Salute was great, but I’ve been taken out with flu for four days. So far…
It’s actually been a tough couple of weeks, honestly. For the first time in several years, my Salute prep has been a solo endeavour. Thankfully, that wasn’t too bad due to the great work Graham did last year casting and helping prep racks. Unfortunately, this Salute prep week was also the first week of the school holidays and, maybe two days before they started, my son’s holiday club had to cancel all sessions. We’re lucky that my wife is currently on maternity leave, and we did manage to scramble an alternative solution for a few of the days. Not ideal though.
Salute went really well. We got set up OK, though there are always things I wish we had done. Hopefully next year I’ll remember what those were! Always good to be set up next to GCT and to catch up with members of the Bushido community. This year, I even picked up a few sculpts: a big giraffe man sculpt by Fancagne Didier brought back to market by Fenris Games, a couple of Bushido minis and two wonderful sculpts from Carlos Miniatures.
I have at times considered not having a stand at Salute – it is the only show I do so I’m not really that well set up for it. Living on the south coast makes almost all shows a costly proposition – I have to hire a van and book a hotel room, meaning I’m adding a few hundred pounds on to whatever the stand cost is. For many shows, these costs dwarf the stand fee. Salute stands are expensive, but I know the footfall will be at least 5000 so I’m likely to recover costs and maybe even make a profit (if I don’t think too hard about the prep work).
I had a realisation this time, however. I really love it. In so many ways, I have stepped back from social life stuff in the last 5 years or so. To no longer attend Salute would actully be pulling back even more, and I don’t think that’s a great idea. Even though this time I picked up some grade A con crud. It’s only now, 5 days after the event, that I feel well enough to type something coherent.
I am aware that several orders await me. A few of those are from before Salute. With the bank holiday weekend, I won’t be able to start working through those until Tuesday. My apologies for the delays. I will get them out as soon as I can.
Ben.
