Return to Blake's 7 fandom

In Februari 2000, cdybedahl and I became a couple. We ssaid from the first that we'd try to take things slow and wouldn't even discuss marriage until we'd been together for at least a year.

This year was up the day before the first day of Redemption, a fan convention for fans of Blake's 7 and Babylon 5. Calle and I went to England a couple of days early, to spend our 1-year anniversary in London. And having been together for a year, and still not only being in love but also liking and loving eachother (not necessarily the same thing!), we decided that getting married was definitely on the cards. We went out, looked for rings but didn't find any (we did see some that were bronze, from around the 5th century if I recall correctly, but they didn't fit well and it would be hard to get matching wedding rings). So we settled for having a nice dinner and the next day we went and bought plain gold bands at the first jeweller's shop we found, and then we got on the train to go to Redemption.

Calle had been a fan of both B7 and B5 for longer than I had, and knew a lot of people there. Nine years earlier, in November of 1992, he'd started a mailinglist on the Lysator systems, and a lot of list (or Lyst, as it was called) members were at the convention. I'd joined the list, but I never wrote much - still, people were nice and welcoming and we had a good time at the convention. And there was a bit of overlap with Terry Pratchett fandom, where I knew far more people, so I wasn't completely out of the loop.

Calle and I got to hold an interview with Tanith Lee, which was great fun, and we spent an evening with her, her husband and Damien London, who'd planed the Centauri Regent in Babylon 5, and who told us lots of stories from Hollywood. Those are my best memories from that convention.

We came home, and we had work and life and stuff, and didn't have the time to go to conventions, but kept on the mailing list, and kept more or less in touch with some people via Livejournal, later Dreamwidth, and Facebook for those that were there. And time passed. This year it'ss 25 years since the Lyst got started. And some people thought it'd be nice to meet - and Calle and I felt that a bit of time off would be nice, so we took Friday and Monday off and yesterday we travelled to London.

Today, we met at a pub at King's Cross, with about 10 or 12 other fandom members. I felt a bit insecure at first, because I hadn't seen these people in 15 years and I was never that active on the Lyst. But somehow when we all started chatting, it felt just like it had back at that convention - that these are my sort of people, that we could just slip back into fandom and friendliness and have a good time, even though we hadn't spoken in years.

We stayed for over four hours, and only split up because some people had a few hours travel to get back home, and others (such as myself) got very tired from being sociable even with people we like and enjoy hanging out with.

All this is just to get to this conclusion: B7 fans are nice, and I miss being a part of fandom, and I had a great time today. That is all.