Lexin

I went out, to a shop, and bought things. Yippee!

I went for breakfast at the oddly named Clio Lounge – excellent breakfast, with sublime smoked bacon. Great pot of tea.

Then I went to Marks and Spencers for food, since I knew I have a gift card which had been unused for well over a year. Bought some nice things to eat which will keep me going until Tesco deliver on Saturday.

So a good morning. Would have been better without the rain, but ho-hum.

The other mild irritation was that my contactless thingy on my debit card didn’t work on the bus. Or in the restaurant, so I’m currently on the phone to my bank to get it sorted out. Arriva buses prefer contactless, which I’m sure is more convenient for them.

Smokey did a sterling job of guarding the house. Which is lovely and clean thanks to the efforts of Mandy, my new cleaner.

So that’s me. How are you?

I’m safely back from redemption_con; the journeys were totally straightforward and the trains were on time there and back.

I enjoyed the convention. Numbers seemed down (if you like a fan-run convention do go along to Redemption in 2019, it runs better with more people) and the convention over-organised for the numbers (at times there were nine streams of events), but that didn’t bother me. I just went along to what appealed to me and dodged anything that didn’t.

I spent a lot of time with legionseagle and julesjones over the weekend, and with various other people whose LJ and DW names I have forgotten. Much gossip was gossed.

Guests were Dr Lynette Nusbacher, Steve Lycett , Miranda Gower-Qian, Thalia Evans and David Wake. Probably you’ve never heard of any of them, I had only heard of Dr Lynette who is one of the presenters of the wargame TV show “Time Commanders”. She was lovely, though I didn’t go to any of her talks she was very nice and approachable when out and about and she always wears lovely clothes, which she told me mostly come from TK Maxx.

The only complaint I heard about the food offerings in the restaurant was from the two people I know who can’t cope with spices. All the cheap restaurant meals (Chinese, Indian and Mexican) were not suitable for them. But they had the option of pizzas in the bar, though one person did mention that it was a bit same-y to have a plain pizza two nights running. I liked the desserts on the cheap restaurant meals, the fudge cake was yummy, and they were quite happy to supply cream if asked.

One night I had the New York hot dog pizza and that was very nice, though I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so physically hot for some reason, and hot cheese is a really hot thing when you bite into it.

The carvery baps were very good, decent portions, as were the sandwich bar options.

Breakfasts were adequate mass catering, though I liked the fact that they were frying eggs practically on demand.

Other things: yes, some of the panels were under attended, but I put that down to the convention being somewhat under attended overall and the sometimes nine streams meaning that people were spread a bit thin. The panels I attended went off well, even if there weren’t that many there. I thought six streams would be fine for the number we had attending, with room to expand it if more sign up.

I forgot about slash Pictionary. I’d have been there if I’d remembered.

One thing I would like to see for Redemption 19 is a slash/adult stream as there’s no general slash con (that I know of) being run in the UK currently.

And Merry Whatever, for those who don't.

I'm doing better than I expected with being alone. I miss the Aged P., but I'm glad not to have had to travel and I've spent the morning in selfish reading of a book, which I wouldn't have been able to do at her house.

I ordered a chicken to eat, and that's in the oven. Tesco didn't have the size I ordered so sent what they had. When it arrived I just noted that it was bigger than I ordered and put it in the fridge. On looking at it when I came to put it in the oven, I realised that the packaging says that it feeds eight. So there's going to be a lot of chicken curry in my future.

Trimmings are things I like rather than the traditional things. Go me!

Presents are a very good haul, gloria1 gave me some teabags from Betty's of Harrogate, which are particularly welcome. I love me my tea.

My brother has sent me some Dr Who vids, which I'm going to watch this afternoon while I wait for the Dr Who Christmas special.

There is also champagne in my future, and I have enough chocolates to sink a battleship.