PC and Cookie's Big Adventure (feat. Navy Bird), the CedB cut

[HAMP man]

Procopius, Cookenbacker and CedB are even more awesome in the flesh, although, CedB seemed somewhat relaxed slimmer and taller than I had imagined him in the flesh! Must be the selfies giving false perception.

Apologies for slinking off early chaps but, an evening on my Counties highway standby awaits me.

 

Another week, Box On

 

Strickers

 

[opus999]

I'd been meaning to look at this thread all week, but only just now got to it.  You guys look like you're having such a great time! 

 

Nice to put faces to the names too! I've interacted with all yoose guys...

[Terry1954]

So I was on my way up to the competion area and I ran into all you guys and some others and got heavily delayed. Belgian beer played a part! Great to meet you all at last and look forward to seeing you down at Yevilton on Wednesday. Those still arou d tomorrow, see you then!

 

Terry

 

PS. I never made it to the completion area, so that's first thing tomorrow!

[Mr T]

Enjoyed meeting Procopious, Crockenbaker and Navy Bird and meeting CeD again, I hope you all enjoy the rest of your trip. 

[CedB]

Thanks guys - great to meet / see you all again too!

 

Busy day, lots of talking and, thanks to CC, ‘some’ beer! And then some beer before going back to the hotel for, er, some beer. 
For some reason I’m feeling a bit below par this morning...

 

No selfies I’m afraid - as soon as we hit the hall PC was off, returning later with more bags. I think I need a roof box!

 

I did take one shot during CC’s gathering:

 

 

Great day. Cosford this morning. 

[JasonC]

3 minutes ago, CedB said:

 Cosford this morning. 

Hope to see you there. Do you know yet when you’ll likely be there?

 

J.

[CedB]

Planning for opening time 10am. 
Text me when you get there if we haven’t already met: 07802 251561!

[Stew Dapple]

Jamie and I should be there about then too - looking forward to seeing you, It has been a real pleasure to spend some time with you all over the last couple of days  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

1 hour ago, JasonC said:

Hope to see you there. Do you know yet when you’ll likely be there?

 

J.

Jason I got your mail but if you're going to Cosford we can discuss there

[corsaircorp]

4 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

Jason I got your mail but if you're going to Cosford we can discuss there

Jamie, I'll be in Cosford tomorrow, I'm looking for you here in SMW. Did you have my order? CC 

[Greg B]

6 hours ago, CedB said:

I did take one shot during CC’s gathering:

 

 

Great day. Cosford this morning. 

I see he has escaped again from his daily task of leaving crop circles behind

[Jonny]

9 hours ago, CedB said:

I did take one shot during CC’s gathering:

 

 

Great day. Cosford this morning. 

Hi, Ced ..

 

I HAVE to ask - the .... gentleman ... in front of you:  who he, please?  Any connection with another planet by any chance?  I’m trying to be discrete, but the lady next to you - who she?

 

Apologies if these questions are impertinent.  Not my intention.

 

Jonny

[bhouse]

1 minute ago, Jonny said:

I HAVE to ask -

I was wondering exactly the same thing so you're not alone in wanting to ask the question

[Riksbar]

Was it by chance anywhere near the What-if crew?

[perdu]

I would be honoured to introduce to you the delightful lady, handmaiden to the invading alien horde Jill

 

And in the immediate vicinity our own Martian invader, the Martian Hale and of course master of the selfie CedB

 

What a wonderful weekend thanks for bringing the chaps along Ced

[Jonny]

11 hours ago, perdu said:

I would. Be honoured to introduce to you the delightful lady, handmaiden to the invading alien horde Jill

 

And in the immediate vicinity our own Martian invader, the Martian Hale and of course master of the selfie CedB

 

What a wonderful weekend thanks for bringing the chaps along Ced

AAAAH!

Thanks, Perdu -

 

I half guessed it might be Mrs. C. (WRONG! and mega apologies, the good lady is Mrs. M), and was totally correct about our Martian!
 

A shame no images of CC though.!

 

Jonny

Edited November 11, 2019 by Jonny
Apologies for mis-identifying the good lady, & correcting my mistake.

[Heather Kay]

Best Beloved and I just had a splendid evening with the chaps, as we are staying not a million miles from where they are currently in the Telford area. I’m glad we managed to actually meet up, and to match real people to online personas.

 

Good times.  

[CedB]

8 hours ago, Jonny said:

half guessed it might be Mrs. C., and was totally correct about our Martian!

For the avoidance of doubt and to quash any rumours, ‘tis Mr and Mrs Martian 👽 

 

Sorry I didn’t get one of CC but I was on my second bottle of CC’s beer by then. I think it was the second... at 9.5% (I think it was a test) it was hard to keep count AND hold the camera to be honest. 

 

CC thanks for the great company (and beer) - after a few more English pints in the pub and hotel I have to admit, for the first time that I can remember*, I had to leave some beer** and retire to my bed. Dangerous stuff this Belgian ale!!

 

* could have been last week, who knows?

** still punishable under English Common Law I believe?

[Biggles87]

I trust there will be some group photos ( with labels ) at some point in the future.

 

John

[perdu]

One hopes er, desperately hopes, not John

 

however I suspects ye'd be right old friend...

[Duncan B]

Reading this on the 11th day of the 11th month certainly brought a tear to my eye. What a moment that must have been to see those photos.

 

It sounds like you are having a great time, it would make an excellent book and CedB would make an excellent travel guide (I understand the demise of Thomas Cook has left a hole in the market!).

 

Duncan B

[CedB]

Where am I? What day is it? So many things seen and most remembered...

 

Cosford on Sunday and again yesterday morning for the Conservation Centre:

 

 

That’s CC and son on the left. 
It was incredibly poignant to stand for the two minutes silence next to the Hampden, still with its bullet holes

 

They also have another Hunter ready for attention. Is that bags of filler I wonder?
 

 

(It’s not, it’s salt)

 

Then it was a frantic dash to Duxford where I’d arranged a set of stairs in the hope that we’d get some photos of the Javelin rear cockpit. Not too successful as it turned out - cloudy canopy. Still, Bill got lots of shots for his upcoming build:

 

 

While PC and Cookie had a ‘tour’ of the Lancaster:

 

 

I’m sure PC will fill in the details. 
 

Pleasant evening in The Eagle looking at all the graffiti in the RAF bar:

 

 

Back to Duxford today for a proper look around. 

[Procopius]

On 11/9/2019 at 5:46 PM, opus999 said:

Though I live on the east side of the state (with enough sand and sun to keep several Tusken Raider tribes happy), I know how to get there -- and my car fits 4...   

Intriguing...

 

 

Sorry for the radio silence, folks, Telford was a bit overwhelming, and the pace of things since has been such that I haven't had much time to update. I think it's safe to say I've done more social drinking in the last week or so than at any other time in my entire life.

 

I neglected to mention that Gorby also very kindly added to my considerable baggage load on the way home with some books, which was most generous of him.

 

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. When I left off, we'd just finished meeting up with the Sovereign Hobbies guys, who happen to both produce my favourite paints and also are two of my favourite people, though we'd never met in person until Friday night. Stew I've known through Britmodeller for years now, and I was excited to finally meet him after missing out in 2015, and Jamie has been nothing but helpful with his advice on how to use his paints, and I was delighted to find they're as pleasant in person as they are online. (Jamie is, however, a decisive man of action, and one of the rare Britmodellers to look like an action movie star -- though AdrianMF, who I met at Telford, looks like one of those handsome tanned industrialists who reveal to a badly injured James Bond that they've spent the last ten years in the Orient learning how to make their hands as hard as steel while they hunt 007 through their labyrinthine mansion -- and Cookie and I had an amusing few minutes imagining him rigging a 1/350 ship with the same speed and decisiveness with which he does everything else.) Thus plied with a fairly substantial amount of Glenfiddich, I retired to bed and awoke without a hangover (my one superpower, whiskey doesn't give me hangovers) at 5:30 AM the next morning to get ready, as if anyone can truly be ready for Telford. 

 

We all met for breakfast, and then I went with the Sovereign guys to help carry some stuff to the show, which meant I got to ride in a Jaguar (cool!) and watch the huge line begin to spiral out of the stately bulk of the TIC. I also ran into Rob85 as we went down to the line, who was the first of a few people to recognize me unprompted that day.

 

 

 

We linked back up with Ced and Bill and Cookie in line (they ended up a few people ahead of us), and as we entered the show itself, I ran into a miasma of truly intense body odour from someone passing near by emitting a human chemtrail, a smell so intense I can only describe it as being not unlike having a #11 blade jammed forcefully up your nostril but stopping just short of the brain. 

 

 

Inside was...beyond description. The largest model show I've ever been to had perhaps 200 people in a single gymnasium. Telford felt almost the size of the Mecca of Dungeons and Dragons, Gen Con, which boasts 70,000 attendees (though, having been to both, GenCon smells far, far worse), though of course I realize it's only about 10,000 people. That still feels like a lot! 

JD and I opted to split off from everyone else and make our rounds, and one of the first things I learned is that when prepping for Telford, don't pre-order anything from Hannants, as you commit yourself to lugging it around for the rest of the show. I felt much less remorse about reserving stuff from Blackbird and Freightdog, and finally managed to get some resin sponsons for my Revell Sea King AEW.7 from Whirlybird Models. I also, in my folly, got the first three volumes of Arab MiGs for a tenner, and boy were they heavy. At this point, between my Hannants show order and what I'd picked up, I had to sharply arrest my buying as it was both heavy and we were rapidly approaching the limits of what could comfortably contained in Ced's car. (When he said that the T-Roc had "best in class storage space", I asked if the class was "cars with very small trunks", and he told me they only make trunks as big as their mouths here.)  My haul:

 

 

Two or three people recognized me from my posts here, and came up and said hi, and allow me to apologize to you now for how disappointing it must have been to meet me in person. Fortunately, I have a secret weapon: JD. Cookie is nicer, friendlier, more enthusiastic, and a better modeller I am, and he did some great ex officio diplomacy for the USA, which needs all the help it can get right now. 

 

I actually found I got fairly tired pretty quickly, as a side effect, no doubt, of stupidly picking up my Hannants order right off the bat and having to lug it around everywhere. Not entirely sure what I was thinking. I didn't take any photos of the models because I was terrified of dropping my phone (which has a bulky battery pack case) on something and turning it into a mere collection of atoms. 

 

I met a bunch of you at the IPMS Birmingham stand around 1300, and it was a great pleasure to put so many names to faces. 

 

Due to the bags policy, I remained on the ground floor with the baggage, while Navy Bird and Cookenbacher went up to look at the contest winners, and found that the spot I'd chosen to sit in was directly in the path of the immense cloud of toxic fumes being put out by the smokers just outside the TIC, huddled grimly about the open exterior door of the building as rain poured down. Unfortunately, the standard of the winning builds was good, and the boys took a long time to examine them, leaving me feeling quite queasy by the time they returned. 

 

 

Mistakes were made:

 

 

More later!

 

 

 

 

[Heather Kay]

You made it to Duxford! Well done! Shame about the cloudy canopy.

 

We are just contemplating breakfast, and then heading back darn sarf of that there Lahndan.

[Terry1954]

I was at Cosford yesterday morning for a couple of hours as I'd never been before and it was close enough to drop by before my drive south. Decided to make a day of it some other time, so didn't do the conservation centre which I really am keen to do justice. I was most impressed with the whole place I must say.

 

See you guys at Yeovilton tomorrow at 10am?

 

Terry