Paris in the Spring...

[amberdreams]

Last weekend it was time to see the Boys again - and this time the Saturday was my birthday, so I just had to go to this one, didn't I?

When our little group of con-friends were looking at conventions this year, initially it was just going to be Nat and Chris, Darklight veterans Wendy and dizzojay, and myself. Then tickets didn't sell out, and the J2 effect started to take hold, and before you know it, Elisa and Anne had bought tickets too, and I had myself a roomie!

The venue wasn’t a hotel, and there were two halls for panels, which were supposed to mirror each other (newsflash, that didn’t exactly work out), and the schedule was exactly the same on the two days because all the tickets were day tickets – and I’m not sure that really worked either. Certainly the Saturday was a lot busier than the Sunday, which kind of worked in our favour as we’d all (apart from Elisa) bought Angel passes for the Saturday, and Demons for the Sunday which meant Sunday having fewer attendees didn’t impact us too badly in terms of queuing times.

Some things didn’t go so well – but first, the good stuff. Chris’s birthday is on 9^th June and we are both hitting 64 this year, so we decided to share a group op (which amazingly included the Js!) for a joint 60s themed birthday celebration, and it went pretty much to plan! The sunglasses didn’t quite get distributed, and Jared held the inflatable banjo behind Gen’s head like a halo, but the improvisation was great fun and everyone was in such a great mood, even though it all took place in such a short few seconds, it was definitely memorable!

I had a meet & greet with Jensen, which was a bit of a mess – it was in a small room with chairs set out in rows so if you weren’t in the front row it was hard to see him – fortunately he realised partway through and stood up. Before Jensen arrived, one of the staff came in and said anyone with photos that were happening now should go with her, she’d take them through the pics and bring them straight back in plenty of time. It couldn’t start without her because she was Jensen’s interpreter. So about half the people went with her, and two minutes later Jensen arrived with a different interpreter, and the M&G started. So about ten minutes after that the ones who’d left for photos came in to find they’d missed stuff and naturally they were really unhappy! I didn’t ask anything in the end, it was too difficult.

I’d decided not to try anything over complicated for my solo ops so it was all about the birthday hugs with the Js




But I had had a silly idea for my J2, which meant I had to rush to the Boulangerie Saturday morning after registration to buy three baguettes.



This was supposed to be a Three Musketeers op, but of course Jared wanted to beat the hell out of the baguettes and bent one – since I had a droopy lightsabre op with Jensen and Ricky Whittle in Rome, I gave Jensen the bendy baguette as I left the op…(I’m sure he didn’t remember the lightsabre but still, I thought it was funny)

While in the supermarket the evening before, we’d spotted a whisk and remembered Rob’s terrible wobbing being whisky joke at JIB, so…



Rob loved this so much, he roared with laughter and told me Rich would love it – so later I got both Rob and Rich to sign the op.

In spite of the priority queuing on Saturday we all had to spend soooo much time queuing, I missed the whole of Jensen’s panel in the morning, and missed the start of the Jared and Genevieve one, which was frustrating, because there were so few panels all together, and no J2 either. We were all footsore and weary, and everything overran which meant there was very little time between the last panel/photos/autos and Rob’s evening concert, and we had to get some weird burgers from the van outside. At least they had veggie ones.

Sunday was meant to be quieter but somehow I’d loaded myself up with photo ops, and was stressing myself out about the trio plan because my idea meant I had three props to juggle plus the stress of me having to ‘perform’. Why do I do this to myself?

This is why…


Mark Sheppard too one look at me in my mask and yelled I LOVE THIS, grabbed the clapperboard and pulled me in. I handed the sign to Jared who said ‘oh no..’ and looked at Jensen, who kind of puffed up his chest and said ‘oh you fucker’. Then I went to put my right hand up and Jensen took over, directed the whole thing and it was awesome. Mark shouted after me again as I left to sort out my bag, saying it was his favourite photo op ever. Honestly though, I was shaking!!

Before the Zorro op I’d had another solo with Jensen and told him ‘you’re going to hate me later’ and then gave me this perfect ‘after’ photo – I was quite chuffed that I’d managed to pull off exactly the right expression too.



And when I had my J2 later, both of them laughed and said I’d won the day with my Zorro, so all round, it was a great success! Looks like Jensen forgave me. For this one I just said surprise me, so I had no clue what they were doing.


Just to tidy it all up, I had a lovely op with Gen (she’s soooo NICE), a fun movie night with the Pads (which they both seemed delighted with), and got to feel Jared’s mighty bicep. Which was impressively rock hard and he seemed very proud to show it off LOL.



 The bad stuff was around the private session – al 7 of us had bought tickets for the Sunday, and the session was supposed to be J2, Gen and all the guests mingling informally for 30 mins, with us being allowed to have selfies as well as chat with them. We’d seen the photos from the Saturday session, and it looked great, but on Sunday morning, we all got an email saying there would be no selfies allowed. So that was disappointing, but we sucked it up. Then we went into the session, which had been moved from Saturday’s well lit room to the dark stage of one of the panel rooms, and Mark, Matt and co turned up and mingled, and we chatted to them and waited for J2 and Gen – and then gradually realised they weren’t coming at all.

That was a major disappointment, and the fact we weren’t told they wouldn’t be there at all was really bad. In fact the email had specifically said not to worry ALL the guests would still be there. We tried complaining – my suggestion had been to allow us an extra auto so we could at least go and talk to each of them one last time – but since we’d all been given an extra single photo that was a bust. Really the extra photo was nice but we’d already bought what we wanted in that respect, and photos are so rushed too. Monetarily speaking they ‘compensated’ us, but in terms of the expected experience, not so much.

We were told it was the agents decision, and that the format of the private session was unexpected, but later found that some stupid bimbo had groped Jared’s bum in front of Gen, and that both of them had left the Saturday session early as a result. Maybe it was a bit of both, who knows. But it was sad to end the weekend on a bum note.