.
The others were surprised that I left early, but I am just not on top of my game with my overwhelming exhaustion.

We finally made it to the hotel in one piece.