Nai elyë hiruva.
Back from Oxonmoot, the annual Tolkien Society mini-con.
The extra night I'd booked in the college was, in the event, unnecessary, since adequate sleep and a lack of hangover have enabled me to come home to the Caves, dropping pellegrina off at Dunharrow en route. I've caught up with all my moves in the Facebook Scrabble games. I've also caught up with miss_next, who has had nowhere near as good a weekend as me. Hugs in her direction would be appreciated.
Friday didn't start well, as I picked Thea and Matt up from Oxford Station, threaded my way through the one-way system of DOOM, then parking in LMH dented my car (again... sigh) on an air conditioner sticking out 3 feet above the wall, such that the collision detectors didn't, er, detect it. Lady Margaret Hall, founded by the same Lady Margaret Beaufort responsible for St. John's in Cambridge, is a fine college, its beautiful gardens, wide quads and largely Victorian red-brick architecture highly reminiscent (to this Tab at least) of Newnham. Its porters are also remarkably ept.
We got out, unpacked and ran the first phase of the CTS's assault on Oxonmoot - Lord of the Goons 1. Seemed to go well. Goodoh.
Then, on Saturday morning, Gloin, my dad, turned up to help the CTS do the Lord of the Rings radio play readthrough. Bless him, he'd been really nervous about it; I'd primed him for his bits (Theoden, Shagrat, Odo Proudfoot) after the rehearsal and it was really quite rewarding to hear the huge improvement in Theoden's death speech. I suspect that his Shagrat really did want to squeeze my Snaga's eyes out... Thea did a great job of the organisation, meaning that we never ran over time. And people seemed to like it.
Lord of the Goons 2 (The Two Jokes) happened after lunch on Saturday. It had more than two jokes - the audience were invited to identify them, and some bright spark suggested "the cast" and "the crew". Hrm hoom.
Ah yes. Lunch on Saturday. I wasn't aware that the phrase "sandwich buffet" should have been taken to mean a buffet of sandwiches and nothing else. Apparently, though, that was considered worth a large number of pounds. This confirms my supposition that I was right not to order any other meals from the college.
After the second half of the readthrough, off to faff with sound checks and recalcitrant microphones in preparation for the evening's entertainment. I now know that I function much better, when amplified (gah! we don' need no steenkin' mikes!), with a lapel mike, giving me leave to walk around. A bit twitchy and nervous, even then, and even after we'd found an acceptable keyboard. Especially when Esther flaked out, having given so much as Frodo and earlier in the day.
Two large Domino's Pizzas (from leaflets available in the Porter's Lodge, of course) and bottles of Diet Coke between three of us cost less than a single person would have had to pay the college for a couple of charred burgers in the barbecue. Though, on the upside, the college were charging more or less student prices for BEER.
Then to the party, and much tense twitching as I eventually realised that the event I'd spent the last six months writing (The Sound of Mumaks) was going to be put right at the end of the entertainments. Some of the other stuff, e.g. Caspar Reiff of the Tolkien Ensemble and a Dutch lady doing some Celtic folk, was good. Very good. But the woman who subjected us to ten minutes of intestine-strangulation-inducing Vogon poetry should have had a word or five in her ear, and should never be exposed to a captive audience again.
So finally, time for The Sound of Mumaks. We'd been given 25 minutes, so we gave them four songs - My Favourite Rings, A Problem Like Moria, A-R-A-G-O-R-N (Do-Re-Mi) featuring this mole as a countertenor Monty Python Ioreth and the CTS Family von Trapp with hand-activated elven rune placards, and Eldamar (Edelweiss). In the event, time wasn't a problem.
They lapped it up and howled for more.
They LOVED us. We did two encores (An Ent called Treebeard (Lonely Goatherd) and A-R-A-G-O-R-N again).
It's my second biggest high from an event I've done, after the 2006 DWCon Omnian Morning Worship.
In 2008 the CTS will be back with the FULL Sound of Mumaks, complete with scripts, Lord of the Goons Part 3 (Return of the Jim), and quite possibly TimeLord of the Rings.
Then off to the land of room parties, raspberry vodka, nuggles and random drunken activity.
Today saw Enyalië (the ceremony of remembrance at the Professor's grave), followed by a lovely lunch at G+D's (pastrami bagel plus lots and lots of gorgeous ice cream).
My love to the lovely people I already knew, including but not limited to skordh, jane_somebody, elanor_isolda, amalion, sigisgrim, narahttbbs, rustica, pellegrina, gabriel_chase, na_lon (who makes frock coats of WIN), the_marquis, parrot_knight, and of course emperor and atreic (I now know what Sally's username means!). And many WANOLJ.
And it was wonderful to meet new gro(u)pies such as gayalondiel. Who is a lovely nnyngy-dress-wearing soprano Christian filker engaged to a very lucky chap indeed.
Finally, many happy returns to emperor and naath.
The extra night I'd booked in the college was, in the event, unnecessary, since adequate sleep and a lack of hangover have enabled me to come home to the Caves, dropping pellegrina off at Dunharrow en route. I've caught up with all my moves in the Facebook Scrabble games. I've also caught up with miss_next, who has had nowhere near as good a weekend as me. Hugs in her direction would be appreciated.
Friday didn't start well, as I picked Thea and Matt up from Oxford Station, threaded my way through the one-way system of DOOM, then parking in LMH dented my car (again... sigh) on an air conditioner sticking out 3 feet above the wall, such that the collision detectors didn't, er, detect it. Lady Margaret Hall, founded by the same Lady Margaret Beaufort responsible for St. John's in Cambridge, is a fine college, its beautiful gardens, wide quads and largely Victorian red-brick architecture highly reminiscent (to this Tab at least) of Newnham. Its porters are also remarkably ept.
We got out, unpacked and ran the first phase of the CTS's assault on Oxonmoot - Lord of the Goons 1. Seemed to go well. Goodoh.
Then, on Saturday morning, Gloin, my dad, turned up to help the CTS do the Lord of the Rings radio play readthrough. Bless him, he'd been really nervous about it; I'd primed him for his bits (Theoden, Shagrat, Odo Proudfoot) after the rehearsal and it was really quite rewarding to hear the huge improvement in Theoden's death speech. I suspect that his Shagrat really did want to squeeze my Snaga's eyes out... Thea did a great job of the organisation, meaning that we never ran over time. And people seemed to like it.
Lord of the Goons 2 (The Two Jokes) happened after lunch on Saturday. It had more than two jokes - the audience were invited to identify them, and some bright spark suggested "the cast" and "the crew". Hrm hoom.
Ah yes. Lunch on Saturday. I wasn't aware that the phrase "sandwich buffet" should have been taken to mean a buffet of sandwiches and nothing else. Apparently, though, that was considered worth a large number of pounds. This confirms my supposition that I was right not to order any other meals from the college.
After the second half of the readthrough, off to faff with sound checks and recalcitrant microphones in preparation for the evening's entertainment. I now know that I function much better, when amplified (gah! we don' need no steenkin' mikes!), with a lapel mike, giving me leave to walk around. A bit twitchy and nervous, even then, and even after we'd found an acceptable keyboard. Especially when Esther flaked out, having given so much as Frodo and earlier in the day.
Two large Domino's Pizzas (from leaflets available in the Porter's Lodge, of course) and bottles of Diet Coke between three of us cost less than a single person would have had to pay the college for a couple of charred burgers in the barbecue. Though, on the upside, the college were charging more or less student prices for BEER.
Then to the party, and much tense twitching as I eventually realised that the event I'd spent the last six months writing (The Sound of Mumaks) was going to be put right at the end of the entertainments. Some of the other stuff, e.g. Caspar Reiff of the Tolkien Ensemble and a Dutch lady doing some Celtic folk, was good. Very good. But the woman who subjected us to ten minutes of intestine-strangulation-inducing Vogon poetry should have had a word or five in her ear, and should never be exposed to a captive audience again.
So finally, time for The Sound of Mumaks. We'd been given 25 minutes, so we gave them four songs - My Favourite Rings, A Problem Like Moria, A-R-A-G-O-R-N (Do-Re-Mi) featuring this mole as a countertenor Monty Python Ioreth and the CTS Family von Trapp with hand-activated elven rune placards, and Eldamar (Edelweiss). In the event, time wasn't a problem.
They lapped it up and howled for more.
They LOVED us. We did two encores (An Ent called Treebeard (Lonely Goatherd) and A-R-A-G-O-R-N again).
It's my second biggest high from an event I've done, after the 2006 DWCon Omnian Morning Worship.
In 2008 the CTS will be back with the FULL Sound of Mumaks, complete with scripts, Lord of the Goons Part 3 (Return of the Jim), and quite possibly TimeLord of the Rings.
Then off to the land of room parties, raspberry vodka, nuggles and random drunken activity.
Today saw Enyalië (the ceremony of remembrance at the Professor's grave), followed by a lovely lunch at G+D's (pastrami bagel plus lots and lots of gorgeous ice cream).
My love to the lovely people I already knew, including but not limited to skordh, jane_somebody, elanor_isolda, amalion, sigisgrim, narahttbbs, rustica, pellegrina, gabriel_chase, na_lon (who makes frock coats of WIN), the_marquis, parrot_knight, and of course emperor and atreic (I now know what Sally's username means!). And many WANOLJ.
And it was wonderful to meet new gro(u)pies such as gayalondiel. Who is a lovely nnyngy-dress-wearing soprano Christian filker engaged to a very lucky chap indeed.
Finally, many happy returns to emperor and naath.