141 Northern Toy Fair – 17th March 2024

	Location
	Rainton Arena, Houghton Le Spring 10:00 – 14:00
	Mission Report
	Fret not faithful reader, although Julie is wont to oft tell the story of that one time we drove 8 hours and a 400 mile round trip to be out in costume at a two hour event 10 or 15 years back when we were younger and stupider like it didn’t just occur the once and was  regular occurrence, we did not make the trip to the North East of England solely for this event. No, rather, with the requirement to use a hotel stay gift voucher prior to the expiration date it was something of a bonus to find a (relatively) nearby troop on the same weekend which offered the opportunity to catch up with Paul and Jase again and meet Simon for the first time.   The troop was fairly similar to the BCGP events albeit on a larger scale and with an almost exclusive focus on vintage toys and model railways in comparison with the formers art and craft remit.  Like them it was a great little relaxed event, with a crowd attending slightly less familiar with our appearances.  If there has to be a negative, the “early birds” had been in an hour (or more some were leaving when we arrived just prior to 09:00) by the time we got out in costume and after lunchtime there were a miniscule amount of new arrivals coming in through the door.  Then again the event takes place in the same venue every alternate month and there was as far as I could see no massive impetus for anyone to come out to the business park on the slightly damp St Patricks Day weekend it was taking place that was going to give them an experience they could get the next time it ran…   Some of the vendors had begun packing up by the back of 13:00, which fortunately meant I didn’t have the opportunity to spend too much money on the way out.  Hopefully the three local troopers make it up here at some point; I would advise them, that unlike me, they fill up with petrol before departing so they’re not paying motorway prices because they’ve underestimated the fuel requirements for the trip though..!
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139 Big Feed Glasgow – 12th August 2023

	Location
	Golf-It, Glasgow 11:00 – 16:00
	Mission Report
	I know, I know…  Last time I really gave the impression I was done after three successive bland events, but this one was a rare chance to go Red and the real short notice made sure there wasn’t the time to think about how not doing it at all would be a much better idea. Admittedly there may have been some confusion on my part, I had it in my head that this was a sort of a food bank charity and this was some sort of open day with street food samples to demonstrate nutritious meals that could be made on a budget that they were holding to raise funds, instead we arrived to find a sort of outdoor food court at a golf driving range.  This made the venue an odd fit… At 11:00 o’clock on a rainy Saturday morning the people at a golf course are there to golf, not play with plastic spacemen, so they largely walked straight past us (or more precisely *they* walked past while their bags full of golf sticks collided with any costumer within three feet) and spent their time knocking balls from their basket of 150, off of a balcony ledge with their backs to us. So, the morning passed, somewhat quiet and boring but not offensively and it got to lunchtime.  Declining to de-kit I was going to forgo eating any lunch, but the organisers had issued us vouchers to use at the vendor carts.  “Street food from a cart”, being literally my idea of personal Hell, owing to the single worst hotdog I’ve ever had in my life falling into that category.  (I’m not even talking about the Rollover one that resulted in this situation incidentally, but a hotdog from a cart outside the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. which I purchased, bit into, spat out and binned in less time than it took to type those verbs describing it.  That’s right, the single worst American-style hotdog in my life was in America and traumatised me so much with its filling of boiled pink slime that it was literally more than a decade before I could even eat another hotdog.) Obviously then, I ordered a hot dog. To satisfy your curiosity…  It was… okay.  It wasn’t the best (this would be the New York Dog at Bread Meats Bread) and it wasn’t the worst as previously discussed.  It was somewhere below most cinema hotdogs and above that Rollover one.  Mostly, I think it was down to the thick Bratwurst-style sausage which was too big for the bun.  This made it messy to eat and the bun soggy even with only basic ketchup and mustard on top, bacon and onion being “extra toppings” in a underhanded move that, with hindsight, anyone charging £2.50 for a 330ml can of Pepsi Max is obviously going to pull.  Quite how you’re meant to eat one topped with salsa and siracha sauce without a change of clothes for afterwards I’ve no idea… Anyway, sorry, this Field Report appears to have detoured into the chart rundown from the Top of The Pops, Hotdogs Edition; Perhaps the weather had changed, perhaps Sci-Fi fans are inherently lazy, but whatever the reason the afternoon session brought an influx of actual Star Wars fans, both old and young.  On that note I had been aware of the presence of a photographer all day, who seemed to be there in some sort of official capacity, but presumably from the charity and not Golf-It as I never once saw ask anyone to sign a release after taking pictures of their children.  Either at his behest or the Golf people we were asked to move down to the…  (crazy golf..?  mini golf..?  I’m not sure what you’ve call it..) ‘non-grass-based ball hitting obstacle area’… for further photos, which again didn’t seem to be overly charity related and more with the purpose of promoting the Golf centre, so I made sure to stay out of sight in them. Having apparently lost weight since the Scouts last outing in 2019, the commute there and back caused the belt to slip down requiring a quick pit stop to adjust the buckle position and back out.  As it drew towards 15:30 they elected to take a more general break before venturing out and finishing for the day with our presence at the drawing of the raffle at 16:00.  Ironically, I missed this sole concession to our presence being for the benefit of a charity, as having experienced such a thing before I had, to coin a phrase, made my excuses and left!
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110 Glasgow Science Centre, Lunar Landing 50th Anniversary Event – 20th July 2019

Location
Science Center, Glasgow 10:00 – 16:00

Personnel

DZ-1873	Ian MacPherson	Jawa
SL-21804	John Reilly	Darth Vader
TB-6275	Mark McCreadie	Biker Scout
TX-11073	Steven Walker	Mudtrooper
UK-7240	Julie Sword	Crew

Mission Report
Looking back over my history with events at the GSC they seem to alternate between deathly quiet endurance testers and so-busy-that-blink-and-it’s-over outings. This Saturday session fell somewhere in-between. The attendance level inside was consistent though not overly massive

Starting the morning with some spotting I was in very real danger of suffering sunburnt neck but equally the fine weather meant that during the period in front of the entrance there was a regular flow of people passing after crossing the footbridge across the Clyde.

Moving inside we found that the attendance level was not overly massive, compounded by the fact that the majority of the public wandering the floors had already passed us to enter the building and availed themselves of the opportunity for a photo on the first encounter, as a result… well, idle hands and all that… the lulls leading to opportunities for mischief.

The troop taking a lids off break allowed me to kit up too, and as early afternoon rolled round we resumed position out front which coincided with a noticeable increase in foot-fall. This kept us occupied enough to take us through to the end of the event, indeed I don’t recall us re-entering the building during my time in costume, until we came to de-kit in the spacious changing facilities and avail ourselves of the wide selection of refreshments and cooked dinners which had been arranged by the EC to be provided by the venue. Though the offer of second helpings was there, we were about to get back into costume…

Visual Archive

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106 Lego Store May 4th Celebration – 5th March 2019

Location
Buchannan Galleries, Glasgow 11:00 – 16:00

Personnel

TA-7240	Julie Sword	AT-AT Pilot
TB-6275	Mark McCreadie	Biker Scout
TB-89909	Jenn Mair	Biker Scout
TK-7336	Alex Bourke	Stormtrooper
UK-0000	Paula-Jane Bourke	Spotter

Mission Report
I can’t believe I managed to do four days at this event last year, clearly I’m getting older because after just the one day of trooping I was wiped out for the next 48 hours!

As ever Andrews staff looked after us to an excellent standard and despite being a Sunday all four of us were kept busy enough with photo requests to make the hours fly past. Only one incident right at the end of the day slightly spoiled the event when a parent started encouraging his child to start pulling components off of the costumes and worse, while the child was being kept at arms length began to do the same thing himself.

Although our spotter didn’t get the opportunity to take any photos to validate our event attendance for the applicable detachments luckily pending Denizen Leo was working in-store that day and sent on the couple of photos he’d had taken…

While the marching from the management suite to the shop was occassionally hairy it was probably preferrable to the five of us being lost forever in the maze of service corridors of the Buchanan Galleries.

And as an even more stranger thing, we 100% did not see the secret Lego set being launched in at the midnight opening of the Leicester Square store on 15th May!

Visual Archive

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105 BGCP Largs Comic Con 2019 – 23rd February 2019

Location
National Sports Training Centre Inverclyde, Largs 09:00 – 16:00

Personnel

BH-7240	Julie Sword	Greedo
SL-77314	Alan Dalgleish	Darth Vader
TB-6275	Mark McCreadie	Biker Scout
TK-18910	Brian McDavid	Stormtrooper
UK-91810	Lynne McDavid	Spotter

Mission Report
I did one of these Big Glasgow Comic Page events about two years back and was pleasantly surprised that about the quantity and breadth of attendees. There are other comic con events where our presence barely gets a second glance having attended so often over the years, but local events like these with a token admission cost bring a more diverse mixture of nerds and families, especially with younger children who may otherwise not be inclined to hike all the way to your SECs or Braeheads who may never have seen us before.
That said on the long uphill drive from the sea front in Largs up to the Inverclyde Sports Centre I did wonder what attendance would be like, as unlike the Rutherglen event it wasn’t located in the town centre and with the limited parking already crowded with vendor vans and transport for the Paralympic Boccia athletes who were using the premises at the same time…

After kitting up and wandering into the hall the event was taking place in my heart slightly sunk. There were easily 50 dealer tables there, but the space was so large it made the number of public attending look tiny in comparison. On the plus-side, this meant that the aisles were also huge, allowing ourselves and the Rebel Legion… er… not “troopers”… rebellers? rebellionists? …whatever… to navigate easily and remain spread out for individual photos while easily coming together for any requested group shots.

The flow was steady if not overwhelming throughout the day, similarly dying off as the afternoon wore closer to the cosplay competition allowing us to de-kit and have a limited look round the stalls as the vendors commenced their packing up…

Visual Archive

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