Right then...
I'm writing this up at the end of April 2024, so wierdly enough I don't remember a great deal about it. Still, I dug up a few pictures from my old external HD (a single terabyte seemed so huge back then!). This was the only MCM I went to for the whole weekend, and not just a single day. Invited by one friend, I also fancied a couple of his friends something rotten, as you, er, may notice...
Friday
I'm pretty sure I went after work, so I got there after dark. Or maybe I was just lazy and indecisive about going. It had also been tipping it down and was threatening to again. My friends called me, I could barely hear them. They said "Just go straight out of the train station and it's right in front of you!". The train doors (I think I was on the Overground) opened, and a gate stood right in front of me, so I just walked out. They said "go in the vistors entrance at the side", so I went to the side of a pub vaguely in front of me, and tried to open a locked gate into an alley.
Turns out, when they said "just go straight out of the station", they obviously meant climb up the bridge at the end of the platform, cross the other platform, and go straight out that way. They'd been at the con during the day and come to the station from the other direction!
Pissed as farts...
Finally I was in the hotel, and eating the remains of the pizzas they'd ordered. Then the drinkin' started! The hotel was above a pub, and we'd all bought a good few tins. The hotel was more of a crappy hostel, so our room was just bunk beds and the toilets were seperate. Much "hilarity" was had locking people out if they dared go and have a piss. We ended up staying up til about 3 in the morning, watching some wierd anime with chibi moe girls who represent different kids of charcoal... I think(?). Also we were watching it because one friend had linked up his laptop to his phone's data and was streaming video from the internet via a hotspot... I didn't know such things were possible back then. And doubtless the bill was painful... for his parents.
Saturday
Time to change into cosplay, for the two people cosplaying anyway. They got, er, some sort of matching maid outfits cheap off Taobao (which I think is an Aliexpress frontend for clothes?). Also they were semi-furries.
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Have you figured out which two friends-of-friends I fancied yet?
Anyway, I was smashed with a hangover, so went off the opposite way to the convention on the DLR and got off somewhere random. I heard fatty food is good for hangovers, so was looking at a McDonalds, but I couldn't face crowds and heat, so staggered off up the road. Some bloke stopped his car and asked if I was alright. I ended up on a semi-sunken cycle path somewhere. It was probably a railway line that got Beeching'd. Finally I puked up down a drain and felt a fair bit better.
I did a bit more wandering of London, I think I had an idea to find the J-Centre and buy some BL, but I couldn't find an underground station after wandering random roads (and still feeling pretty terrible). Eventually I stumbled on the DLR and decided to go to the con.
I got there, but I didn't have a weekend ticket, so had to line up like the usual day visitors. It was late in the day so the qeue wasn't that long. I got in and met my friends, who were pretty confused as to why I'd gone wandering central London. I also found a lemon on the floor that you're supposed to photograph for social media and tag it MCMLemon. I never found that tag in use anywhere.
I think at one point we went back to the hotel room to crash and chat a bit, then back to the con later. But I'm not so sure now. One guy had bought a replica, but metal and nominally "realistic" sword, and went off on a huge rant about how that makes him "suspicious", when he's only a collector. Tell me about it. The BBC one year had a history professor from some London university who was saying that reenactors who wear Nazi symbols must beleive in Nazi ideology. That's the mentality of a 16 year old bully, and this guy worked at a top London university! Emigrate, divest, boycott and renounce citizenship.
I think there was some con afterparty / rave / pub crawl or something in the offing, but we were all too knackered (especially me), lazy or engrossed in strange anime to go.
Sunday
Actually a normal convention day for me! I still didn't have a weekend ticket, so had to line up in the huge line. Also there was some special bag that VIP ticket holders or whatever got. Anyway for some reason there was loads left over / VIPs didn't want them, so they were strewn all over the floor in the qeueing hall, and I nabbed one. I wandered about, bought a bunch of comics (this was the one where Marvel had a table crammed full of black and white phonebooks for £5 each!! But I only bought two because "Duh American comics is invincible menz punching each otherz"). I also looked up some BL and fancied a Gunpla, but didn't get any.
I also toured the tables of various small-pressers and bought about 90 quid's worth. I've been on the other side of that table and know what it's like!
There was a cute guy in a Pikachu costume with a free hugs sign (remember when you could do things like that? Remember when cons were fun?), so I hugged him. Later we were hanging round outside the con, after it closed. Another friend was cosplaying as some Naruto / One Piece character who has a black, sooty face. I said he'd now have to travel across London in blackface. Actually he was staying in a very swanky hotel just across from the convention centre. Some people are doing alright, eh? (One day I'll attend the con from my 140-foot yacht anchored alongside, innit). I saw the hug Pikachu and hugged him again, but he no longer had a "free hug" sign, so I took off before I had to pay him.
Monday
My hotel-mates decided to chuck an empty plastic bottle at each other while the window was open. The inevitable happened. I went to the bog before the inevitable telling-off from security happened, because it hit somebody's car. Then we came home, showing off our wares.
Oh yeah, I had to hit up the "Yaoi Guy" too. Wonder if he's still there, pissing off the neo-prudes?
My mates thought I was bonkers, buying so much small press and indie stuff. And American comics for that matter. Still, one guy that everyone calls Xeno (I never did know his real name!) borrowed a volume of Nova off me... and still has it! I also went off about how The Dandy was killed, The Beano was repeating the same mistakes and how Billy Bunter is the best character ever, and Charles Hamilton the best writer. I bet the Cambridge-London commuters on the train loved overhearing those completely true facts.
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