keeping each other occupied and the locals might not have been getting the full value for their money. But nobody seemed to complain. Valma and I somehow missed the celebrity party which was held early on during the convention, we didn't even know that it was on because nobody told us and we hadn't looked at the programme to find out for ourselves. So we missed out on being people of some minor importance and so missed out on getting our own plastic straw boaters. Pete went along and got his, he wore it for the rest of the convention and it suited him perfectly, he looked exactly like a Void Boy and when I told him this he seemed quits pleased. After the banquet at which both Peter and I had to make speeches we realised that we hadn't said all the things that we had wanted to. Peter had done a lot better than I, being older (not much Pete) and more experienced in the ways of talking to crowds of fans but he had still not done a few things he had thought of. I hadn't said anything that I wanted to, one look at the crowd spread out to filling up the ballroom was more than enough to bring on a state of shock in which everything fled from my mind. Later we plotted out the sorts of speeches we would have made if we had done it properly and the speeches we would make when they rolled back time again. After such planning we would have wowed them but of course while I suppose Pete might have had some idea that he had to say something I was not told that I was expected to make a speech until just after the meal had been served. I might have guessed but nobody on the committee had told me and so I felt reasonably certain that I was safe. On the last evening of the convention, when everybody was in desperate search of a dead dog party worth attending Peter and Valma and I trooped around looking as well. We found ourselves in a large suite where Pete went off and talked with somebody he knew and we ended up talking with Will Straw and a couple of others. Later Pete came into the room and started talking with Ted White about feuds and stf and it was the first time that I'd heard him talking about science fiction for the duration of the convention and I must say that he wears the hats of fannish and sercon fans very well. I wish I could do the same, but I just reads the stuff you know. Pete was only in America on a shortened TAFF trip, he'd had to leave hi wife and child back in England because there was going to be another child waiting for him when he got back. More dedication has no fan than that he would leave his family at a time like that but I suppose that a birth in the family isn't one of those acts of god which are the out from having to make the trip. Even with his short stay I'm sure Peter would have learned a fair bit about America and its fans, he's a smart fellow. He's also a very loveable person and we were truly sorry to see the last of him. We'll have to get over to England one of these days - '79 maybe. Susan Wood probably did more for AUSSIECON at the convention than any Australian there. She spent prodigious amounts of time sitting behind our table collecting money from people and being a nice person. How she could possibly be up and active at such an unlikely hour as ten in the morning was a secret which she never revealed to us, it is something which I would have given my right arm to know for after a long night getting up at all was torture. Valma tells me that the secret is that of not getting any sleep at all but I find this difficult to believe. Susan seemed to know everybody worth knowing and a few not so that with her at our table it was a certainty that everybody would get to visit us sooner or later. I would hate to have to recall the numbers of people who were introduced to me over that table and the numbers of times I looked up to see a stranger identifying itself with a 33