Better late than never

Okay, okay - I know that 'tomorrow' has turned in to a 'few days later' but here is a brief update on proceedings on the last day of the Weird Weekend.

Our speakers were: Michael Woodley (In the wake of Bernard Heuvelmans), Dr. Gail-Nina Anderson (Fairies in Art), Mike Hallowell (Invisikids - childhood imaginary friends), Geoff Ward (Spirals - the Pattern of Existence), Ronan Coghlan (The Duncannon incident) and Jon's keynote speech and closing remarks.

Ronan had previously made Jon promise that no fuss would be made of his 60th birthday on the Friday of the Weird Weekend but, as Jon announced before Ronan took the stage on Sunday, he had not promised not to mention it two days later! To this effect, the auditorium was full and we all sang Happy Birthday to the birthday boy, and presented him with a rather tasty looking strawberry gateaux.

As before, Allan and Jennie did us proud with our end-of-weekend dinner at our local - The Farmers Arms, and we all thank them very much for their hospitality and the delicious meal.

In my write-up about Saturday's events, I forgot to mention that, Dr. Karl Shuker spoke briefly about his new book - Dr. Shuker's Casebook - and many people took the opportunity of buying a copy signed by the man himself. Thanks go to him for making the journey to and from Walsall with his mum - all in one day - for the event. They must have both been exhausted on Sunday, after such a long trip!

All in all it was a successful weekend, although tiring and with a few minor hiccups. Myrtle Cottage has been quiet all this week as we catch up on our sleep, but we are sticking our heads up from our covers gradually more each day and will soon be back to normal - whatever normal is.

Thanks go to all our speakers for their interesting talks, and thanks also go to all our crew who all pulled together and helped make the weekend go as smoothly as it did. And for their excellent work in the kitchen, we also give our thanks to those who constantly provided the excellent refreshments and food throughout the three days.

We have videod all the talks this year and Jon has been busy uploading them on to YouTube, so keep an eye out for them.

As for next year - well it will be the 10th of these events and will also mark Jon's 50th birthday so I guess it promises to be interesting to say the least ......