Went off to Memorabilia at the Birmingham NEC on Friday, stayed the night in the usual hotel, trotted off to the show clutching my Early Bird tickets, and things got off to a pretty good start when I got handed a City of Villains DVD box set, including a book of concept art from City of Heroes/Villains, some Heroclix figures from the game, and everything I'd need to play the game (free for the first month!) online.
After that, it was the usual, systematic wander round the show. It was about average for the winter show in terms of number and variety of stalls, but there were vastly fewer attendees. Even by lunchtime it wasn't remotely as crowded as it has been in the past.
Despite having almost £200 in my wallet when I arrived, I didn't spend a great deal - both because I was intending to be sensible and because there actually wasn't a great deal that I really wanted. I picked up Deep Space Starscream and BT20 Argent Meister from one stall (the guy who always has a tin of Quality Street) at 20% off the marked price because the stallholder wanted to clear his stock, then grabbed the Japanese (Henkei) version of Classics Sideswipe elsewhere. The temptation to pick up Omega Supreme is still not quite strong enough to overpower my aim to avoid overspending on toys.
I was somewhat disappointed that I couldn't pick up obvious Christmas presents for anyone, but I have several already, so that wasn't too bad.
The big disappointment was the lack of stuff happening on stage. At previous shows, they've had several stages running all day, but this one had only one stage, sparsely filled with a small number of events each day... And no really interesting ones at that.
But on the whole, it was a good day out.
Dinner that evening proved to be a bit troublesome, in that I tried a small sample of beef from my companion's plate. I don't normally eat beef because it can make me ill, but she was so emphatic in her praise of this beef that I couldn't resist. After all, it could well be that the beef I've eaten has been cheap and poor quality, or badly cooked.
Sadly, it seems that beef generally will make me ill. About 15-20 minutes after eating it, I felt like I'd swallowed a lead weight. The morning after, I threw up a couple of times.
Thing is, beef has kind of a musty aftertaste... and I suspect something to do with that is causing my stomach to act up. It tastes off, so my stomach behaves as if it is off, even if it's not.
The drive home on Sunday took a brief detour but was otherwise uneventful, largely because my companion saw the need to get me home as soon as possible, so I could lie down and start to feel better.
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