The Holy Pasty?

Well it’s been an odd one today indeed, and it certainly gave me an insight into how much the attitude of Londoners differ from people in Cornwall, at least the majority from each anyway.

Today my sister and I travelled across London for the MCM Expo held at the Excel Centre in the heart of London’s Docklands. Now the dificulty is that my sister is registered disabled because of her mobility problems. She can walk short distances, but she needs to take it slowly. Steps up are bad and steps down are worse.

Yesterday, actually we went to Legoland, and although things weren’t perfect for her, they weren’t too bad. She was able to borrow a wheelchair and there were two people there to help her get around. Legoland staff were considerate and for the most part so were the other customers in the park.

Today was a different kettle of fish entirely. For a start, it seems that half of the tube, part of the DLR and many buses are running on diversions, closed stations and limited services. A simple route across London via tubes, buses and DLR took us nearly 2 hours, on a Saturday, not because it was busy, but simply because there was little or no information. Every time I asked anyone for help they gave us different advice. Mostly conflicting with what service announcements themselves were actually saying. Arrgh!Frustrating for anyone, doubly so when you tell someone you are travelling with someone disabled and they send you on a 5 minute walk to change trains or similar!

Finally arriving at the Expo my sister was able to get a wheelchair from the Excel Centre staff who were polite, courteous and efficient. However this is where the real fun began! We asked where we should go to pick up our press passes and we were told N1, I walked to N1 and was told all the way down to the bottom of the hallway. The Excel centre is HUGE, I wondered down the corridor (leaving my Sister waiting for the wheelchair) I got three quarters of the way down and asked for the Press Office, I was told S6. I queued up for S6 only to be told that the press office was back up the hallway a bit. I finally find the press office and they issue the passes (by this time my sister had wheeled herself down to the entrance and can’t find me) but they don’t have any lanyards left. Thankfully I find a way of attaching my press pass and my sister uses a lanyard I had from another event. We finally get into the main hall and it is absolutely jam packed! We knew it was going to be busy, but this was ridiculous.

I had booked to be part of a Q&A session in the morning and one in the afternoon. I asked about 5 different members of staff if they knew where the Press events were being held and no-one knew anything. Finally a fellow journo helped me!

In the main hall we decided to look around the exhibits. It seems 90% of the stuff was relating to Manga and Anime titles which I don’t mind, but I don’t have a huge amount of interest in, I wouldn’t really know the characters if they bit me! It didn’t really matter though as we spent most of the time looking around trying to get anywhere near the stands with the wheelchair. People paid absolutely no attention to the difficulties we were having, everyone was too busy pushing and shoving in their own obsessed world.

What heightened the irony of this was that a whole load of people there were offering “free hugs”. This is something that I didn’t really care for to be honest. Being an outsider to this world I don’t know the origins, but to me it seems an empty gesture.

In fact there was something slightly sinister about the whole thing. I don’t want to cast it as Satanic, but there are some odd influences in this whole area. Obviously it is a Japanese culture thing, but I think there is something odd about dressing up as heavily sexualised young girls and offering free hugs and kisses, especially walking around with notices to this effect. Call me sheltered, but even the girls in Camborne don’t do that!

Anyway we left after being at the Excel for less than 2 hours because it was frustrating not being able to access the trade stands. Please if you ever go to events like this, pay a little attention, show a little care and watch out for wheelchairs and let them through, rather than getting in the way!

The rest of the day we spent meandering back through to central London, which wasn’t easy from Docklands, but we wandered around Covent Garden and then hopped over to Regent Street and the New Ferrari merchandise shop and Hamleys. We got back to Bracknell about 7pm absolutely shattered. Not impressed with the Expo and also very let down by London Transport!

Let’s hope tomorrow is better at the Big Church Day Out. Have been looking forward to this, it’s in Wiston House, it’s Sold Out and one of my favourite Christian artists, Michael W. Smith, is performing!!

Tags: Disability, EXCEL, legoland, MCM Expo, Soteria, Transport

Well we are currently on holiday all the way up country in Royal Berkshire! Oh yes, staying with my sister may not be the ideal, but it’s good value for money!

However this isn’t just a holiday, it’s been a business trip as yesterday I had the arduous job of having to go to Legoland! This was arranged by Warner Interactive and the good people at Legoland so that I could have a look at the XBOX 360 Gaming Zone which currently has all three Lego games available (Star Wars, Indiana Jones and the newly released Batman) of course the added benefit that my family were able to come with me too and my son absolutely loves Lego! So it was an ideal excuse, especially with the added attraction of it being the Lego Star Wars fireworks show that night too.

The downside of something so huge was that the place was absolutely packed all day, we managed to get on a couple of rides but a short queue was about 30 minutes long, for some rides they were over 2 hours! However Toby really enjoyed himself and managed to do his Lightsaber training and had photo’s taken with various Star Wars characters including Darth Vader and some Storm Troopers, and he will come home sporting a Star Wars watch and a Darth Vader lego man to add to his collection.

Just before we left I managed to get some magazines printed out, although more need to be printed, and our fantastic devotional booklets arrived! (I think that they are fantastic as I wrote the devotional articles, but I have yet to hear what anyone else feels about them. Watch out for the articles and the competition going live on the website later this week as well as a selection of images from Legoland! However I don’t know how much Soteria work will get done this week with a very busy mission at the church that I am involved with, so I have better get on with the resting that I am meant to be doing while I am on holiday!

Tags: Lego Star Wars, legoland, Star Wars