From: SWELBURN <[S--LB--N] at [channel4.co.uk]> Date: Tue, 13 Feb 96 14:15:08 Subject: Obligatory Angouleme Post - stage 1A - -Poster: SWELBURN <[S--LB--N] at [channel4.co.uk]> Phew! Where to start... Probably with sleep... and a current need for huge amounts of it... This is caused by living on coffee & alcohol for three days... not entirely a recommended diet... Additionally, there is the peril of French beds combined with hours wandering around looking at comics & the town... Aching legs, aching back, and now aching arms from having carried stuff back... Anyway, back to the beginning. Being a lazy, good-for-nothing sort, I couldn't decide whether to actually get to Angouleme... trying to sort out a hotel reservation was a pain, it would cost money, and somehow it seemed like it'd be a lot of effort... However, Mark was going to be lugging laserdiscs into Europe for me, I had a pile of stuff for him, assorted comix list luminaries would be there, and I wanted to escape from work... I continued to vacillate until last Monday... at which stage I got onto Compuserve & discovered the times of the necessary trains & planes [Yes! A good use for Cserve!!!]. Then I phoned the station to check availabilities... sorry... it'll be a ?5 charge if you want to reserve over the phone, but no we can't let you know if there're actually any spare seats on the train until you book... Ho hum. Call travel agents, discover ?80 plane tickets to Paris exist. They will check availability and do. I can get the plane to Paris! They provisionally book me a place. Gosh! What nice people they are. Then it's the walk to Victoria Station, fortunately near enough to work so I can get there in my lunch hour, and fortunately empty-enough so I can also get served easily... Yes, there are places available, so I buy a ticket... ?69 for the train, plus ?6 for seat reservations plus ?5 'cos I don't want to cross the Channel by train... Anyway. The trip's arranged and I just have to do it now. Thursday morning 7am UK time... Drag one weary carcass out of bed... after packing at about midnight, 'cos I'm late out of work, and can't quite figure out what I should be taking... end up taking too many books... [stupid mistake number 1]. Get to Tulse Hill station at about half seven, train to West Croydon is at the platform.. decide to wait for train directly to East Croydon... train leaves... I check timetable... next train to East Croydon is in almost 2 hours time... Whoops! [stupid mistake number 2] Wait for next train to West Croydon... Get to West Croydon, change to Gatwick train and check-in about 25 minutes before the flight leaves... Still find time to grab Port & Pineau from the duty-free shop... Land at Charles de Gaulle... Try and figure out whether to get RER or coach into Paris, and can't quite decide... In the end get RER to Place de l'Etoille... Oooh! Isn't the _Arc de Triomphe_ cute... Wander along the _Champs Elysee_ and pop into the Virgin Megastore... [stupid mistake number 3]... Leave with a less empty than previously credit-card and a pile of laser-discs... Walk across to Gare Montparnasse with half an hour or so before the TGV to Angouleme leaves... Sit on TGV wondering how many of the people on-board are going to Angouleme... Fortunately I bothered to head to the bookshop before leaving and the France-On-The-Cheap guidebook had an address for the hotel... Mark only had a name and a fax number, which wasn't going to help me much... and the Atlantic Coast Michelin guide had a map of the centre of Angouleme... between the two I found the hotel... At this stage, I met Mark, Arthur & Lisa... and started saying 'God, I'm tired'... this became a litany... possibly even a mantra... Looking back, I seem to have spent a huge amount of the weekend saying that phrase... Swap comics with Mark... assorted US goodies for assorted UK junk... seems a reasonable exchange to me ;-) Next... Meet Ulli & Kristiane, those on whose shoulders the mighty wait of the COMIX presence in Angouleme fell... well, a good half of it anyway, as they honourably allowed certain less-than-professional members of this list to be their "foreign correspondents"... Many thanks to them for all their efforts. Basic plan... find alcohol. Off to the Galerie [full name probably unknown, possibly obliterated by alcohol] where the Bordeaux, St. Emilion & Pineau (Rouge et Blanc) quaffing started in earnest... Eventually we also had assorted others around the table including Richard from Knockabout (UK), Ebbi, Konstantin, the chaps from Chicago Comics [Hi Eric & Kurt, if you've actually joined the list...] plus, as they say, many more... Imbibe & conquer seemed to be the plan... Then, food. A small _French_ restaurant - possibly capable of containing 30 people, absolute maximum - was the destination and it coped fairly well with non-animal-eating types by providing the traditional delicacy of baked-potato, carrots and green-beans... otherwise, meat in [many] incarnations was available, and was up to a standard where the place was revisited the following two nights... Things observed to be eaten on that first night included... - - An egg, cheese and carrot starter... it looked a bit like a cross between an ommelette & a poached egg, with a mound of grated carrot in the bottom to surprise the unwary... but Arthur seemed to cope admirably with it... - - Etoillettes [??] French sausages that bore a distinct resemblance to miniature haggises - - Assorted bits of duck - - Wine, wine and more wine... Things observed _not_ to be eaten were... - - "Very well done" lamb that was of a somewhat pinkish shade... Then it was a return to the Galerie, where more people were met, more wine drunk, and eventually, the desire for Beer took over... Time for the "Chat Noir", probably one of the tackiest bars in Angouleme, purely for the 20ft tall black cat outlined in neon outside. There, there was beer & also the Belgian [and particularly insane] chaps from Freon [who "do" Frigobox]... Lots of drink, Mr. Nevins starts networking... they wonder about whether they could get to visit the US if they got a distribution deal of some sort... everyone gets more drunk... [Flashback! Maybe the visit to the Chat Noir was _before_ the first visit to the Galerie... but what's a few hours anyway...] It's getting late, I'm _still_ tired... so what do we do ??? How about the _Magic Mirrors_ a cross between a convention tent and a club, with booze & bands until reasonably silly hours... The band features people in vaguely "interesting" clothing, and there is some stuff played that I recognize as music, and which most of the local psychopaths also seem to recognize... Eventually about 4:30 am, they start closing up, my brain then decides it's had enough for one day (21 hours approximately) and starts complaining at me... Again, I start repeating... 'God, I'm tired'... Mark and I stagger back & crash... Next day, we discover that the "evening" continued to about 6:00am or so... However, the mixture of wine, pineau & beer has had left surprisingly little of a hangover, or maybe I'm just too knackered to tell... Anyway, we're up around midday, and it's time to actually link being in Angouleme with comics... First, however, breakfast... of course it's actually much too late for breakfast, but that doesn't stop us... in the end, it's basically coffee for all... but damn fine coffee at that. We're awake, we're in Angouleme, and it really is comics time now. At the _Place Mars_ [very odd, naming a bus-station after a chocolate bar...] there were the main two exhibition tents, and Ulli disappeared into a tent, and came back bearing a pass for me... I could then enter the Halls Of Temptation Within these two tents were... Casterman, Delcourt, Humanoid Associates, Stakhano, L'Association, Oog-En-Blik, Knockabout, CNBDI (Centre National de Bandes Dessinees et de l'Image, as far as I can remember... the _big_ BD museum in Angouleme, who also are responsible for assorted computer animation projects that appear on the _Imagina_ collections), and many, many more... UKCAC is mainly a dealer-based affair, seeing something this size based around _publishers_ stands gives you an idea as to just how big the whole BD thing is... like massive man... There were _some_ dealers, but they were way outnumbered by publishers, each selling their own titles. So there's minimal overlap in the stock between stalls (for want of a better word) and everywhere you look there are _different_ comics... Gulp! I could see that I was going to have _no_ problem finding things I wanted to buy... Years of practise paid off, however, as I decided to adopt the explore first, commit to spoending later approach... It didn't take long to decide that I was going to resist the call of the big publishers, and to explore the smaller stalls. Of course actually _managing_ to resist was a different matter... [1A complete... TO BE CONTINUED!] [Note that this was written immediately on returning from Angouleme, and I still haven't got round to writing up the rest of it... thought I may as well bomb the list with it anyway ;-) ] Steve W.