UK PonyCon 2022, Sunday part 1: Better get nervous, better get tense

Fluttershy stickers naturally need some serious security

Sunday morning dawned pleasantly enough, and in a highly agreeable turn up for the books, I'd had another excellent night's sleep. This whole "sleep in Derby, con it up in Nottingham" arrangement was proving to be right on the money for me. I suspect that at least one reader of this blog will be very happy to know that these few days have considerably improved how I feel about Nottingham itself. I think I now feel that it's a pretty nice city in the daytime, at least, although I still don't have all that much time for it late at night.

As I tend to do, I put my con badge on before I left my hotel room, to make absolutely sure I wouldn't lose it. You know what I'm like sometimes! The walk to the bus station was uneventful and dry, and the Red Arrow coach was once again comfortable and once again somewhat lacking in working USB ports. As with Saturday, I'd left plenty of time for a little bit of breakfast before getting going, although this time no unexpected friends appeared. Can't win 'em all! Off to the venue, without quite so much pressure of time this time around, though I still felt it worthwhile being near the front of the queue.

For the one and only time all weekend, there was a very minor issue with going in: I was mildly upbraided by a member of venue staff (not the one who'd cheked my bag on Saturday) for having a Fluttershy sticker on the back of my con badge holder. Apparently the fact that it covered a "2022" was a bad thing. There were two other mentions of the year on the badge – one on the same side as the sticker – so it seemed a rather footling complaint, but hay ho. I later discovered a couple of other people had had minor badge issues along the same lines. Oh well.

That's the posh ponies' queue on the left. Us plebs on the right

I was inside in loads of time, so it was good to see folks again. Everybody needs somebody, I'm somebody too. Hey there hello, the friends I make, the friends I know. And so on. With a little time to go before official events began, I had a brief turn around the stalls. I can't remember whether it was now or later on that day, but it was nice to have a quick chat with the ever-affable Jowy and pick up a couple of A4 prints: one for Make Your Mark and a title card for "Sounds of Silence". Jowy used to be really well known for doing these, but he'd shifted away from them for a while and had only recently returned to the idea. I'm glad he has.

First up today was "Britannia's Best of British", which I think was originally planned to be the con staffers confusing our Canadian and Swedish GoHs with a range of very British things. What actually happened was that Andrea Libman and Anneli Heed spent about three-quarters of an hour being fed British food and drink. Andrea suggested this was the best panel she'd ever done! Marmite, sadly, did not make the grade for either VIP, though I kind of share their bemusement at toast and jam flavour tea. Yes, it's a thing. They were generally happy with British chocolate (I'd always thought Canadian Cadbury's was much the same as ours, but oh well) but the highlight for me was that Andrea Libman loved custard creams! :D

After a very brief bit of "let's confuse the foreigners with Briticisms", which didn't work quite so well as so many of them were regional, not national terms, it was over. Great fun overall, though, and a perfect way to start a UK PonyCon Sunday. After this, though, things got very serious for some of us. So much so that I missed karaoke, the "Total Chaos" game and even the mighty "Ponies in Boxes" (a room full of cardboard boxes to play around in, put plushies in, etc). Along with a couple of friends, I had a hugely important appointment for which I could not possibly be late: it was signing session time! Nervouscited? You bet I was.

The Best of British panel. The girl on the right is Anneli Heed's daughter

A friend who I suspect would like to remain anonymous¹ who'd bought a higher-level ticket had very kindly given me their freebie signing session tokens, since they weren't going to use them. We weren't sure whether this was allowed, but Big Boss Con Chair Maz gave it the go-ahead, so yay to him as well. The queue when I joined it wasn't all that long, so I was fairly confident I'd make it well inside the end of the signing session. I felt a little bit sorry for Anneli Heed actually, whose queue was much shorter than Andrea Libman's. If the latter had been anyone else, I might have switched. But not when it was Actual Fluttershy.
¹If not and you're reading this, let me know and I'll happily credit you :)

I almost never bother with autograph sessions, since I'm not much of a collector of such things and they tend to be, if not expensive as such, about the price of two nice prints or pub meals. Most of the time I value those more. I hadn't brought anything for Andrea to sign; originally I'd considered taking my copy of Fluttershy and the Fine Furry Friends Fair, but it completely slipped my mind until it was too late. Fortunately the A4 print on offer was very nice. As was Actual Fluttershy – her little message was Pinkie-ish, but I felt that was actually appropriate for a party like this!

That wasn't all, however. You could also have a little voice message recorded, but I skipped that partly because it would have been quite expensive (my gifted tokens didn't cover that) but mostly because I was more interested in the other option:  the photo! To say I was nervous standing up there in front of the UK PonyCon sponsor board with Actual Fluttershy was the understatement of the century. Let's face it, though, she's done a million Pony conventions and knows exactly what she's doing. She was kind, cheerful and helpful, and although my little old phone doesn't take the greatest photos in the world I will treasure this one for a very long time.

The mighty roller banners, a UKPC institution

Next time: Are you scared about tomorrow?