I went to the Fortean Times UnConvention and all I got was a cursed head...

Ah, there you are.  You might have been wondering where I was, of course,since I was absent without leave yesterday, well, I shall tell you.

I was in London.  Actually, I was in a large hall in Camden.  This time I wasn't taking all my clothes off to a dubious cover version of Kylie Minogue... oh.  You didn't know about that?  Well, I think it's a story for another time, actually, although I have to say that I am still finding sequins, and I can't look a tangerine in the face without coming over all peculiar.  No.  I was at Uncon, which is the Convention for those of us fortunate enough to read the Fortean Times.

It looked like this.  Only less green, and there definitely wasn't a vampire behind me on the Tube.  Anyway.  Whilst at UnCon, I listened to a talk about a supposedly cursed head.  It turned out not to be mine!  I've always put my hair down to a particularly virulent curse applied liberally by some Spellmaster of the first order, but the cursed head of the talk didn't even have any hair.  It was carved of stone and had the somewhat bemused but benevolent expression of a headmaster who has taken early retirement and suddenly finds himself in Sainsbury's with no idea what a flagolet bean is.

Reader, I patted him.  I tried to find a picture to show you, but this is the best I could locate.

It's near enough, although looks to me to be more baffled than bemused.  Like he's just sat down and then realised that there's no toilet paper.  Anyway.  I patted the cursed head.  Will report on results, although I have to say that I have no need to buy flagolet beans.  But if I find myself in Sainsbury's wondering what I came in for, I will attribute it to the curse, although my nearest Sainsbury's is 20 miles away, which is a long way to go and not remember why, so there may be no noteworthy results for some time.

I also heard about talking dogs, mummies (the shuffling, bandaged kind, not the procreative female kind, although both descriptions fit my own mother fairly well.  She has a great range of curses as well, you should hear her if she runs out of flagolet beans...), mongooses on the Isle of Man, Sasquatches... and I met a great hero of mine, Jon Downes, who signed a book for me and made my weekend complete.

Right, I'd better go - I've been seized with the urge to go to Sainsbury's, for some reason....