Hello and welcome to Inso's World again. As promised, I will be adding a few more "reflections from Salute 52", now that I have had a chance to land and look back with a clear, less exhausted, mind.
So here goes...
All the travelling sucked.
Yes, I have travelled afar in my previous life but now that I have settled in Cornwall, my will to travel... or even leave the place... has really died. I found sitting on a train full of people who didn't want to chat, a bit weird and wasn't really happy with the cushioning on the seats either. The air-conditioner wasn't really on top form and the train was packed (luckily I reserved seats for the to/from London train). Thank heavens for Sudoku.
My lack of familiarity with getting around London didn't matter because the underground is very easy to navigate BUT I over spent on unnecessary tickets due to not realising I could just tap my debit card on the Oyster pads. Also, the closure of the Chiltern line, over the weekend, meant a few diversions which added time and uncertainty to the journey.
Overall, I wasn't unhappy with the "travelling tools" at my disposal but the time it took and the cost of travel was hard to rationalise for me. It was a whole weekend of traveling for 5 hours at a show... I could have done a lot of things in the same time, had I not gone.
Sleep?
Nothing to do with the event BUT I had little more than a couple of hours of sleep over the three days of travelling/being away from home. This was caused by a mix of excitement for the show, anxiety about travelling/tickets and my insomnia. It was a real shame because the bed I was "sleeping" in was extremely comfortable. The lack of sleep and all the travelling, coupled with my "post long COVID lungs" and polluted air, meant that I was pretty exhausted before I even got to Salute... which was a shame.
The show.
The South London Warlords put on a cracking event. There was something for everyone, the staff were amazingly helpful and surprisingly friendly considering some of the nonsense that I expect they had to deal with. The venue, as always, was perfect for the show and the food-courts were varied and really not as expensive as I could have expected. The ticket price was very fair and although I arrived a little too late for the extra free miniature, I got a nice little bag of freebies; of which a small part, are on my workbench. If I could think of a negative from the show perspective, it would be a lack of a place in the hall to get a cold drink without having to go out into the food court areas (assuming that there wasn't one that I never noticed)... but that's a really small gripe.
The crowds.
I'll be the first to admit that the crowds bothered me a lot. I wasn't expecting it to be the case but I was quite overwhelmed by the floating masses. I can't fault the courteous nature of people... I experienced no rudeness or bother from anyone at all; in fact, everyone was friendly and willing to chat and those I wanted to interact with, were brilliant. The problem I had with the crowds was the unrelenting nature of them. I am not one to sharpen my elbows and push-in so I found that I was standing around in a bit of a daze for a lot of the show... waiting to steer around people to get to areas I wanted to go. As a result, I lost my bearings completely and had to look at the map a lot more than I would have expected. The daze also meant that I missed going to stalls that I wanted to visit, didn't realise some of them were there at all, forgot about others I planned to visit and became so overwhelmed by everything that I felt I had to leave the event earlier than I wanted to.
When I tried to find a quiet spot, away from the crowds, it was like I was being followed by people who just wanted to be in the space I was in... so I felt like I couldn't escape... and the longer it went on, the more anxious I was getting.
... and the crowds didn't die down... they remained pretty constant throughout the whole time I managed to remain at the event. It was great for the show but too much for me.
I had a nightmare trying to find people that I planned to meet up with. It was lucky that most of them found me, even though I was really trying to find them. I had some lovely chats with them and met some people for the first time, even though we'd been chatting for years on Facebook. I missed a few people that I really wanted to see but I was so overwhelmed by the event that it was inevitable that I wouldn't see everyone... and at the end, I ejected so rapidly that I didn't have time to shout out a warning so missed others who may have wanted to connect.
It would appear that living in a quiet Cornish town has had a dramatic effect on my ability to deal with large gatherings of people.
The vendors.
I really can't fault a single one! Every vendor was happy to chat (when the crowds allowed it) and I was able to enthuse about their products or listen to them enthuse about them. I connected with lots of people I knew from past Salutes, met new ones and did a bit of networking and chatted with people about new products that I hadn't seen before. The stalls were interesting, well laid out and there were many little add-ons / freebies floating about if you wanted to find them (like the colouring table at Bad Squiddo Games, for example).
Overall or TLDR...
The event was brilliant, the people were brilliant, the stalls were brilliant, the crowds sucked, the travelling sucked and my ability to deal with crowds hampered my enjoyment of the day a little.
Would I go to another one?
If I was to go to another Salute, I would need to be lodging nearer the event to save on travel time. I would need to go with someone who could take my mind off the crowds and I would need to find a way of getting some bloody sleep! If I managed to arrange that, then I would go again... but not for a couple of years because I need to land properly.
The End?...
On to other things... and I have a week off work! That means that I have had a lot of sculpting time and have been busy sorting out a Servitor and another Engineseer. This is the Engineseer (all primed, ready for paint):
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