Red Hot Sand

It’s now over a week since I got back from the City of Angels, so of course I’ve left it until now to blog about it.

Why did I go? I went to Gallifrey a large Doctor Who convention, for shame. Steve O’Brien - my comedy husband - and I had always talked about doing it, and with only another two of them left we decided that this was the year, and what a ball we had!

We had time either side of the convention to dash around LA LA Land. Before the convention we went to Universal Studios for the tour, which was fun. This sounds dumb, but I didn’t expect it to be such a theme park. I know, I guess it was because we were both so focused on doing the tour, good fun, Jaws was a tad underwhelming though. Then post the con we went on the Paramount Tour, which I found more interesting as it was very much more of a working studio than Universal, it was such a thrill to see where key scenes of The Godfather and the original Star Trek were filmed (even if they were basically sound stages).

We’d put the least amount of thought into what we were going to do at the convention, we just rocked up and rolled with it. I loved the American fans, they are so passionate and intense. We found ourselves going to more of the discussion panels than I thought we would, and there was an over riding disappointment amongst those gathered for the latest iteration of the series. There were groups of fans at the convention who were into their very specific niche. Torchwood is still a thing over there! Who knew! There were a group of sixteen year old’s who were into The Faction Paradox? No, me neither.

After one of the days events I got talking to a charming lady and said that she had to visit Wales, she said she had, 19 years ago she’d been to Swansea and started showing me photos.

“Hang on…that’s me!” Kathi Olson hadn’t changed a bit, which is more than can be said of me. One of the highlights of Gallifrey was become reacquainted with her and her husband. What a delight! They introduced us to some great people and made us feel really welcome.

We also hung out with the Cutaway Comic crew and Gareth Kavanagh who were a reet laff. One of the other highlights was watching the live commentary of the episode ‘Lucky Day’ - one of the better recent episodes - with the writer Pete McTighe and Millie Gibson.

I got absolutely hammered on the Saturday and sang ‘Raspberry Beret’ at the Karaoke on the Saturday night. I sounded like a seal being clubbed to death, much to the indifference to all those in attendance, except Steve O’Brien who said it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. It was my disgrace and my triumph, I loved every minute.

Hung over to fuck the next day, we went to a merchandise panel where I proudly mentioned owning a full size Dalek, I was probably in the only room on earth at the point where I got gasps of envy.

Talking of my comedy husband he pointed out that it felt like we’d visited LA, gone to some weird liminal space for the convention, then returned to LA at the end, it certainly felt like that.

My overriding memory of the ten days we were in LA was the laughter. We had an absolute gas and I’m looking forward to going back - fingers crossed - next year with Sian in tow.