familiar name. After a few days it even got to the stage that I knew some of the people I saw around the convention at various times, mainly by face because I have a terrible head for names. The afternoon before the banquet Susan asked us to bring along SynthiA and come to her room where she was trying to cheer up David Emerson, the poor fan had just gotten away from the army after a few days and needed a bit of cheering up. How a lot of electronic wiring could make anybody feel happy is beyond me but David seemed to be suitably entertained and even a little less morbid looking after a few moments.Susan took her ease in bed (if she really doesn't sleep much during conventions she'd need it) and we spent a few hours getting acquainted, there is a difference from sitting behind a table with lots of people and having the chance to talk quietly. Too soon the banquet was almost upon us and we had to get dressed up for it, which meant for me putting on a fresh shirt and a tie for the first time in a couple of weeks. I was not too impressed by the banquet and the awards but the Hugo to Susan as the best fan writer cheered us up immensely especially as she had thought she didn't have a hope and had resigned herself to being one of the "also ran's". There were a few parties we visited on the last evening of the convention but early in the morning we stumbled into The party and found Susan along with a lot of other beautiful people among whom were John Berry, Ed Wood and Dan Steffan. We were in a bedroom of one of the suites and spent a lot of time drinking and making merry. In the end they decided to go off and liberate the swimming pool and Valma and I tottered off to bed. But we met Susan again in New York and spent a lot of time with her there, and enjoyed her company immensely. Bob Tucker is a living legend I suppose, we'd seen him a couple of times around the convention but it was not until the AUSSIECON party that we had the opportunity to meet him. We'd bought a bottle of Jim Beam (duty free) in Sydney with the intention of presenting it to him and asking for a demonstration of how to drink it properly. We got taught good. Valma gave him the bottle and asked for a demo and before we knew it just about everybody in the room was raising a right arm and waiting for the bottle to get back to Bob. The room was full and so it took a longtime before the corridors rang to the cries of "Smooooooooth". Later we had to go to a Minneapolis party for a short while to get our photo taken with all the members of MINNEAPA at the con and spent a lot more time than we had expected there talking with lots of people from Minneapolis whom we'd only seen briefly before. Out on the balcony we talked with Jim Young about Minneapolis and the centres of civilisation on the North American continent and I also had a quiet talk with John Brunner about his work. I told him how much I'd enjoyed his latest book, the one with the happy ending, and he said that he was sick of being depressing and would be writing more optimistic books in the future. That was good news and since I had begun to realise that Brunner is a rather underestimated writer whose works are really quite good I'm looking forward to reading what he has to say next. When we got back to the AUSSIECON party Bob Tucker was still there and while I talked with many other people Valma seemed to get quite pally with him. At about four in the morning we decided it was time for something to eat and went with Bob and Rusty Hevelin to the coffee shop (or whatever) where we fed ourselves and filled in the time waiting for the meals learning some of the ancient mysteries of fandom. Bob then took us to another room where Jackie Franke and a few others were letting the last of another party die away. Bob sat in a chair and we at his feet (which seemed appropriate) and the time passed. Rusty fell asleep on one of the beds 34