It is late, but the people I've been nagging for photos won't let me get
away with not posting a report. Fair's fair, I suppose. :-)
It was, yet again, an excellent con. The attendees were generally funny,
helpful and creative.
THURSDAY
Just before noon, shared a taxi to the hotel with Eve of the Dark Clerks
and Yvonne. Taxi driver asks if we're going "to that Disco thing."
Made myself useful. After finishing the exciting task of helping Liz and
Keith put guild reminder stickers on the attendees' envelopes, I went
down to the Hub to help with Registration. I found myself sitting next
to Karen/hypatia's #2 who made short jokes at me (she's been taller than
me since she was 11 but still hasn't run out of jokes). I met people
from the middle of the alphabet and I heard someone laughing over my
Stephen Briggs bio which was a relief.
The afternoon's downpour exposed the inadequacies of the car park
drainage system. "The car with licence plate XX-11-YY might want to
think about moving their car. The chance of engine flooding is rather
high." -- Dónal addresses everybody in the hotel (i.e. the queue for the
buffet)
After dinner it was time for personal humiliation at the hands of Jenny
Delaney and her evil pub quiz. Did any of the cloggies get the special
Dutch question right?
FRIDAY
Though it was early in the day, the hall costumes were great. My
favourite was a young Auditor who stood silent and unmoving next to me
for some minutes. This was sufficiently disturbing that I gave him a
hall costume token in the hope he would go away. (On the subject of
disturbing, try Ops dancing to Dragostea Din Tei early in the morning.)
In the Hub, there was a large pile of foreign editions which Colin
Smythe had donated. Attendees got one book in their goody bags and were
allowed to take another one from the table. This turned into a nice
social activity as people swapped books and tried to identify the
various languages.
I thought that I would spend most of my time having a nice sit down in
Registration but there were more than enough gophers to help so I mostly
wound up answering questions and stuff. So far, I've seen one photo of
me and I'm a blur, which about sums up the con for me.
At the end of the afternoon, it was time for my Lovely Assistant Leo and
me to run Werewolf. Werewolf is an icebreaker game which employs the
friendly method of murder. Nirvana did the best death ever -- I've never
seen a corpse do the splits before. The kids' Werewolf which we ran
right after was even more fun, if possible. Unlike the adults, they
didn't need any encouragement to lynch their fellow villagers.
I saw the Opening Ceremony for the second time ever, I must be getting
into bad habits. It was worth it, where else can you hear Take 5
arranged for kazoos?
SATURDAY
One item I was determined to get to was How to Buckle a Swash. It was
educational to see what happened when rapiers, short swords, spears,
axes, etc. were matched against each other (not all at the same time,
mostly). The best bit was the Circle of Betrayal(?) when the helpful
audience didn't warn Orjan that he was about to die.
Another item I wanted to get to was Graham Higgins storytelling. It was
as good as I'd heard, a mix of funny, sweet and sad stories.
Unfortunately, it was cut a bit short because people wanted to get to
the Maskerade.
Right before dinner, various people were summoned out of Ops by
Alchemist Deputies Patrick and Eelco to watch the Alchemists and
Seamstresses movie that they'd written and shot that day. It was so good
that we were giving other people tokens so that they could go see it.
The Hedgehog Party was a great success. Two Germans (Robert & ??) tried
to persuade me to eat some ginger bears and dubious peas. I met one
person who I hadn't seen before, Jens Ayton, but spent most of the time
catching up with oldbies like Bernd (Tefkab) and Jeremy Stark who I
hadn't seen in years. I also purchased a moratorium on short jokes from
Karen's #2.
After the party, I went to the Hub where I found that the Voodoo Board
had committed suicide, so had to get the gaffer tape. Again. A bunch of
people, Len Oil, Eelco, Cybercat, Ali (who was still embroidering a DW
bookmark), Leo, Snow and some others were lounging about in the Hub so I
joined them. It was one of those late night conversations where you go
from songs about frogs to weddings, to a civil(!) argument about the
Middle East, until it's 3am and the knock knock jokes start.
SUNDAY
I was woken shortly after 8am It was either a family of giant
woodpeckers or builders doing renovations right above my head. Argh.
On my way to breakfast, two Conjurers carrying beautifully made Feegle
dolls asked if I would like to see their new disappearing Feegle trick
(the one that didn't involve running away). As I'd only had four hours
sleep, I opted to pay an extra token to have it performed "with
sympathy". She asked me to close my eyes and hold out my hand. After a
moment, I was allowed to open my eyes and the Feegles had disappeared
under her colleague's cloth. She then adopted her most sympathetic voice
and said, while stroking my hand reassuringly, "there, there, nasty
Feegle all gone now, they won't come back."
By 10am I was up in Ops, helping someone enter an article for the
Chronicle Live. They had a toddler with an imaginary PDA...
At noon, I was in Treacle Mines with Alex Carlton and David Cook, doing
the second juggling workshop of the weekend. Saturday tends to have the
fast learners, Sunday the slower ones for some reason. It is incredibly
satisfying to see struggling beginners persevere and suddenly "get"
three balls.
I escaped from Ops in time to catch the last half of Terry and The Mob
talking about Hogfather. So someone is going to have to explain about
the tentacles because I missed it. I did get to see the clip of Nobby
visiting the Hogfather. As far as I'm concerned they got Nobby right --
not only does he look like he could sidle while standing still, his face
has sidling capabilities too.
The response to the clip was overwhelming, I hadn't expected such a
strong reaction from the audience. Afterwards, the Mob handed out the
teeth as souvenirs -- there were all sorts, not just molars. Now that's
attention to detail. Anyway, based on this, I'm sure people will enjoy
the movie and there'll be just enough to complain about to keep the fans
happy. :-)
As soon as that ended, I accompanied Bernard to get a pile of programme
books signed as prizes, fed him strong coffee and very apologetically
herded him to the Charity Auction for which he was the auctioneer. He
even abandoned his sandwich for me. I'm going to hell.
Usually I'm not one for book signings, but I'd finally remembered to
bring my copy of Good Omens which Neil had signed four years ago in
Rotterdam so had to get "apply holy match here" from Terry. As he was
signing, Rob Wilkins came up with a Hogfather tooth that had a hanger
set into it and asked Terry if it was okay if someone (Barrie Wakeford?)
sold them. It had taken less than an hour between the teeth being handed
out and the finished product. I believe the word "loonies" was used. :-)
Sometime after midnight, a confused Committee member asked over the
radio, "why are there teeth in my bed?"
MONDAY
Just after 8am and the giant woodpeckers with drills are back. I fail to
meet the Assassins Guild on the way to breakfast.
There were still people asking questions but noticeably less than before
as the attendees had settled into the rhythm of the con. My memory is
hazy at this point but I do remember thinking just how *nice* and
patient the attendees were. Inevitably there will be organisational
hiccups but everyone was at pains to assure me that I didn't have to
rush to solve their particular problem. Which makes you want to work all
the harder.
The Closing Ceremony: people were thanked, awarded, applauded and
(almost?) sung at by the fat lady.
After dinner, I caught the tail end of the Dead Monkey party in Hub.
Various cloggies and other people were occupying couches there, so I
joined them and laughed at silly things until it hurt.
TUESDAY
Much saying of goodbyes and standing on tippy toes for hugs. Karen's #2
reminded me that the moratorium on short jokes had ended.
Get home, post two articles to the Chronicle Live and pray they are
coherent. Am amazed at the amount of stuff that the team have posted
over the weekend. I still don't think I've read it all.
Collapse into bed. I did crawl out the day after to go to dance class.
"What did you do during your weekend?" they asked.
"Well..."
--
Kimberley Verburg, k...@lspace.org
** Discworld Con 2008: We'll be back! **
