What I did at DWCon '08
This has taken a while to appear because I went straight from the Con to spend a further week with friends in Manchester, and it's only now I've finally returned home that I've had time to write it.
I wandered into the hotel around 2pm on Friday, joined the check-in queue at reception, and barely had time to observe how remarkably short it was before I had a text from saintmaryuk saying they were behind me in the bar. Wandered over to say the first of many hellos before dumping my luggage and going to register for the Con itself.
This was the first time any of my friends on AFP had seen me with short hair and it came as quite a shock to several of them. Once they'd got over that they were mostly very approving, though anejo greeted me with "Keep away, strange short-haired scary person!" before accepting a hug, and is still convinced that I am in fact my own evil twin. (Mwahahaha.. *ahem*)
The opening ceremony was superb; the History Monks bringing Pterry onto the stage via time spinners with accompanying TARDIS sound effect brought the house down. As did his opening line: "Good evening, I'm..." *pauses for thought, pulls piece of paper from pocket, reads it* "...Terry Pratchett!". Not surprisingly he used his time onstage to talk about Alzheimers, finding humour for his audience even in this serious subject. Eg. being a fantasy author presents unusual problems for doctors in that when they ask if he has experienced any confusion about reality he has to explain "I hallucinate for a living."
I returned to the main hall for Pterry's Bedtime Stories to hear him read fairly sizeable extracts from Nation. From there I headed to A Time And Place For Music, in which people took turns to stand up and perform songs, poems or entertaining monologues. I had a crack at Billy Joel's The Entertainer and Mitch Benn's The Hardest Song In the World To Find unaccompanied, and then Eric Jarvis dragged me up to sing Biko. aligoestonz threw in a very funny song called To Keep My Love Alive, and Eric led megamole, countertony and me in a harmonised rendition of The Sloop John B.
Saturday morning was mostly spent in a queue for a signing which unfortunately closed before I reached the end. But I got a ticket to the head of the following day's queue, and was kept entertained by wingedkami and the glingle_feegle, so not a total loss. Then in the afternoon there was the Maskerade, wherein I think way too much fun was had making duck noises at the host. Yes folks, we are, collectively, five years old. And then in the evening there was the Hedgehog Party...
There was music, provided by shevek, and I felt I would probably do a little dancing at some point. That point turned out to be way sooner than expected. Now, I have no problem with attractive young women coming up to me and inviting me to dance, I'd be happy for it to happen more often. More often and, also, differently:
Ailbhe: *bounce* "Look! We have handbags!" *grab*
Me: "Wha...?"
Ailbhe: *drags me into a small circle of women dancing around a pair of, yes, handbags on the floor*
Me: "Oh, yes. So you do." *is dancing* "...What just happened?"
Eventually I wound up in a game which involved reading out suggestively smutty phrases and trying to guess the entirely innocent meaning behind them, which somehow meant our table was the last to leave the party. As I walked away I discovered there was a lot of singing going on in the bar which I would've joined if I'd known about it earlier, but by that time I was totally beat and headed straight off to bed.
My standard approach to the Cons is that I try to see Pterry's events and do the live music, and if I'm not too busy socialising with friends I might catch something else too. The only such item I managed this year was Jaqueline Simpson's talk on Diskworld Folklore on Sunday, and I was half asleep through some of it (my fault, I hasten to add, not hers). Pterry has a fairly wide knowledge of folklore, and much of Diskworld involves taking that knowledge and building something funny in the gaps. It was fascinating to hear how, in researching The Folklore Of Diskworld, she and Pterry would frequently discover that what actually went in those gaps fitted Pterry's inventions in ways neither of them had known at the time. I didn't buy the book at the Con, but I definitely will at some point.
I got to show off my singing again in the Toast & Jam, reprising Biko and The Sloop John B. Edmund threw Madness' Our House at me, which unfortunately didn't suit my range very well, but he also played guitar for me while I sang another Mitch Benn song, Size Zero, which went very well. I also got to play some drums, my first time in public (or indeed at all) since breaking my arm 4 months ago. We kept it quiet this year, doing more with rods and brushes than actual sticks, so thankfully it wasn't too strenuous. Not without its challenges though, including improvising a suitable drum part for Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit with no more clue than Edmund's hasty guideline "basic psychedelic drumming, then power it up a bit in the choruses". Much fun, and very happy with how well I coped.
When I wasn't performing I spent a lot of time running the signup sheet for other people wanting to perform, giving me more freedom to watch and enjoy than I've had a previous T&Js. There was The Wazzocks In Cassocks doing Yesterday in four part harmony (and one other which I missed), trialia singing Mal's Song (a Firefly filk which neatly incorporated the original theme tune as a chorus), a humourous blues played on ukulele from Graham Higgins, a rousing and interactive The Internet Is For Porn from plum177, and finally I managed to slip back onto the drums as we closed with The Saga Begins.
There's little more to add except to say that it was yet another triumphant Con, and that Bruce summed up what it is to be part of Pratchett fandom in his closing ceremony speech far better than I ever could. Thanks to the organisers for all their hard work, and to everyone else for just being there.
A couple of quick words about the hotel:
Checking in for the Cons at Hinkley was always a bit of a chore, with the queue at reception taking around an hour. At the Hilton there hardly seemed to be a queue at all, and I was done within minutes. Having one's bill slipped under your door on the last day made checking out even more painless. The only additional obstacle was getting a carpark exit ticket, and even this was easy; I asked at reception early on monday morning when there was no queue, and they gave me an exit token and added my parking charge to my bill on the spot, so I could use the automatic checkout procedure with no further changes and it would all be taken care of.
And there was a nice piece of attention to detail at breakfast in the Boulevard restaurant. Things were labelled; there were signs by the jugs of fruit juice saying "orange", "apple" and "grapefruit". Friendly, I thought, but nothing you couldn't tell for yourself just by looking. Until I came to the milk jugs, which had been labelled "Skimmed", "semi-skimmed" and "full cream". Now that's thoughtful.
Sadly that attention to detail didn't transfer to the Pavilion, where I ended up breakfasting for the next two days. But as that was obviously a temporary setup I'm happy to forgive it. And I was very pleased with the breakfast itself in either case.
My only real complaint about the Con was that I was mostly too exhausted to see as much of it as I would have liked. So to all the evil sods who deprived me of sleep by keeping me up to chat, joke and, above all, sing, I would like to say... thank you, I wouldn't have missed a second of it. :-)
I wandered into the hotel around 2pm on Friday, joined the check-in queue at reception, and barely had time to observe how remarkably short it was before I had a text from saintmaryuk saying they were behind me in the bar. Wandered over to say the first of many hellos before dumping my luggage and going to register for the Con itself.
This was the first time any of my friends on AFP had seen me with short hair and it came as quite a shock to several of them. Once they'd got over that they were mostly very approving, though anejo greeted me with "Keep away, strange short-haired scary person!" before accepting a hug, and is still convinced that I am in fact my own evil twin. (Mwahahaha.. *ahem*)
The opening ceremony was superb; the History Monks bringing Pterry onto the stage via time spinners with accompanying TARDIS sound effect brought the house down. As did his opening line: "Good evening, I'm..." *pauses for thought, pulls piece of paper from pocket, reads it* "...Terry Pratchett!". Not surprisingly he used his time onstage to talk about Alzheimers, finding humour for his audience even in this serious subject. Eg. being a fantasy author presents unusual problems for doctors in that when they ask if he has experienced any confusion about reality he has to explain "I hallucinate for a living."
I returned to the main hall for Pterry's Bedtime Stories to hear him read fairly sizeable extracts from Nation. From there I headed to A Time And Place For Music, in which people took turns to stand up and perform songs, poems or entertaining monologues. I had a crack at Billy Joel's The Entertainer and Mitch Benn's The Hardest Song In the World To Find unaccompanied, and then Eric Jarvis dragged me up to sing Biko. aligoestonz threw in a very funny song called To Keep My Love Alive, and Eric led megamole, countertony and me in a harmonised rendition of The Sloop John B.
Saturday morning was mostly spent in a queue for a signing which unfortunately closed before I reached the end. But I got a ticket to the head of the following day's queue, and was kept entertained by wingedkami and the glingle_feegle, so not a total loss. Then in the afternoon there was the Maskerade, wherein I think way too much fun was had making duck noises at the host. Yes folks, we are, collectively, five years old. And then in the evening there was the Hedgehog Party...
There was music, provided by shevek, and I felt I would probably do a little dancing at some point. That point turned out to be way sooner than expected. Now, I have no problem with attractive young women coming up to me and inviting me to dance, I'd be happy for it to happen more often. More often and, also, differently:
Ailbhe: *bounce* "Look! We have handbags!" *grab*
Me: "Wha...?"
Ailbhe: *drags me into a small circle of women dancing around a pair of, yes, handbags on the floor*
Me: "Oh, yes. So you do." *is dancing* "...What just happened?"
Eventually I wound up in a game which involved reading out suggestively smutty phrases and trying to guess the entirely innocent meaning behind them, which somehow meant our table was the last to leave the party. As I walked away I discovered there was a lot of singing going on in the bar which I would've joined if I'd known about it earlier, but by that time I was totally beat and headed straight off to bed.
My standard approach to the Cons is that I try to see Pterry's events and do the live music, and if I'm not too busy socialising with friends I might catch something else too. The only such item I managed this year was Jaqueline Simpson's talk on Diskworld Folklore on Sunday, and I was half asleep through some of it (my fault, I hasten to add, not hers). Pterry has a fairly wide knowledge of folklore, and much of Diskworld involves taking that knowledge and building something funny in the gaps. It was fascinating to hear how, in researching The Folklore Of Diskworld, she and Pterry would frequently discover that what actually went in those gaps fitted Pterry's inventions in ways neither of them had known at the time. I didn't buy the book at the Con, but I definitely will at some point.
I got to show off my singing again in the Toast & Jam, reprising Biko and The Sloop John B. Edmund threw Madness' Our House at me, which unfortunately didn't suit my range very well, but he also played guitar for me while I sang another Mitch Benn song, Size Zero, which went very well. I also got to play some drums, my first time in public (or indeed at all) since breaking my arm 4 months ago. We kept it quiet this year, doing more with rods and brushes than actual sticks, so thankfully it wasn't too strenuous. Not without its challenges though, including improvising a suitable drum part for Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit with no more clue than Edmund's hasty guideline "basic psychedelic drumming, then power it up a bit in the choruses". Much fun, and very happy with how well I coped.
When I wasn't performing I spent a lot of time running the signup sheet for other people wanting to perform, giving me more freedom to watch and enjoy than I've had a previous T&Js. There was The Wazzocks In Cassocks doing Yesterday in four part harmony (and one other which I missed), trialia singing Mal's Song (a Firefly filk which neatly incorporated the original theme tune as a chorus), a humourous blues played on ukulele from Graham Higgins, a rousing and interactive The Internet Is For Porn from plum177, and finally I managed to slip back onto the drums as we closed with The Saga Begins.
There's little more to add except to say that it was yet another triumphant Con, and that Bruce summed up what it is to be part of Pratchett fandom in his closing ceremony speech far better than I ever could. Thanks to the organisers for all their hard work, and to everyone else for just being there.
A couple of quick words about the hotel:
Checking in for the Cons at Hinkley was always a bit of a chore, with the queue at reception taking around an hour. At the Hilton there hardly seemed to be a queue at all, and I was done within minutes. Having one's bill slipped under your door on the last day made checking out even more painless. The only additional obstacle was getting a carpark exit ticket, and even this was easy; I asked at reception early on monday morning when there was no queue, and they gave me an exit token and added my parking charge to my bill on the spot, so I could use the automatic checkout procedure with no further changes and it would all be taken care of.
And there was a nice piece of attention to detail at breakfast in the Boulevard restaurant. Things were labelled; there were signs by the jugs of fruit juice saying "orange", "apple" and "grapefruit". Friendly, I thought, but nothing you couldn't tell for yourself just by looking. Until I came to the milk jugs, which had been labelled "Skimmed", "semi-skimmed" and "full cream". Now that's thoughtful.
Sadly that attention to detail didn't transfer to the Pavilion, where I ended up breakfasting for the next two days. But as that was obviously a temporary setup I'm happy to forgive it. And I was very pleased with the breakfast itself in either case.
My only real complaint about the Con was that I was mostly too exhausted to see as much of it as I would have liked. So to all the evil sods who deprived me of sleep by keeping me up to chat, joke and, above all, sing, I would like to say... thank you, I wouldn't have missed a second of it. :-)