DEFCON 3: Nerdageddon!

At last! The Terminator exhibition I've been looking forward to for so long.
So once I'd had a fortifying fried breakfast we left the house. That's when we remembered that the car was still at the garage and we had to use Nanna's car. With trepidation we approached it and marvelled at its doors that you have to open with an actual key and stuff.
It was noisy and blarty and slow and rubbish, but not as noisy as us, as we guffawed our way across town. Once we were on the motorway we tried to break its all-time speed record. Under normal driving conditions, it will noisily blart along at about 70, but on the mainland you actually get hills and we planned an assisted descent and got it up to 85! But this is only possible going downhill and once we were going up the next hill, it was back into the inside lane and trundling blartily along at good old 63.
Amazingly, we made it to Totton. This rather sad I'm sorry delightful conurbation is just past the Redbridge roundabout and in no time we'd identified the Totton Conservative Club which was the venue. Parking clumsily down a side street, we gave thanks for safe deliverance and moseyed on over to the event proper.
For only £9 we got a green wristband each and discovered that the festival had grown and spread into 3 venues, the Conservative club, some kind of respite home/lounge for old people, and the civic offices (no public toilets). But these places were only yards apart so it didn't matter.
Each one of them added up to roughly the same idea as the film festival we'd been to last year, indeed, if you read the description you wouldn't know which was which.
1.  The room is dark and worryingly malodorous.
2.  The room is full of stalls selling Lego, posters, figurines and tat at more than the average price.
3.  Actors that you have heard of, and actors you haven't will sign photos of themselves for money and you get to have a picture with them.
4.  Random Daleks, Stormtroopers, Yodas, droids, girlies in high heels and breasty suits, Vaders, Ghostbusters, Jedis and Spidermen called Steve wander throughout the event and will strangle you for photos.
5.  Various large vehicles, coats that were once used in a film, Tardises and wigs are on display and you can have photos near them.
But it's all rather fun and we pootled around lashing out money on diverse Star Wars-related Lego and suchlike. What I like best is that every item purchased just goes into Buds' bag so you lose track of how much you've got and spent, and I get away with buying more.

At some point we knew we had to eat so went to the Totton Fish Bar where we had chicken McMorsels and chips which we ate in a pedestrian precinct, for we know how to live in style. The Ghostbusters had Costa coffee, maybe busting makes them feel good.
We got a couple of brightly coloured Lego Daleks and saw the Terminator display and you could buy Arnold Schwarzenegger's autographed picture for £140 if you wanted to, or Vitali Klitschko's autographed boxing glove for £60 and loads of other stuff like Star Trek mugs, Tardis piggy banks and Incredible Hulk models.
Remote-controlled droids various wander around beeping and I met a really big golden Dalek who invited me to dance, said he wouldn't exterminate me at all.
Last year we got Richard Kiel's picture so were determined to get more. Mr Dave Prowse was there and would sign a picture of Darth Vader for £40, and possibly give some tips and hints on the Green Cross Code. But that was a little too much so we found Holly (Hattie Hayridge), Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) and Rimmer (Chris Barrie) and got all of them. Now that's what I call a success.
Then the whole lot of Cosplayers lined up in front of the 35 foot Staypuft man and we got a picture with a Predator, some stormtroopers, Mr Vader (again), Yoda with pet Wookie and a bounty hunter. Why is it that the female costumiers always draw their ladies with big heels and breasts and exposed midriffs? I may never know.
Then we got back into the rubbishmobile and blarted our way to Grandads' place. He lives in an Elizabethan mansion nowadays, and it has a security gate with intercom thing. Now what you do, is you press the call button and somebody crackles through the little speaker and you say visitor for Finkleman or similar and they open the gate with their magic button.

But it didn't happen this time and the gate intercom thing actually went to answerphone. I'm not kidding, we sat outside the driveway and the freakin' gatepost invited us to leave a message. Once we'd stopped laughing, I hopped the fence and jumped around on the other side to try and set off the sensor but I wasn't heavy enough so I had to go inside and summon a member of staff to open the gate. That's when Grandad walked past and we all laughed about it. He pointed out that I have a little pot belly, but I couldn't help but notice his paunch is getting bigger too, maybe he didn't have a Week Of Healthy Living course at his school in 1930s South Africa. We left a message on the gatepost intercom system anyway.
He gave me a Gibraltarian £1 coin and a small snake, as you do. We uprooted a dead tree for him and then blarted our way home where Jof was still cooking.
Hurrah for everything.