Durham Convention this year was, as usual, ZOMG amazing! We cunningly broke the journey up there into two by staying at my parents’ pad on Friday night so we could play with their new puppy, Milly. She’s awfy cute, although she did say goodbye by headbutting me.
We got up to Durham in good time, at any rate, and I was duly impressed with the coolio key passes. I got a curly c. Then practiced kick ups and booted a club round the hall for a bit. Then I met Miark and did silly stuff with him. Then I met ^Tom_ and we did more silly stuff (including a quick game of Le Jeu Slappie – although he was rubbish at it). And then, to the accompaniment of some of ^Tom_’s dreadful jokes, we went for lunch, which ended up being really nice chippy chips. Nom nom nom. I remarked on it at the time and was met with dirision but will happily repeat myself-wandering through a little town and joining a random queue in the street is terribly evokative of Stalinist Russia. In my mind at least.
When we got back I messed around in the hall some more with four clubs which was working very well. And five clubs which was not. I still haven’t quite figured out optimum grippage of three in one hand. Then just as I was about to stick some music on and hunker down to some proper practice Alby walks through the door. And he’d brought supplies of Coke. Wahey! Hugs all round, n’that. Bit of passing. The usual.
We spotted Ali from rec.chat at one point and sneered quietly to ourselves. We several times told Mamph in no uncertain terms that we weren’t doing Chocfest only to watch her completely disregard the fact. I found a Maddy and after being grossed out by various piercings giggled merrily for the rest of the day. We watched Barnesy look ever so slightly stressed out about his routine. I got a hug off a still commendably grizzled TP, and the very little bit of passing we managed to fit in turned out not to be too awful.
Pug grub for tea. Maddy and I listed illnesses as we walked down into town. The old woman in the pub said something along the lines of “Och, the more the merrier!” in a terribly twee Scottish accent which warmed my cockles. And then there was steak. More nom nom noms. Maddy had a plate of mango. I don’t know why. We passed notes like naughty school children, injected innuendo into the conversation of other tables, and generally laughed uproariously.
Then back to the school just in time for the show. Incidentally, our walk back through the cemetary was the most hilarious walk back through a cemetary I’ve ever done. Well done, everybody. Show was sat through. And then to the hall again for another four or five hours of the most civilised, continental sitting-around-the place that I’ve done for a long time. Alan had outdone himself in preparation and had brought along the remnants of his Belgian beers, a box of quite delicious German chocolates and several big slabs of smoked meat products. We added to the pile both the chilli and the watermelon Milka Alan had brought back from Herxheim. It was quite a spread. And it attracted rather a lot of attention. Connie scared me with her instant and unreserved love of watermelon chocolate. Annnabod’s ‘what’s this, will I like it, oh, it’s not too bad, wait a minute, my God that’s rank, I can’t believe I’m still eating it, christ, it’s gone fizzy’ face was priceless. I lasted until about 2am before conking out and wandering back to the van for what I thought was going to be a freezing cold, godawful night, but turned out to be swelteringly warm. Hurrah!
Ewan greeted me in the morning with a big fat cuddle, on the off chance that I could be swayed with bribery. I found Alan in the hall looking haggard and hung over. Serve him right, the lush. Then there was more coke, a bit more passing, a lot more sitting, and then more meat. By this point my guts were rebelling, but I just about managed to choke down some sausages and bacon. Ooh, and a slice of fried bread. Nom nom nom again.
And then it was all over and we had to go. High winds and roadworks made the journey not quite as pleasant as it could have been, but we found chocolate teacakes at the services which helped. Fak and Void managed to pass us twice and I saw a field of queuing sheep. A good omen.
