You ever get the guilty feeling that you’re so late with a post that it’s now too late, the thing you thought you should have written about days ago is old news, the window has been closed, the moment missed? Well I sort of feel like that. But I had too good a time at Bristolcon on Saturday not to at least acknowledge the hard work of chairperson Joanne Hall, who invited me when we met a month ago in Brighton at Fantasycon. She is clearly one of those rare people who can combine grace and good humour with ferocious organisational and timekeeping skills, as a result of which Bristolcon was fun and relaxed and went off without a hitch, at least from where I was standing/sitting/moving between panel discussions. And I met other extremely cool people and had some really interesting, stimulating conversations: shout-outs to Colum Paget (who appears to have recruited me for a hypothetical panel two Eastercons away – I’m game), Cheryl Morgan (who I think is a Bristolcon grandee, and I suspect a grandee of rather a lot, but I confess to missing details in the general hilarity), Iain Cairns, John Hawkes-Reed, Simeon Beresford, John Meaney, Gareth Powell, Aliette de Bodard (I came in early for a panel, caught the tail end of her reading, and became a fan; even more so when I spoke to her after and she turned out to be friendly and charming and invited me to sit at their table for lunch), and the lovely woman wearing the Neil Gaiman T-shirt with whom I shared a gushing fangirl moment along with a rather more measured chat, and whose name has since gone completely out of my head. I knew I should have posted sooner.

So be warned, those whom I will meet for the second, or even the third, time at Eastercon; it’s possible that I might get a deer-in-the-headlights look when you swan up to me with a cheery greeting. Please don’t take it personally, any more than I will when I do the swanning and you do the stricken-Bambi. I suspect it’s a condition endemic to the Cons, to be overcome only by repeated exposure.