2003 Archive 
We walked down to the hotel and saw some more faces in the lobby. It was surreal to see people lugging in Space Precinct models and large boxes labelled "Stingray"... During the course of the evening I got to meet a number of Fanderson people and get the lay of the hotel. Every so often, vaguely familiar faces would appear, sometimes Fanderson people, sometimes, hey, isn't that?....
Ed Bishop
I came out of a corridor and as I did so, none other than Ed Bishop walked by! Now TV collided with reality. For no apparent reason I exclaimed "Ed Bishop!" out loud. This could have been embarrassing (I have a history of embarrassing moments like that), but instead, he stopped, turned to me and smiling, said "hi" and put out his hand. So I shook the hand of Ed Straker and Captain Blue. We chatted briefly and he was very pleasant.
For me I think the most startling thing was actually seeing his face in 3D. Much to my surprise, he looked and sounded much like he did way back when.
The People
A lot of people hung about in the lobby and re-acquainted themselves with people they had not seen in a while. After a while, we were in a well-spirited group heading even further down the hill in search of a place to have dinner. In the end we were in a large pub and the part we were in appeared to have been (not too recently I hope) converted from horse stalls. The stall area became where the 8 (or 10) or us had dinner that night.
What a nice bunch of people. I only had ever met one of these people before. A few I knew via letters or email, but we were all united with a common interest and it certainly kept the evening fun. Surprisingly, a lot of the conversation was not oriented to Anderson shows, but that just underscored what a normal bunch of people we were.