Having left York in the morning, it was a mad dash towards Liverpool on the "Wall of Steel," otherwise known as the British Motorway (Interstate Highway for us Yanks on this side of the pond).

Armed with sketchy directions, we suffered a bit of driving around, including an extraordinary bit of luck in getting lost in the right place and fortuitously making a U-turn just in time to see a sign pointing us in the right direction. Yep, nothing like getting lost on the other side of the road.

At one point, we stopped and asked an older fellow waiting for a bus if he heard of the Sports Centre that held the event. He seemed about WWII age, and made several references to the War, and how much he was glad to help a lost pair of Americans. It's good to see that we Yanks are still appreciated--and he gave excellent directions.

Parking was a nightmare--people parked all over, including islands, curbs, lawn. We parked next door at some school, but inquired about the legality of such a thing. Good thing, as they lock the gates around 1 p.m.. We left and parked across the street on a side road.

Arrival

Arriving just before noon, we were tickets numbered 299 and 300--not a bad total, and no doubt even more folks showed up later. This is a one-day show, too.

The gym held the dealer tables as well as the gaming tables--shades of Historicon in Harrisburg. All sorts of books, rules, figures, buildings, etc were for sale. Several games were in progress and gamers meandered about gawking and talking. We may be 3,000 miles from home, buy the crowd is all the same, eh?

One thing I noticed was that the level of terraining was quite high. Maybe it is the honor of hosting a game? Maybe it's that they take the games more seriously that throwing some felt into a box with some skirmish figures. Whatever, the reason, it looked pretty good.

Now for some differences. The first thing you notice is the air quality--or lack of it. Sorry, as a non-smoker, I notice things like smoke--and you could smoke all you want anywhere at this show--no shortage of filling your lungs with secondhand cigarette and pipe smoke. Yes, I know, another whiny non-smoking health nut yearning to breathe free. But when in Rome...

I spoke with Mark Reynolds of the Legio VIII, dressed in full recreation clothing and armor. Also talked to the good folks at the American Civil War Society, who were also dressed up in period clothing, or should I say, period reproduction clothing. I stopped at various tables to look over the goods and goodies, as varied and plentiful as any one-day show here.

Large Photos of Convention, Legio VIII, and ACW Society (extremely slow: 564K)

Bring and Buy

The Bring and Buy (flea market to us Yanks) was held in a raquetball court--with no air circulation. If I thought the smoky gym was bad, the putridity of the court was worse. I took a quick spin and fled for less confined spaces. I didn't even bother to go into the other court. Sorry folks, but the, ah, humidity level, that's it, wink, wink, grin, grin, the humidity level from several hundred gamers was more than I could stand. And I thought the smoke was bad.

Bring and Buy is not like an American flea market. In the US, the fellow selling is the one sitting behind the table--so you can do a bit of horse trading and haggling if you like. And usually, if you buy in quantity, you can lower the price a bit to buyer's and seller's acceptance. In a Bring and Buy, the price seems to be fixed because only two fellows are manning the long tables, and the price is as prices are marked.

I had a good chat with Mark Bevis of the Society of the Twentieth Century as well as his own MicroMark publishing company, and gave him a demo of MagWeb. Lunch (and the demo) was in the upstairs cafe and the meal was fish and chips -- OK fish, but bad chips (french fries for us barbarians on this side of the pond). And while I can enjoy, OK, rather enjoy, OK, really enjoy a room temperature pint of bitter, a room temperature can of soda--well, er, ah, ugh. Ah, we Yanks are a coddled lot with our vast ice-dispensing machines in fast food outlets and such. The bar was a hoppin', but alas, being the middle of the day and was not yet comfortable with driving on the opposite side of the road, I passed on a pint.

Sadly, after a last look around, it was all over too soon for I had to big adieu in order to head to Shrewsbury area.