MAX BLAKE: What Maxy did next...

Well, it has certainly been a busy weekend for me! I awoke early to grab my kit for the weekend, and then headed out in the car to find a village hall in a tiny village outside of the sprawling metropolis that is Yeovil. If I am honest, I did not expect much from this year’s Bugfest, the Sci-fi blended with inverts I thought would be a disaster.

Yes, great for the kids it would be, but for people who wanted to meet up with friends and buy inverts? Not quite so good. However, after signing in and meeting the rest of the gang, I had a chance to look around, and it was not as bad as I first thought!

The sellers with livestock had some nice animals for very sensible prices, and in the 2 hours I was there I spent about twice as much as I expected! I ended up with a few cockroaches to add some new genes to my colony; some new Phasmids for school; a pair of red colour form Chilean Rose tarantulas (for only £20!) and 3 undiscribed baby scorpions, plus two large heat mats to keep everything toasty. I had a good old long chats with old friends, and met some new people, which is always good!

Eventually, Jon, Corrina and I decided it was time to leave and get to ol’ London town. We slogged our way up the, errr, road, and managed to get to a tiny railway platform where we could park the car overnight for free. Great! except there was nothing in the way of security. I risked it. The train arrived, and we were off to the centre, away from the stunning ring-necked parakeets which were zooming around next to the railway station and managing to get Jon and I very exited indeed.

A taxi took us from Waterloo up to the hotel where I arranged my inverts on the table by my bed. They were all fine from the journey, and the warm room would suit them fine overnight. I chilled out for an hour or so, before meeting J and C downstairs to whip off to the gig venue, only after seeing firsthand an example of racism between blacks and Asians. As we got there before the doors opened, we went to a pub and had a drink. I could here rant on about how much I love Weatherspoons pubs, but I won’t. Instead of staying for a few more drinks, we left to get back into the queue for the venue.

As expected, I was the youngest person there by a fair way. Not to worry, there was a great support band to watch. Only, there wasn’t, they were very much sub-par. So much so that I spent about half an hour during their set trying to work out how to increase the image size on the CFZ camera. I failed. After their set finished, we moved Jon around to the side of the stage at the front where he would be able to video the gig, and I could take photos. Dr. Strangely Strange arrived, and for the entire duration of their gig I was very much in rapture as I watched 4 fairly well aged Irish men play through their set in the relaxed manner of people who had seen it all before, and couldn’t care how many times they had to restart a song to get the start right!

Nor could the audience, we all laughed along and had a very merry time. I bought a copy of their reissued and tarted up album, “Kip of the Serenes”, which I managed to get signed by the three members of the band who played on it, as well as the fellow who played Glockenspiel on the first recording. The band seemed fairly positive about playing at the Weird Weekend, apparently they needed something to aim for or else they would probably split up again!

After the gig, we left to find somewhere to eat. The only place we could find was a 24hr kiosk where we got a Jacket Potato for Corrina, and two rather sad looking and tasting burgers for Jon and I. A short hop in a taxi, and we were back at the hotel to sleep until the morn.

The next day, after re-packing the inverts, we set off on a mammoth journey to the car, which took the best part of 3 hours by train and taxi. The car was undamaged, so I was happy. We set off to find Wildwoods, one of the best fish shops in the country. I could now wax lyrical about the new fish for the hobby that were for sale here, but I will leave that for a separate blog. Suffice to say, there was an awful lot of rare fish on sale here, if you were prepared to pay for the privilege. Still, there were many unusual fish for sale at reasonable prices. If you are into fish and live near north Greater London, for god’s sake go there! Our journey back was uneventful, but I did get two burgers for the price of one at the services we stopped at! Simple things, simple minds...

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