(It says last weekend, but I left this in drafts for two weeks, sigh)

(Aaaaand I posted an incomplete draft. I’m a hot mess.)

Last weekend we headed to the Hilton Birmingham Metropole for Eastercon! We opted for the full, relaxed experience this year an took the train down on Thursday and returned on Tuesday – which explains why I’m only just recovering enough to write my report now. As ever I promised myself I would take notes and write a proper report but did no such thing and and am relying on my frankly terrible memory, so expect a loose chronology here. One of the few things I miss about the height of social media is being able to go back and reconstruct a timeline.

So, on Thursday I worked a half-day, finished packing, and then enjoyed a lovely Indian food late lunch/early dinner with John’s parents, who were looking after the cats for us over the holiday. The train to Birmingham is Crosscountry, so perhaps not the lap of luxury, but it got us there without any delays and so we were able to unpack, freshen up, and get some some barcon time in to start the weekend.

Friday started with the hotel buffet breakfast, which aside from the now-pervasive terrible coffee machines and the one day where there was no black pudding, was really very good. After breakfast my one responsibility for the convention was hanging art. I pdid that and had a sneaky peek at what else was there for a later in the convention visit – a couple of standouts were the new-to-me Sophie Jonas Hill with her whimsical black-and-white illustrations and Autun Purser’s postcard prints, which I later picked up in the dealer’s room.

Art hung, I was free as a bird. I got to Opening Ceremonies late and the room was overfull, which turned out to be sort of an omen for my Friday programme aspirations – I managed to either miss, or decide against everything on my list. But that meant plenty of time to check out the dealer’s room, with several visits to the Briardene Books table to say hi to Nic and/or Niall, and a lingering stop at the fan tables to have a look at the Worldcon bid offerings. Edmonton’s strong designs look so good that John immediatelly bought a tee shirt (he is also excited about the bid, obviously). Brisbane had adorable koalas and Tim Tams, while Nuremberg had some wonderful poster art and an action figure of the first true Bavarian superhero (sorry Nightcrawler) Tratchman!

The Friday evening enterntainment was karaoke, which is not really my scene, so I spent the evening in the bar, grateful for the much cheaper and nicer selection of drinks available at the real ale bar. That said, the convention arranged a 20% discount for drinks/food at the bar for convention members which helped considerably!

Saturday was a much more successful panel day, I enjoyed the BSFA lecture From Real to Reel by Rosemary Alexander-Jones which looked at some famous filming locations and how the owners, locals, and fans interact with them over time. I also popped into a planel John was on, Playing in the Apocalypse, since although I’m not much for games I do quite enjoy and apocalypse. 

Newcastle’s First Thursday’s own Andy Openshaw was at the convention for Saturday only, so we did some shots and hit the disco, which was a good one this year. A fun variety of music including some k-pop for the Haurhicon folks in the room, it was only later I heard they also had a disco which was open to us, ah well. The dance was scheduled to end at 23:15, so a little after eleven we wandered out as a song neither of us liked much came on. Turns out it actually ran till midnight, but we ended up chatting with Alison Scott and Emily January in the bar, then ran into David Green and his excellent whiskey, and chatted with him and with Ann Landmann about the Cymera Book festival till it was time for bed.

It’s possible I had a slow start on Sunday, and while the hotel breakfast helped a lot, the coffee was still terrible, bad enough that I walked over to the Resorts World for some Costa coffees for me and John. That helped a bit, and I was further perked up when Nic said she hadn’t been over to the Haruhicon dealers room. I looked at all the pretty wares on sale, and Nic made delighted noises at all the tiny things, purchasing quite a lot of them including an adorable(?) Ditto figurine which became the Briardene Books table’s mascot for the rest of the convention.

After experiencing all that light and colour, I retreated into The Gothic, a panel that managed to get both nicely specific while still ranging over the entire history of the genre. Impressive. Microgenres followed, where Niall Harrison and Nick Hubble tried to come up with proposals for tiny new genres spotted in the wild – I’m excited to see this format develop at future conventions hopefully. Then I watched six people struggle to name a single person from New Zealand during the Fan Funds Gameshow (they eventually got a few). 

There were loads of lovely cosplayers from the other convention, so I probably could have put something together, but the Eastercon membership itself only had a few actual costumes. Still, there were a few folks dressed up, so I put on my Collectif dress that I didn’t get to wear to Seattle and spend the night having the sort of bar conversations that good Eastercons are made of. 

And then it was Monday all of a sudden, funny how that always happens. Octothorpe Live kicked things off in its usually chaotic fashion. Then I collected my unsold art, it’s always tricky without the auction so I’d priced fairly low and did at least sell two, but I’m thinking the fans may move to being just a special ocassion thing rather than for art shows after this year.

I fully intended to see at least two panels before closing ceremonies, but instead it was one hallway conversation after another as folks started hearing back into the world. Indeed I even missed closing ceremonies since it filled up before I got there again. I comforted myself with the thought of all the lovely catch-up viewing I had in store (this will be the year I actually do that, promise)

We’d chosen to stay till Tuesday morning, so we had one more night of barcon! I chatted with friends old and new, made plans for future adventures, and reminisced fondly about the now-closed Real Ale bar.