NO BARCODES approaching fast

Been a bit remiss, not done much posting recently.
A few things to report. Dropped by the stall saturday morning. Went to the theatre in the evening to catch Mr Phill Jupitus' fine performance in Life Coach at Trafalgar studios, his first venture into straight acting in the West End. He was excellent as was the whole cast and the play was both amusing and quite touching.
Been beavering away for the last three days in readiness for the big event this weekend. Caught up with the lads at Tom Humberstone's book launch in King's Cross last night. Had a couple of beers with Oli, Sean, Oliver, Dan, Alex and met Sally Anne Hickman.
David Baillie has done a grand job interviewing some of us exhibitors and posting the results. You can read mine here
Looking forward to seeing all you fabulous people in Camden at NO BARCODES this Saturday! Click here for info and map.

Nice review

Things are already looking up: I found this nice review from Andy Luke here. Thanks.

From bad to worse

This last week has evolved from bad to catastrophic from the moment I got back from Bristol.
The Lucy hospital incident, followed by the Nick job termination (not exactly a surprise), were trumped later in the week by Hugo's flat being gutted by fire, leaving my brother and his family homeless although mercifully still alive. And to top it all, when he went to see our mother to tell her the bad news in person, not wanting to shock her over the phone, he found her so unwell already that she had to be rushed to hospital.
Sorry about the downbeat tone. Hopefully next week will bring better tidings.
P.S.: Turned out not to be as serious as originally feared and she's back home on antibiotics after a night of tests and investigations.

From Gay Paree to A&E by way of Bristol

Returned from Paris on Thursday night after a couple of days visiting the folks. A spot of stapling on Friday night after work and I was set for my first ever Bristol Expo.



My day trip turned out just fine. The company was fab and I made the right call for once and dressed appropriately as it was somewhat oven-like in the convention hall.

Digging the nerdfest... Above: David and Jake; below: Oli, Sean, David and Oliver



Managed not to miss my train and got there in time to meet up with the LUC gang and their hangovers for kick-off. There was a massive queue waiting to get in even before it opened with a large sprinkling of daft buggers in superhero garb – those stormtroopers and Darth Vaders must have been cooking inside their costumes. Or maybe it was some kind of sponsored slimathon...
The stall was heavily manned with seven or eight of us sharing the two chairs in rotation. Did a fair bit of circulating around the hall and bumped in to a few familiar faces. And I dared Sean to steal an apple at the Ramada. We're so rock'n'roll.
By the end of the day my feet were killing me and Richy and I managed to lose Jake on our quest for food with the help of Sean's crap excuse for a map.
It all turned out OK. We eventually stumbled upon the Weatherspoon by accident and everyone gradually drifted there including, finally, Jake who was most pleased to have found not only a branch of Subway in his wanderings, but also the car he had lost earlier that morning.
Had to leave before the Eagle Awards to get my train back to town.
I arrived home at midnight just in time for a whole other drama to unfold.
Suffice to say that not a lot of sleep was had as I fielded calls from Nick from the hospital until he got home at 6am. I brought Lucy home on Sunday afternoon, thankfully with no lasting damage, but we were all pretty shaken by the incident.
And so relieved that I had decided to only go for the day.
Everything happens for a reason.