Another trip to Birmingham

Specifically to the NEC, for another round of Memorabilia.

It didn't get off to a particularly good start from work, with so much of a backlog on my team (not so much on the ad setting side, but certainly the Copy Control side, and the Editorial) that the planned early finish could not go ahead. The designer for my Monday magazine actually seemed very pissed off for much of the day, and wasn't any happier when I suggested getting our 2-days-a-week 'senior' designer to muck in on her features.

"I really want to do myself," quoth she, in her broad eastern-European accent
"I'd like you to do them yourself, too... but we'll have to see how the work goes on Monday."

This, following a few days of her Editor fretting and complaining (and, on Friday morning, a meeting between her and the MD, where she complained bitterly about the 'lack of resource in Production' - a phrase learned from her boss). I wish I could say it'd be better if my senior designer was in five days a week, but as the workflow study shows, he's been doing gradually less work as the weeks have gone by. Partly this is because I'd slowly weaned the other two off the idea of leaving all the ads for him (seriously, had that continued, we'd have had ads piling up for 2 days before any got picked up) but largely it's because he's slipped back into being comfortable in the office, meaning he's spending far more time telling people how hard he's working than he is working hard.

But I digress.

The situation isn't looking too bad, on balance. There's not much editorial left to do but, according to the Editor, it's all 'fiddly'... probably meaning she doesn't like the way her designer normally does it, so it'll be back and forth endlessly. My boss will be having a chat with her boss about this... it's all very well for an Editor to have opinions on the look of the magazine, but when those opinions are crap, and contradict everything the designer knows about how things should look, it gets a bit silly and counterproductive.

So, to cut a long story short, we didn't leave early. My companion and I didn't even get out of work on time... but we weren't too late.

Travel was complicated not by traffic or road/lane closures, as it has been in the past, but by the total failure of my companion's GPS unit. The damned thing just kept shutting itself off. We had maps in the boot, but ended up relying on memory to get us there. While we didn't take the quickest route - possibly missing the ideal exit - we ended up getting to the hotel far earlier than last time because we knew where we were going once we got to the nearest town. Next time I think I may print off directions and secrete them about my person, in case something similar happens...

The hotel we stayed in is lovely. Decent size place, nice rooms, comfy beds and, this time, a nice view over the hill at the back, where we saw a number of wild rabbits and a couple of guys with shotguns. Thankfully, being outside the city, we felt secure in the knowledge that they weren't out to shoot people.

The biggest surprise about this Spring Memorabilia was that UK Garrison weren't in attendance when we arrived. They're basically a permant fixture of this kind of event, and enjoy pretending to be security for the event. To gain entry to the event unmolested by Stormtroopers was at once a relief and a slight disappointment. They arrived eventually, but there was something intrinsically wrong with arriving before the Stormtroopers.

My companion observed almost immediately that Memorabilia was smaller again... but this is to be expected of the Spring event. The only regularly large event is the Winter one but, since the first we attended, there has never been another to occupy two halls.

We took our traditional, methodical approach to wandering about but, whereas I'd normally view all the stalls, then take a second, targeted run at the things I wanted to buy, this time, I bought as I found things I wanted.

First purchase was TF Movie Stockade, followed swiftly by the Gen 1 repaint of TF Movie Jazz (meaning, essentially, that I now own three iterations of that mold, placing it alongside such wonders as Armada 'Bendy' Prime, Energon Arcee, Cybertron Hardtop and the Lamborghini molds from RiD and Gen 1), which means my Movie collection is complete unless I decide to pick up the Deep Desert repaint of Leader Class Brawl or the Premium edition of Leader Class Prime.

On the non-TF front, I picked up two new dragons from show regulars DWAND - one Andrew Bill (ex-Enchantica) limited run and one in a new-ish line, called 'Book Wyrms', where a small dragon is posing atop a book in a manner appropriate to the title. I snagged 'Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger' which, rather subtly, features a tiger's tail sticking out of the dragon's mouth. One will be a birthday present for my mother, the other will be held over till Christmas. Convenient, eh?

Universal Pictures were there, represented most prominently by a large statue of the new Hulk (Edward Norton's version, rather than the much-reviled Eric Bana one from Ang Lee's stab at the comic book genre). They were mainly playing a bunch of trailers over and over again, including Hellboy 2 and what looks to be an upcoming action Brit-Flick called Doomsday, featuring the likes of Bob Hoskins and one of many ex-Lara Crofts, Rhona Mitra. Expect dry wit and explosions.

My companion discovered a stand selling CDs of MP3 recordings of everything from radio dramas to adverts, and took a selection for a relative. I snagged a CD containing "over 24 hours" of Asimov stories - some are straight audiobooks of his short stories, but there's also a radio drama of Caves of Steel, the first Elijah Bailey mystery. That's going to be fun...

We were also pleased to see Genki Gear, a home-run company producing cool manga-style t-shirts. They had a couple of new arrivals (though not all sizes, and a few others hadn't been completed and delivered by the printers in time. I asked them not to speak of printers to me, as I work in magazines...). From Genki, I grabbed one of their new designs - 'Scarey (sic) Forest' - which is seriously cute.

After taking a turn around the whole place (bumping into Sven of AutoAssembly, manning his Infinite Frontiers stall with its pride-of-place £750 Gen 1 Victory Sabre box set), my companion was beginning to get angry at the utter stupidity and selfishness of people barging everywhere, and decided to wait for me outside while I made my final purchases. While I had seen and considered buying the two new TF Revoltech figures - Starscream and Hot Rod - I ended up not bothering. I have Prime and Megatron and, to be perfectly honest, I have no idea why I bought them... Revoltech is a neat idea, but the execution is often a little sloppy, and the idea of super-poseable TF action figures is a little redundant in this age of super-poseable TFs. I ended up just scooting back to the Space Bridge stall and grabbing a set of Armada Mini-Cons (the air defense team, molded largely in translucent blue plastic and packaged with a CD of music by the No Name Heroes, a J-Rock band I'm sure I've heard of from somewhere) and a Gen 1 Bumblebee keyring for my companion.

Having satisfied myself that I'd got everything I wanted to get, I negotiated the thickening crowds and left the show behind. As I left, I noticed it was about 11.30 - we would be leaving slightly later than last time, but with a far bigger haul. Oddly, there had been no announcement of the doors opening for regular entry - which was basically our cue to leave the last time. This explained why everything had got so crowded and bumpy.

I found my companion sitting quite near the entrance, chatting with a woman who'd been to another of the shows on at the NEC this weekend, Miniatura. She'd been looking for dolls' houses, but the only place selling them is based about five minutes from her home, so she knows their stock well enough already. This reminded me of the dolls' house my father built for my sister many years ago... it's still sat in the cupboard of the spare bedroom, and it's still brilliant, even if it could do with a few repairs here and there. Perhaps, I mused, my father should look to that as a way of supplementing his income, along with the woodturning.

When I presented my companion with the Bumblebee keyring, she first appeared rather nonplussed, but seems to be enjoying it. It's certainly easier to transform that the Concept Camaro version of the movie figure. I'd been searching for one for quite some time, but they seem to sell out far quicker than Windcharger, Cliffjumper or Brawn.

We left, heading straight into town to pick up something simple for lunch back at the hotel, so we could watch some of the DVDs I'd brought along. Ergo Proxy went down well, aside from complaints from my companion that I keep getting her addicted to anime series and then making her wait for further episodes. Le Chevalier D'Eon, being another case in point, was viewed next. Volume four ramps up the intrigue as the plot against the King of France becomes wider-reaching than anyone had thought, and Lia starts to gain a stronger hold over D'Eon.

After dinner - some lovely salmon which I could not finish, being stuffed with both breakfast and dinner, while suffering from my usual 'travel/holiday-induced metabolic slowdown' - we completed volume four of Chevalier, then watched The Limey, an excellent Steven Soderburgh film starring Terrence Stamp as the titular protagonist. I'd forgotten how many brilliant lines the film has, along with its excellent cast... but the strange colour filtering of the film didn't work too well on the small LCD screen of the portable DVD player. My companion pointed out an excellent gag line that I hadn't noticed before, where Wilson admits that it wasn't long before his daughter realised he wasn't a Royal Marine or "playing Iago in world tour of Othello". I wasn't aware that Terrence Stamp had done this in real life! I wonder if that was ad-libbed, or added to the script once Stamp signed on...

Following a good night's sleep, we somewhat reluctantly packed up and left the hotel to return home, stopping along the way for a snack at a service station.

When I arrived home, I was greeted by a letter from the estate agent confirming the acceptance of my offer on the flat, and a large envelope containing my employer's annual report. Back to reality with a crash... :P