Rosie Goes to See James at FedCon
The first part of the Rosie ramble ! ( I'm so behind with my rambles!)
Thursday 29th April
Another country to add to my list! A week previously I had pretty well convinced myself that I wasn’t going to make it to FedCon because of the Icelandic volcano ash cloud. Didn’t mind if I got there and James didn’t, or if neither of us did - but would have been gutted if he had got there and I couldn’t. And then flights were back on and it seemed it would all be OK, which was great.
So I had a very civilised start time - didn’t have to leave home until 9am and that was giving me lots of time to get up to London. This was my first time driving up since I moved and in fact it was slightly quicker. I had the Harry Dresden audio book “Blood Rites” as read by James to listen to and I find that always makes the journey go quicker anyway.
Everything was fine - got to Heathrow with plenty of time and as I only had hand luggage and was able to print my boarding pass out at home, I just had to turn up which felt very odd. I don’t do European flights very often so it was more like going on a bus! I had time in the departure lounge to work on my ramble from Love Hearts, (which I still haven’t finished!) before being called to the furthest gate, tucked away in the very back corner of Terminal 1 - it was so far away I thought I was walking to Germany….Willy, who is a dealer that lives not far from me was on the same flight as were a couple of FedCon guests (none that I recognised though!)
Flight is less than an hour and I go a nice aerial view of Cologne as we were coming round to land. Again, having only had baggage meant I was through immigration very swiftly and had no trouble finding my way to the bus stop and the correct bus for Bonn. (Isn’t the Internet wonderful? From the comfort of my lounge, I was able to book my flights and hotel, look up bus times and numbers between the airport and town and print off a map of the walking route from the bus station to my hotel!) I met hawera at the bus stop too, so we travelled into Bonn together. It’s a nice little city with lots of old criss-cross pedestrianised streets full of interesting shops. I found my hotel quite easily - just a few hundred yards from the Beethoven House, so it was right in the centre - upstairs above a tapas bar! Luckily my room was at the back of the hotel so it was very quiet. Having checked in and sorted a few things out, I made my way back out and walked the short distance to the hotel where Sylvie was staying, and we went out to find something to eat. It was very warm - about 26 degrees they said - so we sat outside shared a pizza and had an ice cream each. As usual, we managed pretty well as I have no French and Sylvie is uncertain about her English (though it gets better every time I see her and considering she only really uses it at James events, its fantastic!) and neither of us had any German! But we coped pretty well - I found most of the menu was reasonably easy to guess at.
Back to our respective hotels - I felt perfectly safe walking around at night - and we arranged to meet up in the morning when Katrin would be joining us and making our way to the Con to find out what was what…
Friday 30th April
Breakfast in the hotel (where I had the dining room entirely to myself and didn’t see another soul!) and then packed up my rucksack and started on my way to find Sylvie. Before I got to the hotel, I heard a shout from behind me and there were Sylvie and Katrin on the other side of the road. So we waved and made gestures until I could get across and finally introduce myself to Katrin in person as we had only spoken online before. We took to each other immediately and I really enjoyed her company all weekend. Being that she is German, she was wonderful all weekend helping with the translations and finding out information for us - mostly everyone at the con did speak English to some extent, but its better to ask some things in the native language - less room for misunderstandings!
We found the underground train station and worked out the right way to travel to get to the con. Bonn has the most wonderful public transport system - buses and trains and trams galore, all within easy reach of each other. (And the underground is only underground about half the time if that!) We got off at the station by the Hotel Maritim and were momentarily lost for which way to walk - until we saw people dressed up. Easy way to find the con - follow the costumes!
The hotel foyer was packed, though we didn’t have to wait long to get registered. Then we ended up in the very long queue for next years FedCon by mistake thinking it was the queue for auto and photo tickets - luckily we found out before we got to the front! Turned out they were selling the auto tickets round the corner in the merchandise shop- but not for James’s - his were a different arrangement (pay at the table) And all photo ops you paid for as you went in. As I wasn’t interested in anyone else’s autograph, the others got the ones they wanted and then we had a look round, trying to find one of the screens they said were around to check on photo op times. The programme that was in both German and English did have maps and explanations but we still couldn’t work out exactly where things were. Reading about the seating for panels and things, I realised that our tickets did have numbers on and they dictated where you sat in the main auditorium. There were 4 areas downstairs - Katrin and Sylvie were both there, but I had an E seat which meant I was banished to the balcony and wasn’t allowed downstairs at all. So it looked like my zoom lens was going to be vital!
Hunting around, we went upstairs - not a huge area - it was like a mezzanine floor where the centre was open and looked down onto the ground floor. According to the maps (with lots of different coloured arrows pointing in different directions!) James was going to be upstairs in his own spot on the mezzanine floor separate from the others to do autographs the next day. We found where the photo op room was - tucked away in a corner and also spotted one of the big screens with the con info at the top of the stairs which had the photo op times for the day on it- and James wasn’t on the list at all, which was disappointing and rather took the wind out of our sails.. That meant the only thing he was doing on Friday was the Q and A - and that wasn’t until 9.45pm. At this point it was about 11.30am…!
We had been joined by Jamma and Alessandra at this point, so broke the news to them and we were all standing at the top of the stairs debating what to do next, when Katrin suddenly said to me “There’s James!”
Well that was guaranteed to have me reacting like Pavlov’s dog! I whipped round to look behind me and there he was, coming around the pillar to walk right by us. Katrin had spotted him coming out of a door that led to the hotel just beyond the stairs. He was looking fantastic of course, in black t-shirt and the black zip up cardi and the curls looking a bit more tamed than of late. It was totally unexpected to see him, but I had the presence of mind to quickly say “Hi James” as he came round past me. He looked up and grinned when he saw me, and holding up a hand as though he was going to touch my shoulder (but didn’t) said “Hey Rosie - how are you doing?” as he walked past. Lisa was close behind and said “Hi ladies” and Steve acknowledged us with a raised hand as they came past and it was obvious they were in a bit of a hurry to get somewhere as they zoomed down the corridor and back into the main hotel on the other side. I assume James was going to do an interview or something.
Talk about being in the right place at the right time! We could have been anywhere in the con, but we just happened to be right there and Katrin saw him. (In fact Katrin proved to have very good ‘James radar’ all weekend!) It was great and cheered us all up so we had a bit of a squee!
As it looked like there wasn’t going to be any James until much later, Jamma and Alessandro decided to go into Bonn instead, leaving me with strict instructions to text them immediately if the programming changed at all. (But in fact Jamma texted me later saying she had just seen Steve and the JM crew in the centre of Bonn, so knew she wasn’t missing anything!) Katrin, Sylvie and I looked round the dealers hall which was surprisingly small and obviously had lots of Star Trek merchandise (I didn’t buy anything except a transparent badge holder!) and then got talking to a Dutch girl, Astrid who was there on her own. She had been at the Tabernacle concert in February and was standing behind me and so a lot of her pictures had lots of red hair in them! We kind of collected her up and she spent the rest of the weekend with us - so we really were an international group with 5 different countries represented. Also around now, we were accosted by two Aliens, which rather freaked me out as I do find them very scary - but Sylvie didn’t care a bit and I got a picture of her snogging one of them….!
We found a few chairs to sit on in the foyer and then spent quite a lot of the rest of the afternoon there, eating or chatting. Katrin went off for a bit whilst both Sylvie and I fell asleep (and Astrid caught us on camera!) I did wake up in time to have a very yummy and very naughty pancake with chocolate sauce that they were cooking fresh right there in the foyer. (The con food was excellent - very good quality and value - they had a big hot food section right there in the lobby with good and plentiful choices and a token system (‘bons’) to pay which worked very well.)
We decided to go and sit in the main auditorium before the opening ceremony to try and get a decent seat as I hoped that they would bring all the guests out during it - and then the plan was to stay there through the other 2 panels before James was on. Astrid joined me in the balcony as for some reason her ticket didn’t have a letter on it, so it looked like she could sit where she wanted. We found some seats at the front and to the far left of the stage and it did look a long way away - my camera was going to be severely tested. They were premiering some ‘Phase 2’ Star Trek episodes which are new stories using the characters from the original series and appear on the internet. I wasn’t impressed as I thought the acting was dismal and it seemed more like a spoof and I kept expecting the punch line that never came! (I’m too used to the hilarious little spoofs they do at DragonCon methinks!)
The opening ceremony was fun - we had the Aliens dancing to Michael Jackson at one point - and they did bring all the guests out one by one. It was odd to see James introduced somewhere in the middle, as of course it being primarily a Star Trek con, the ST guests were the top billing. He said a few words in welcome and then joined the line and carried on being very polite and clapping each new guest as they were announced. Once he was on stage, I had eyes for no one else and it was fun to watch him chatting with David Hewlett from Stargate Atlantis and Tahmoh Penikett from BSG. Mostly James stood in his favourite pose with his thumbs in his jeans pockets, though at one point I saw him happily drumming his hands and doing a little bit of shuffle in time with the music!
Michael Dorn and Terry Farrell were the big stars for this con and the crowd was whooping them up a storm, - and I must confess I had no idea who they were! (I only ever watched the original Star Trek) so I just clapped politely and carried on watching James some more, laughing with Gareth as they went off stage.
Terry was the first panel on after the opening ceremony and she obviously wasn’t used to doing Q and A’s as she talked very fast and about nothing really, to the point where I was starting to cringe. When she finally did start taking questions fro the audience, she was shooting off at tangents and still going on about unrelated subjects.
It was David Hewlett up next - another one who I had no idea who he was until somebody told me (I’ve never watched any Stargate - though I think I might watch Atlantis now!) and he was good - very funny. A joke about the fact that all the Germans wanted to ask more than one question started up during this to the point that when people were at the microphone they were saying “I’m German, so I have two/three questions” and if they weren’t, they were apologising - “I’m from England and I only have one and a half questions!”
For once I was going to ask James a question in the Q and A and I wanted to get in early so I could then concentrate on taking pictures. So as David was going off stage I went round to the microphone on my side of the balcony and got in the queue first. It was very strange seeing the number of people that were leaving the auditorium as James was introduced - normally he is the one that pulls in the crowd! He had changed his black t-shirt for the lovely black-striped button down shirt that looks so good on him.
I wasn’t the first question as there five mics altogether and they went to the others first. I just watched and listened and felt sure that James wouldn’t be able to see who it was asking him the question right up in the gods where I was. The person before me asked James to sing so he did a bit of the cowboy song which was great. Then the spotlight slowly made its way round to me and I just said “Hi James” down the microphone and immediately he called out “Hey, it’s Rosie! You got upstairs!” which was just wonderful, him calling me by name in front of everyone.
My question was suggested by Salchi - I asked James if he could demonstrate the Irish accent that he was using for his character Victor Hesse, in the Hawaii 5-0 pilot, “as it was such a good old Irish name…!” James responded by saying he had asked the director were there any Irishmen called Victor? And he had replied “Dude, it’s not your real name!”
What I didn’t notice was he replied to me in the accent - a very well done Northern Irish one, which is not easy to do - its quite different from the “land of the bogs and the little people” southern Irish that is far more familiar. It was quite spooky, as it sounded so natural. Having not noticed the accent, I asked if he could demonstrate it and James replied laughing “I just did! What do you want me to say?” and then in a strong accent that was eerily reminiscent of the old Unionists, added “Get the fuck out of Belfast!” which brought the house down!
I couldn’t add anything to that, so laughing I just said “Thanks darlin’” down the mic to him and then turned away to leave. And then James replied “Love you, Rosie”
I nearly fell over when I heard him say that! It’s the first time he has ever said that to me unprompted - he’s replied when I’ve said “Love you” at the auto table or whatever, but never first. And he said it in front of about 500 witnesses and with my name. Definitely the highlight of the weekend for me!
I went back to my seat, but didn’t sit down - I went right to the point of the balcony that curved round nearest the stage to try and get pictures from there. It was better, but certainly not the easiest place to photograph from. The zoom did its best, but none of the pictures were that good. Sky was up there with me, having the same trouble. If I had been downstairs, I could have crept to the front on the floor but I wasn’t allowed down there. Grrrrrr!
There was nothing new that came up - I thought we were going to get away without the John Barrowman question, but no, it still managed to sneak in there! - quite few on Spike, one rather cringe-making one that was immediately after me about what Spike was thinking while he was fucking Buffy, that James handled with his normal diplomacy (whilst its patently obvious that the honest answer would be “Phwoar! Buffy!”) And there was a question about fan fiction to do with Spike and Giles (Who would be on top? James - “Giles is the old guy - let him go on top and do all the work!”)
He got a round of applause when he was talking about Torchwood and the “homophobic backlash” and went on to say about how they are now finding out that about 10% of every species tested, right down to the tsetse fly, is gay!
It was over far too soon of course and James went off stage to as much whooping and cheering as we could manage. By now it was gone 10.30pm and we were all pretty tired and we needed to catch the train back into Bonn’s centre. So we all met up outside of the auditorium and compared notes, saw on the big screen that James’s photo ops were going to be from 5-6pm the following day and then made our way to the train. Astrid was staying in another hotel also close to ours so we all travelled back together. The train was surprisingly full and the centre of Bonn was very lively and loud when we got there - music and partying on the streets. The following day was the May Day holiday so obviously everyone was making the most of the evening. We agreed to make our own ways to the con the following morning and meet up there and then went to our separate hotels. I was very glad I had a room at the back of the hotel as I didn’t hear anything from outside overnight, but there was obviously some fairly hard partying going on as evidence the following morning showed!