Discworld Convention 2008 Report

[mrslant]

Last weekend, basement_jax and I went to the Discworld Convention in Birmingham. This is what happened.

Thursday

Set off from London about 2:15 pm. According to basement_jax's route planner it was 120 miles door to door, via the A3, M25, M40 and M62. We arrived at the hotel at 6:15. Thus on the UK's wonderful motorway system we averaged 30 mph. Fortunately we managed to nab a parking spot fairly near the hotel entrance, and unloaded our stuff. No one batted an eyelid when I strolled nonchalantly past the concierge's desk with a crossbow over my shoulder - clearly the con hadn't started yet as there was no one to tell us to take it to Ops!

After unpacking in our pleasant room (complete with balcony overlooking the slag heaps!) we found the pre-arranged con dinner (perfectly OK for the price) and then formed a team with Cal and Scouse Mark and a couple of others for the quiz, in which we came a fairly close second (Curses! Last time I won!).

The evening ended with music in the bar, where Mark introduced me to the bodhrán, djelibeybi_meg got her nails clipped so she could play guitar, and later I managed to remember the chords to Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah to accompany some young ladies. All the while Essy sat in the middle of the group quietly embroidering a Seamstresses' Guild coat of arms...

Friday

Up bright and early for breakfast (smoked salmon!) and registration before donning the hall costume I had prepared: Teatime, complete with contact lenses - black sclera lens in the left eye, white with pinhole pupil in the right. The rest of the costume consisted of a black frock coat, black trousers and shoes, black brocade waistcoat, black wing-collar shirt (which I managed to get from a highland dress supplier) with black knot cufflinks and black bow tie, a black top hat and black leather gloves. This scared the ?$@* out of a few people and earned me quite a few tokens. It also got me a few minutes chatting to Terry, who said I looked like "a Bishop from Hell", albeit slightly, erm, weightier than he'd imagined Teatime. Which is, it has to be said, a fair cop...

Still in costume, I attended Davina's Have I Got A Nac Mac Feegle For You, the highlight of which was a game of Just A Minute between Pat Harkin and Bernard Pearson, who will no doubt soon be teaming up for the World Pairs Talking The Hind Legs Off A Donkey Championships. After dinner was the Opening Ceremony, in which Terry explained what Posterior Cortical Atrophy is so we wouldn't all be asking him about it all weekend. It hasn't affected his sense of humour, I'm pleased to say: his opening words were, "Hello, I'm... [pause, pulls note out of pocket and reads it] ...Terry Pratchett."

After that I changed out of my costume (btw links to any pics would be much appreciated) before Terry's Bedtime Stories, which consisted of extracts from the forthcoming Nation. Judging from these and the extract in the con programme booklet, it's going to be another top-notch piece of work. Looking forward to it.

After that I went and handed in my hall costume tokens at Ops - 17 of them, which meant I won the prize for that day by quite a margin. Which certainly made up for losing the quiz this time. :-)

After that we went to bed as basement_jax had three rehearsals in the morning.

Saturday

While basement_jax went to the Maskerade rehearsal, followed by the Reduced Discworld Company Rehearsal, followed by the Discworld Broadcasting Company rehearsal, I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast (no smoked salmon this time, but still good) before going to see Time Bending with Lupine, in which Rob once again read and manipulated minds with varying degrees of success. Unfortunately the show overran a bit so I missed the start of esmeraldus_neo's talk in the Guilty of Literature session, but caught most of what was a very interesting look at some of the literary and historical analogues in Terry's books.

After lunch was the Guest of Honour Interview in the form of Disc Is Your World, with contributions from Terry's PA Rob Wilkins, Colin Smythe, Bernard Pearson, Stephen Briggs, Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart.

After that I got to catch a glimpse of basement_jax between rehearsals, but only by dint of watching her performance in the DBC Play for Today, an extract from The Truth, in which she played Gaspode and Boddony (among others). Then she headed off for another Reduced Discworld Company rehearsal while I grabbed some dinner, and took in Jacqueline Simpson's Tales from Folklore (a brief but interesting selection of stories) before the Maskerade.

Several detailed reviews of the Maskerade have already been posted, so I'll just say that Sane Alex appeared to be in almost every entry, and particular favourites were the Dark Morris sword dance - done properly, and with only a few hours' practice, I'm told - and sabremeister as Nijel the Destroyer, both of which won prizes, as did basement_jax as Magrat in Armour, winning the Journeyman category. For trivia fans, her breastplate was moulded from Lupine's wife AJ, and Jax would like to thank her new friends Amy and Jane... She also had the honour of being introduced by the younger version of Pat Harkin, thanks to a small accident with a procrastinator, rectified shortly thereafter. Quack.

After the Maskerade photocall we stopped in at the Hedgehog Party for a while, then moved to the bar where the customary singalong session got under way. I seemed to be getting the hang of the bodhrán by now, and guitar was provided by st_lemur, ericjarvis and the_magician. Singers included gmh, gipsy_dreamer, dr_dofuckall, countertony and ciciaye among many others, as well as a certain Mr T Pratchett for a while. The evening concluded around 4:00 am with a remarkable feat: a rendition of American Pie in which all the words were remembered, and in the right order! I believe this may be a first for the Discworld Convention.

Sunday

The day began with an 8:00 am rehearsal for basement_jax and a leisurely breakfast for me, followed by Jack 'n' Ian's session on Alfred Russell Wallace. Jax had another rehearsal after lunch and I went to Jacqueline Simpson's Folklore of Discworld and Jack Cohen's Sex On The Disc before we met up for Lionel Fanthorpe's Are UFOs Time Ships? (to which it seems to me the answer is, no Lionel, they're not). Then it was time to get ready for the Gala Dinner.

There was a slight hitch when I discovered that the trousers of my dinner suit wouldn't fit - must have shrunk since I last wore them, or something... However, they were swiftly replaced with the black trousers from my Teatime costume, so all was well. Our table included both Pats Harkin as well as another couple we knew. The food was pleasant, particularly the smoked duck with pear. Terry said in his speech that he understands there is going to be another convention, and he fully intends to be there. Stephen Briggs was caught a little off guard by impromptu calls for a speech from Lord Vetinari, but managed to improvise some brief remarks; pointing out that he was the only man in Ankh-Morpork with a vote elicited the response from Terry, "That's what you think..."

After dinner we looked in on the Toast & Jam for a while, which included renditions of the theme from Firefly, The Internet Is For Porn from Avenue Q, some songs in Dutch by flexor, st_lemur demonstrating his "voice for folk music" and the Jessica Rabbit song by basement_jax and burntcopper, hamming it up in their slinky red dresses. We headed for bed relatively early (i.e. about 1:00 am) as it was the final rehearsal in the morning.

Monday

I headed for breakfast (the smoked salmon was back!), before attending Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, an interesting preview of Ian Stewart's forthcoming book of the same title, and Meet The Mob, which had a blooper reel from The Colour of Magic and the news that Going Postal will be filmed in Hungary, although fan extras may be able to go over there. Apparently Jeremy Irons has been approached to play the Patrician again, but nothing is definite yet.

basement_jax's rehearsal had been in the Dysk immediately before the Mob, and they hadn't finished their tech rehearsal, so they had to get back in straight afterwards. I wandered off to lunch and left them to it, and came back for the (slightly delayed) final performance of Moving Pictures (abridged and adapted for the stage by John Hicks and Kevin Miller, directed by John Hicks).

Star performances by knowitall_teen as Gaspode, PTim as Victor and, of course, basement_jax as Ginger, with a particularly well-received "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" scene complete with stuffed orangutan. The limited rehearsal time showed in that not everyone had their lines down pat, to put it mildly; Tony and Elaine as Silverfish and Soll cunningly resorted to passing a clipboard back and forth which, rumour has it, held a copy of the script, while Richard as Dibbler relied on improvisation and guesswork. Stand-out quote: "What I want to know is... What I want to know is... what my next line is!" All this was, of course, taken by the audience as part of the entertainment.

One of the highlights of the convention weekend came at the curtain call when medium_jock (who played the handleman) stepped forward with a mike, called for tinkerbell1980 (who played the artist) to join him at the front, and in front of around 600 people asked her to marry him. She said yes, and there was nary a dry eye in the house. Sweet.

With all performances finally out of the way, basement_jax was able to join me for the closing ceremony, where we received our prizes from Shend, adorned with his Hogfather tusks. My hall costume trophy is a gold-sprayed plastic egg atop a miniature Corinthian column, which now stands proudly on my shelf, and Jax's prize included a copy of Jacqueline Simpson's British Dragons - which she already had, but she got this copy signed by the author.

As there was no convention menu that evening we joined a group including some of the Moving Pictures cast for dinner at a local curry house - this was the first time we had set foot outside the hotel since arriving on Thursday evening!

Later we went to the Dead Monkey Party for a while, including some energetic balloon keepy-uppy, and then sought a quieter refuge in the bar for wind-down drinks, chat and finishing off the strange foreign sweets left over from the party. basement_jax had to be woken up to go to bed. That's what this acting lark does for you.

Tuesday

After a leisurely breakfast with no thought of rehearsals, we packed up, made a lengthy round of goodbyes, and headed home. All in all, it was a cracking convention; the hotel was excellent, the programme varied and interesting, and the organisation smooth (allowing for the usual and inevitable overruns, late starts and technical hitches). It seems most likely we will be back at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole in 2010.

Now, off to Wadfest!

X-posted to discworld_2008.