As Samuel Johnson once said, “When a man is tired of Scarborough, he is tired of being attacked and defaecated on by the equivalent of a homicidal turkey which is willing to fight you for your lunch.” And so it went at Fantasycon, especially for those gentle souls who weren’t brought up on the North Sea coast. It is telling that no gulls dared come near me or the Editor-in-Chief. They sensed the East Yorkshireman’s natural talent for wringing their necks and selling them to Gordon Ramsey as ‘sea-pheasants’.

So, gosh. I went to a convention. Time for lots of diplomatic name-dropping, and anecdotes about how we shook hands with a woman who almost touched Joe Hill’s luggage, how we conjured the shade of David Gemmell for malign purposes, and how we rigged the voting…

No, we’re not really fussed about all that. We met people. They were cool. We didn’t have to use either of the concealed chainsaws. We had far bigger concerns at the convention:

• Why is hotel tea so bloody awful?
• Why was most of Scarborough heated to sub-tropical temperatures?
• Why didn’t I make enough money writing to buy everything on the Swan River Press stall?
• Where was Laura Mauro?
• How do hotels manage to produce such bad tea? (have we had that one yet?)

Besides, with the Roman watch-beacon on the point, and the historical presence of Roman cavalry inland at Malton, I was busy passing on early Yorkshire trivia. The mounted unit at Derventio Brigantium would probably have been a rapid-reaction force in case of local trouble. The Ala Gallorum Picentiana, Picentine cavalry, are of especial interest because the Picentines were from North-east Italy. There is heated debate as to… no, you’re not bothered either, are you?

The convention. We were quite well prepared. Following astounding efforts by Editor-in-Chief, we even had dual greydogtales and Occult Detective Quarterly T-shirts to parade. Sadly, following an incident with a frying pan full of hot oil a little earlier, one of them looked like a ‘before’ advert for stain-removal, so only Herself had one on. The reserve T-shirt had not been ‘pre-stretched’ to accommodate my large frame, ahem. We had ODQ fliers to shove in people’s faces, and even stylish greydogtales calling-cards.

However, attending my first con after twenty plus years did create much mental confusion, as if I was trying to survive on two different planes of existence at once.

The last time I did this sort of thing, I was a man in his twenties or thirties, able to drink from ten in the morning until three the next morning, shuttling between the many fans, contacts and authors he knew. Poker on the hotel landings, utterly futile and rabid arguments between fannish factions, and a profusion of hand-duplicated fanzine, etc.

In the old days I attended a lot of conventions, organised some of them, and generally ran wild. I remember making love with a delightful US attendee on the edge of a duck pond, and being found there by early morning fishermen, who were actually hoping for pike; drawing Celtic swirls all over my face with an indelible marker, wandering around smoking a pipe I hated, and falling unconscious while eating tinned tuna and drinking Captain Morgan rum from the bottle at the same time. Slightly surprised that I have a liver at all, when I think back to the eighties and early nineties.

I played rugby (using a hard white cabbage) with a Professor of Anglo-Saxon Literature in a crowded bar, sang Frankie Laine songs whilst hitting myself on the head with a tray to keep time, and did those things that you did back then. It all made sense at the time.

2016 was slightly different. This time I had never met anyone face-to-face, not a single person. I spent a lot of time squinting to see if any of the members looked vaguely like a Facebook photo I’d once glanced past. And I was up for no more than a few relaxed pints in the evening – and then crash time. I’ve never been to a convention before where I was asleep by half one in the morning.

And there was the panic attack stuff, which I never used to have. I managed to get away with only one major attack while we were there – when Editor-in-Chief wandered off to see the sands. I sat in our room, and then realised I was miles from home, I didn’t drive, and I didn’t have the longdogs with me. Sudden massive feeling of insecurity, chest pains and trembling all over. Run away! Fortunately I sat it out, and eventually went for a shaky walk. It passed.

The rest went well, involving the spending of more money than feasible, and the occasional dribble of dubious tea. Given that I live on eight or nine full pint mugs of tea a day, this was a bit of a comedown. I even drank a bottle of Coke at one point, but that was even worse than the tea.

One of the reading rooms was bizarre. As an agoraphobic and claustrophobic, this was a slight trial for me. We went to hear Jilly Paddock read, for example, which consisted of a strange adventure-challenge wandering down endless over-heated corridors at the Royal Hotel, after which we shuffled into a small room whose acoustics were helped by the sound of the air-conditioning groaning away in the background. I briefly considered throwing myself through the plate glass window to escape, which was nothing to do with the quality of the readings.

I should tell witty stories about who we met, plug known authors for their humour and friendliness, and so on, but you’ve heard it all. I can tell you that everyone on the streets of Scarborough seems to be completely pissed on a Saturday night, which made the convention seem quite restrained. I went to half a programme item during the entire weekend, possibly the major connection with my practice in the past. I also introduced my wing-woman to many people, just to prove that she existed and that I didn’t live entirely wild with lurchers in an abandoned shepherd’s hut.

My other difficulty (apart from the tea) probably came from my heretical practice of not really being that bothered whether or not a book is signed by the author. I hardly dare admit that neither of us care that much, and more than once we had our purchases signed before we could escape politely. The thought was, of course, appreciated, but we’re not collectors in that sense. We merely have vast numbers of books.

When Mike Carey (who was very friendly and seemed an interesting chap) started signing his latest, I extemporised by asking him to inscribe it to Herself, thus turning it into a thoughtful present. Hopefully.

Three key experiences stand out, and they cannot be missed in such a thorough and exhaustive convention report as this one:

• Dave Brzeski (and his partner Jilly Paddock, a writer herself) introducing me to more people than I could possibly remember. Dave seemed to be trying to overload my ancient brain as a sort of science experiment. I think he was curious to see if sparks would come out of my ears. Invaluable hostliness, nonetheless.

• Meeting Brian Showers, High King of Dublin’s Swan River Press, who we interviewed for greydogtales a while back (swan river secrets), and who was a real gent in person. Having formed an admiration for his work, that admiration was cemented by talking to him and browsing their stall.

• Finding Laura Mauro, up-and-coming writer of worrying tales. I liked her writing, liked her FB posts, and agreed with a lot of what she said. I’d also interviewed her (scary women again) and I’d seen a recent photo. She was one of the people I was absolutely sure I’d recognise. Which I did. Less than ten minutes before our parking meter was going to run out and we had to drive home. Still a victory, though, and she was super nice.

I won’t name anyone else, because I’ll probably start to get names mixed up, leave people out or whatever. But they were all, as stated earlier, jolly cool, especially Nina Allan and Adrian Cole, who I suspect I could have talked to for a few days solid. No, no more names. Bad dog.

The rest of it was business for greydogtales – feature and interview opportunities – and business for ODQ – where next, what people wanted, who would like to write for us, more illustration possibilities, that sort of thing. Editor-in-Chief and I came back with light hearts, lots of ideas, and I now have much more work than I had beforehand. Which is just what I wanted <insert sarcasm here>.

Next time, the usual weird stuff, and a bit of signposting to yet more new books…