Cardiff Workshops and Bristol Comic Expo Report

Our visits to Cardiff and Bristol were great! Really rejuvenating. We did two workshops on Friday 8th of May in the brand new Cardiff Central Library, a really attractive building, and the kids were great. A big thank you to Heather and Rob who invited us down and were perfect hosts, we managed to catch up with them over a few beers and Japanese food! Thanks too to all the chilren who as always had amazing ideas and who left some positive comments and thank you notes.

Slideshow below. Photo album here.

After the workshops we went on to Bristol for the rest of the weekend and had a fantastic time too, catching up with people like Chris Staros of Top Shelf and Gary Millidge on a quiet Friday evening. We were in the SPExpo part of the Comic Festival on the Saturday all day, the first SPExpo in fact, situated in a spacious, well-lit hall (complete with actual windows and panoramic views over Bristol, a welcome variation on many comic conventions). The whole event was fairly low key, as the Expo had to downsize this year. The two shows might have benefited from being in one large space rather than split between venues (we heard from many people that they didn’t know the SPExpo was there until much later, for instance) but it all still managed to be highly enjoyable. On the Saturday evening, drinking beer and wine and eating tapas al fresco with Paul Gravett, Ilya (Best New Manga, King Lear), and Doug and Emma from Self Made Hero, was highly enjoyable as was the convention bar/party, were we shared conversational notes on dizziness with Tony Bennett. Sunday was spent trailing the Expo and checking out stalls and books, then absorbing sunshine for several hours, watching people finish a half-marathon, generally being very relaxed without passing out, before heading back to Glasgow. The funny thing about conventions is that you can completely miss people: we only met up with Gary Erskine at the baggage pick up in Glasgow!