A.D. File 3 - A Con Report

or

Friday the 16th : A Nightmare in Sheffield

by Simon Devey

All those of you who need an explanation of that sub-title, please see either Jim McLennan, Paul Watson or the others that were there that fateful Friday night for an explanation.

Now on with the main body of this report.

I arrived in Sheffield ridiculously early on Friday having taken the day off work and only getting lost once on the way up. Once there I located a car park relatively close to the Space Centre and deciding that it looked safe enough, deposited my car there. Two hundred yards bought me to said Space Centre and I hurried inside, eager to quiz Rick Cowling as to the whereabouts of the 'BIG BUBBLEGUM BOOK' that I had ordered. "It's probably packed for the con" said he. Fine I thought, I'll just have to wait till morning for the spending frenzy to begin!

I wandered around Sheffield in search of only two things:-

1) Food.
2) Somewhere to vacate my heaving bladder.

Having satisfied both of the above urges I wandered into the Virgin Megastore. Aha, what's this I see. An Akira T-shirt that I'd not seen the design of before. "That'll be £9.99" said the assistant. First £10 spent on anime related items that weekend.

I decided that now was probably the time to head round to the hotel to check in. When checking in, I had the words of Jim McLennan's '92 report fresh in my memory. Yes, I think my room must have been located in the same part of the hotel as his was last year. I dipped, I wound back and forth and finally arrived at my room. After all that the room turned to be not too bad at all. I had a bath, one luxury I never like to miss out on and headed for the foyer, hoping to find other early attendees. I met some friends, old and new (hi, Leigh), and collapsed into a very worn couch, just inside the front window, watching the new arrivals.

Evening came and together with a number of others headed for the 'Frog and Parrot' to celebrate J.M.'s birthday. And what a birthday evening it would turn out to be. (Again see J.M. or the afore mentioned others for an explanation). Morning came and I started to queue for the dealer's room. At last 10 o'clock arrived and I entered the deeper recesses of the dealer's room. Yes, the Space Centre had my BGC book and I gleefully handed over the princely sum of £29.95 -money well spent. I've since lost count of how much money I spent in the dealer's room, but spending money on things I love gives me such a buzz....... As far as th anime went I did see a little, not as much as I would have liked to, but there's always ConTanimeTed in October. What I did see though was certainly good - anybody out there with a copy of Scramble Wars can contact me pronto - and the programme as a whole seemed to contained enough to please everyone.

One thing that I think I and many others were pleased about was that we got a chance to grill Laurence Guiness. It's just a pity Janice Hindle wasn't there to hear our comments about Animego's pricing policy.

The rest of the weekend was spent doing much the same as has been reported on above, i.e. drinking, eating and watching anime.

When it came down to it though, I enjoyed Anime Day 3 for the same reason as I enjoyed ConTanimeT - the opportunity to get together with people who are for ninety percent of the time only words on paper or a voice over the telephone and talk anime, amongst other things. Like the Exorcist.

Well, that about wraps things up for this report. See you soon.