robpannell.com

PLASA

Yesterday I traveled to Earls Court for the Professional Lighting and Sound Association’s annual exhibition.

I boarded the train at Brighton station, and stuck my nose into my book.

The last thing I was prepared for at this point was for a skydiving Monkey to crash through the ceiling of the train, land in the seat next to me and offer me a quick round of giant Jenga.
Thankfully, it didn’t happen so preperation was not required. Something equally concerning, however, did.

‘Bingle bangle’ went my phone, in a noise that wasn’t my message tone. I looked at the screen confused and read “Look behind…”.

I nearly jumped out of my seat as terror took a hold. Had I gained a stalker? was I about to get a knife in my back? Was a bystander informing me that the Monkey had missed and landed in the seat behind me by accident?

I opened the message and the full text read “Look behind your driving licence”.

Ok, so someone has stolen my wallet and has sent me this message to make me check and then panic even more. No. My wallet was where it should have been. At this point I realised I wasn’t looking at a message, but a diary reminder on my phone. I looked inside my wallet, behind my driving licence, and found a note from Sarah that told me she loved me. Apparently so much that she wants to give me a coronary. I sent her a text to inform her how I’d nearly died and that I loved her too and sunk back into my book.

I arrived at the exhibition just after opening and had a good wander around.

There was lots to see, lights, smoke, pyrotechnics, sound gear, all very impressive.

A high point of the exhibition was that I got to meet that man of the internet:

I think he’s quite famous. He’s on the internet, so he must be. Here’s us together:

Next stop was the Roland stand where they were demonstrating a new sound desk. It was all very technical and I didn’t have a clue was he was going on about. It looked pretty funky so I watched the whole demo. Everyone else came and went so the guy started focusing on me since I was consistant. I nodded and “yeh’d” a lot and made general ‘I know exactly what your talking about’ noises.

I think he bought it.

I then went to a very interesting and helpful seminar about the use of visual gear in churches and then having seen pretty much all there was to see, headed into London for a little lunch and photography. I walked a lot and today am feeling the punishment, but below some photos so let me know if it was worth the aches. The photos not shown here are on my flickr.com account

He dropped it as I took this one:

I had a really good day. Shame we have to come back to reality really.