Salute 2012: Part 1

I hate you cat.

I ordered my Salute ticket a fair old time ago now, in fact I think that I pretty much ordered it the day they went up for preorder. Although a few companies asked me if I would be willing to run intro games this year I had to decline them all, simply because I wanted to actually see the show. So the 21st of April came around pretty sharpish and it was time to get my sorry ass out of bed and down to London. Speaking of time I had to get up at 5:00 in the morning to have a shower, so as not to stink and be foul and offensive to my fellow gamers, get dressed and try to look half way presentable... the image in the mirror at 5:30 did not look presentable! We left the house at some ungodly hour (6:45) after Poppy the cat decided she wanted to eat my breakfast Weetabix. Why the hell do I own 4 Maine Coon cats again? Any way we had to leave this early to catch a local train to Solihull Train Station to ensure we could make our connection onto the 7:24 Chiltern Line Train down to London Marylebone. So having had a wash, eaten half a Weetabix (screw you Poppy) and had half a glass of water I made my way down to London, and thanks to Mike McVey I was dragging Dr Brainiac along with me. When did I stop being a morning person? Or more pertinently was I ever a morning person?

We arrived at London Marylebone shortly after 9:11, so the train wasn't too badly delayed... well for the UK! We made our way via the Bakerloo Line to Oxford Circus tube station, whereby we then caught the Central Line to Bank. By this time I was starting to feel a little bit more awake, but Dr Brainiac hadn't received any caffeine... I was starting to get concerned that if she didn't get fuel soon she'd start tearing limbs off of people and going on a rampage. She's exceedingly British and requires tea to remain a functional, civil human being. I briefly considered at Bank whether it might actually have been wise to go grab a warm drink and breakfast... but Dr Brainiac said we might as well carry on to the ExCeL center as there was bound to be coffee and tea available there. So onto the DLR to Beckton we got and onto the ExCeL center we went. We were quite crowded on the DLR by lots of people who looked far too fit and were wearing far to much Lycra to be wargamers. It was at this point we realised why the Tube was so crowded... the bloody London Marathon. Just a quick word here, Lycra is not a fashion statement it's an affront to the eyes!!!
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