Neil Gaiman

For all those whose eyes have been trained on the IOC meeting, here's an update on an even more important event happening on this lil island of ours.

Neil Gaiman came here!!!!!!

But the poor man, I think he had to sign autographs for like 2000 people. I went both his Kinokuniya signing and the Borders signing. Both basically attracted such huge crowds that it was insane.

The upside is that while I had to wait for over an hour each time, I got to take TWO photos with him!!!!!I was so elated I nearly jumped up and down and in a minute I will be explaining why that would not have been a good idea.

I sprained my ankle on Saturday. Heh.

No I wasn't supposed to go to the signing. (Or move about too much...or put too much weight on my ankle)

Yes I went anyway.

Both times I had people who helped me out immeasurably. At Kino I ran into a JC classmate of mine who happened to be standing VERY near the front of the queue and she let me join her. ( Must buy her a drink/chocs) In case I did not articulate this clearly, THANK YOU ADRIAN!!!!!!

At the borders signing, my sister's friends who also happened to be Neil Gaiman fans very kindly let me join them. So there was this enormous gaggle of girls from RGS and me standing there.(Cannot buy them drinks, all underaged, chocs will do).So thanks to ALL of them who helped me out so much even though they didn't know me.

So both times I managed to save my poor ankle from too much strain.

I realize there aren't many other authors I'd do this for. For Neil, it was just that I had to go just to meet the great man face to face even if it was for all of 2 seconds.

You see, the type of fantasy he writes so closely mirrors the kind of stuff going on inside my internal daydreams all the time. He writes the stuff of Dreams.He single handedly turned comics into something more than childish, brightly coloured power fantasies. He turned it into literature. He brought in Shakespeare, Marlowe and the other great figures in the western canon of literature. In doing so, he assured himself of a place amongst them.

There was a vacuum that really needed to be filled and his stories filled it beautifully. The western literary canon would be so much poorer without him. (I'd say the same for Terry Pratchett and Isaac Asimov and many many others)

But its the Sandman fans that were the truly fanatical ones. There were people there dressed as Dream, Desire, Destiny and Death. I saw so many goth girls with an ankh all trying to look like Death.(pardon the pun)

I've noticed that novels tend not to give rise to the same sort of fanaticism,barring the Harry Potter phenomenon. Perhaps the pictures do help flesh out the imaginings a little more, give shape to our febrile fantasies. If so, I look forward to a graphic novel of Neverwhere as well, my favourite of his novels. And if he had another signing, I'd go dressed as the Lady Door(complete with contact lenses to mimic her opalescent eyes).