Gunning for the Easter Bunny

Everyone in Britain talks about how foolish it is to go away for Easter, then they all do. Every possible business closes from Friday through Monday, so that if you have (to pick an example entirely at random) forgotten to pick up your drycleaning on Thursday, f’rinstance, you won’t be seeing in until Tuesday. Since I frequently find myself over here around that time to attend the British National SF Convention, Eastercon, I frequently have the pleasure of taking a train to one exciting holiday destination or other (such as Hinckley, Leicestershire) on overcrowded trains. The rail companies always put on extra trains, and it’s never enough.

A couple of years ago, when the con was in Blackpool, my fellow passengers consisted mainly of people who were planning to spend their four-day holiday puke-sick drunk in a town where that and gambling are the major entertainment options, and were getting a leg up on that condition on the train. One memorable portion of my journey that April was spent standing packed like kippers in the vestibule between carriages (which were even more tightly packed) with a dozen merrymakers and their duffel full of beer. At every station more people packed onto the carriage, but a sweet young thug on my right protected our cozy vestibule for the entire milk-run from Manchester to Blackpool by keeping his hand to the Door Close button at every station, smiling in a predatory sort of way at the increasingly desperate would-be passengers on the platforms, who were beating their fists on the window and screaming ineffective curses. There were only two carriages, and the loo – which thankfully was not at our end – was flooded, and here were all these people drinking beer as if there would be none where they were going. From the smell the rest of the weekend, they must’ve started pissing in the gutters and phone boxes as soon as they got off the train. Blackpool. Just say no.

Eastercons are held more often in Hinckley, Leicestershire than any other location, a fact that might puzzle anyone who’s actually been there. And yet if you hold it in Hinckley, they will come. It’s in the middle of England, not too far a journey for most people, and the hotel is cheap. To American fans and pros, who hardly give a thought to travelling 500 miles to attend a largeish convention, it seems odd to think how few Britons will go half that far to get to the biggest one they have all year. Move Eastercon a couple hundred miles in any direction from Hinckley, and the British stay away in droves. This year’s con was in Glasgow, barely across the Tweed, but might have been the site of an Avian Flu outbreak for the size of the crowd. In the end it probably comes down to population; even a large British convention is never all that large by U.S. standards, simply because we outnumber them. Still, although the hotel seemed strangely empty, I managed to have fun, meet new people, and eat great Indian food, and what else is a convention for?

This was my fifth visit to Glasgow, the first being in 1995, when Marti and I attended that year’s Worldcon along with our mate Lorelei Shannon and her wonderful husband Daniel Carver. One memorable evening we three ladies walked down to the site of the old Water Taxi with its Art Nouveau ironwork gate, and watched the starlings come home in great black clouds over the Clyde to nest under Glasgow Bridge. Of course bird netting had been installed long since, but when fifty million birds want something, who’s going to stop them for long? Just ask Alfred Hitchcock (and let’s not forget Daphne duMaurier). The sight was miraculous, and almost as much so was the fact that we were only shit on once the whole time.

It was good to get back to London and sunshine after being rained on and blown around for two days. In fact, almost as soon as I left the Glasgow gloom, the clouds blew away and the day was pure spring all the way over to Edinburgh and down the eastern route through York. So maybe all that gloom was just me.