Right then, where do I start? Rather than trying to be clever and start somewhere at the end of the event, or even around the middle, I'll stick with traditional protocol and start at the beginning, which for me was Friday, and the customary early morning. Luckily, I was relatively organised as some parts of my collection were to be loaned out elsewhere for the event, and I didn't need to take that much anyway.

It was agreed that I was to give out free copies of Micro Mart during the event and all of the issues arrived in good time before the event. So, it was looking good, and I was confident that (on the hardware side of things) everything was working nicely and, more importantly, would work during the weekend. The hardware in question was a Spectrum +3, an upgraded Commodore 128DCR, and a TurboGrafix 16 - obviously no foreseeable problems then...!

Things were looking good when Bob Bailey turned up, and we quickly loaded up the car to go and headed south. The journey went without problems until we got to Croydon, which is known as the 'Manhattan of London', apparently.

After what seemed like an eternity of trying-to find the hotel and navigating the horrible one-way systems, we called the hotel and at first even their directions seem to lead the wrong way. Eventually we arrived, managed to park up and found numerous other attendees and stall holders at the Jury's Inn Hotel.

The following morning meant an early start and by now, Mr Bailey had become an expert at navigating around Croydon from our hidden hotel, and it seemed a simple task to get to the Fairfield Halls, unload the many items, find the stand and set everything up.

The inevitable happened though, once the doors were opened, Metal Dust crashed. Luckily, the SuperCPU had simply over-heated and only a screwdriver was needed to fix it (by taking its top off and leaving it off).

That morning, nothing seemed to be planned, so I diligently took the copies of Micro Mart around handing them out explaining that 'it does have a very good retro and Amiga column', and if you are now reading this because of my soft-sell approach then may I also humbly welcome you to my retro-scene column. Apparently, the fact that this- magazine isn't just a 'PC mag', and does look at niche formats was something of a surprise to many attendees.

As it was cracking on for dinnertime, I decided that I'd better eat, and so I joined Andrew 'Merman' Fisher and Co who were talking about all things Commodore

Shortly after, when the guys decided to move on, Mark Branson, a member of the Chestnut Computer Club (www.cix.co.uk/~derryck/index.htm), joined me to talk about the current Atari scene, in particular, the ST/TT range and beyond. Although there are many exciting developments with new ST hardware, the problem was (like most other 'retro' platforms) that despite the hard work of the few developers, there is only a small user base to test and appreciate them.

I'll continue my adventures next week. Until then...