2003 Archive 
At 1pm I set off for Coventry. In order to do this I had to circumnavigate London which involved getting a train into London and then getting a tube to the correct station and then getting another train to Coventry. The latter train was one of the new(ish) Virgin trains and was quite nice. Certainly a pleasant change to the somewhat grubby London commuter trains. But no matter what, the train service is still excellent.
When I got to Coventry, I saw two Americans getting into a cab and asking the driver for Allesley. Being a shy and retiring type, I asked if I could join. They were more than happy to have me join them, so off we went. The two Americans turned out to be Mike Clark and Bill Wincker, both flew in from Los Angeles, which made my journey not so bad. Bill is a journalist who was planning on setting up some interviews. They both seemed quite excited to finally be going to this.
The hotels
When we arrived at their hotel, the first thing I noticed was that it had a sweeping outside staircase which strongly resembled to stairs outside on tracy island! Mike and Bill had rooms at the hotel, but I did not and the cabbie told me it was "just around the corner". So I opted to walk. With my two heavy bags. It turned out that the cabbie was being "economical with the truth" and the actual journey was closer to 15 minutes, most of it uphill, at least it wasn't raining. Allesley is a small village which goes gradually uphill toward my hotel. Mainly small houses along the narrow winding road, but there was a post office and a couple of shops for supplies, including the essential ATM.
Almost there, and I saw Theo de Klerk with some fellow fans from Holland. I had recently met Theo in London during an earlier trip, and it was good to see him again. I finally got to the hotel and checked in. I looked around and there was a man sitting in a chair. He said "Simon?". It was Marc Martin, he of the great UFO web site! It seemed like everywhere I went, there were people I have known but rarely actually met in person. This was going to be fun.
A little while later Marc and I met up in the bar and were joined by Hazel Kohler who came up from London. Marc flew in from Seattle via Amsterdam as part of a business trip that was going to take him into Russia. I think he got the jet lag award. Hazel has been to conventions before, but Marc and I were first-timers, but we were all excited about the upcoming weekend. Even though it was early friday evening, and the convention did not technically start until tomorrow, we had to go down to the other hotel to check out the events and people. Well, wouldn't you?