Day 800

Day 800...

And my first official day of 'retirement' and I was looking forward to a slow and steady start to the day but that was not to be.

Today was our first time 'trooping' with our fellow Star Wars geeks since February 2020...for obvious reasons. Although events had started happening a few months back a lot of places had been insisting on tests and masks and we simply refused to go along with anything that wasn't just normal.

We are members of two costuming groups; Joker Squad and East Midlands Garrison and so it is a matter of seeing when either are attending an event and whether that event is something that we are able to get to. Luckily for us today we were trooping with East Midlands Garrison at Em-Con held at the Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham which is only a few miles away for us.

So we were up and out the door by 7.50am and were outside the arena by 8.20am to meet up with our Star Wars family.

Arriving at the arena with our East Midlands Garrison family

We had about 20 members of the garrison in attendance today and our first task was to find our changing area and get kitted up for the day.

Star Wars cosplay is not a glamorous life and we often find ourselves allocated some rather interesting locations as our changing area. Today was no exception as it appeared to be an empty storage room with a few chairs and not much else. But we got on with getting kitted up which for me involved transforming into Governor Pryce from the animation series Rebels complete with a black, bob styled wig and for Simon it was Stormtrooper time.

Our day was then spent wandering around the convention, meeting the public and having lots of photos taken, some of which were with a few of the celebrities in attendance!

With 'Hunter' from the TV show Gladiators!

With actor Will Mellors

With actor Nick Frost

A long day but an enjoyable one and one in which we were able to make a lot of people smile as well as raise money for a charity called PASIC which supports families of children who have cancer.

So now it is time for a well earned feet-up in front of the telly!

See you tomorrow.
xx