A Grand Pagan Day Out

Yesterday I was at Pagancon in Preston. I got a lift there with my friend Linda. Also travelling with us was Chris, another friend of Linda who was doing a stall at Pagancon, selling handcrafted wands and staves.

Pagancon is a fabulous Pagan day out with brilliant stalls, talks and workshops. For the full rundown and review, you can have a look at The Radcliffe Moot blog.

It was really good to catch up with old friends, I hadn't seen Ken and Sandy for a few years. It was good to see Thorskegga and Sandra - I only ever seem to see them at Pagancon . Thorskegga does Heathenfest as well, but that's down in Peterborough and it's too far to travel.

I came home with some lovely things - fabulous pink hairfalls which I bought from the Shared Earth stall, a lovely belt and purse from Roo the Leathercarver, a beautiful moonstone pendant and the tarot deck I've been searching for for years. Clive Barrett who designed the Norse Tarot was there at the conference selling pewter god and goddess statues and jewellery, and he had one last copy of the Norse Tarot left - no book or box, but I don't think I really need those. I got Seán a present, too - a couple of second hand books from Ken and Sandy's stall, including Gifts of Unknown Things by Lyall Watson. I also treated myself to a wand, made by Chris from wood (I think it's pine) collected on Midsummer Night at a lovely valley in northern Sweden.

I could have spent three times as much if I'd had the money, it was really difficult to limit myself. I would have loved a bigger leather pouch - one big enough to put purse, phone and keys in. That'd be dead handy for work and shopping in summer when you don't want to take a coat, and the only reason for taking one is so you've got pockets to put those things in. I'm not a fan of handbags: they're either too small and you can't get all your stuff in them, which means you need a rucksack as well; or they're big enough but very heavy so you're unbalanced carrying it around, which leads to back problems.

They do lovely food for us at the rugby club, too. they have a fab breakfast menu of cholesterol butties - bacon, sos and egg barms. Then for lunch, they do chips and baked potatoes with a choice of accompaniments - tuna mayo, veg chilli, mushroom stroganoff or cheese. And the bar has some really good beers too.

I only did one workshop this year - Linda's shamanic journeying which was way too short because other things had overrun and hadn't left very much time before the main speaker was due to start her talk. It was still good. I hadn't expected to be able to get that deep into a trance state in such a short time, but so I did, which meant that returning to normal consciousness took longer too. Fortunately, there was leftover food on the buffet which was very helpful for grounding. Mmmm, cold chips and sausage rolls!

I'm already looking forward to next year, which is provisionally booked for 4th July 2009. I'll have to work harder at saving up, as next year's Pagancon will be before my birthday, so I won't have any birthday money to spend!