My Motley Meanderings

Monday from about 9AM to 3:30PM was spent rushing around finishing things off in the workshop and getting prepared for the Great Crystal Cyberdrome Exhibition. SMS and Eira presented two guided tours while Cuil sabotaged the monorail, then suddenly it was 5PM and I had to rush off to the closing ceremony. watervole and the_magician thanked loads of people by name, then asked everyone who had helped in some way to run the con (including gophers and panellists) to stand up - that turned out to be roughly two thirds of us. Back down to Newbury where we spent the next couple of hours first shifting all the exhibits back to the workshop room, then sorting, packing, and clearing everything out of the room (the hotel wanted it back the next day).

When I came back to the dead dog party after dinner I staggered around for a few minutes in a bit of a daze thinking, "is it over already? what happened? I've only been to one panel item!" before twinfair nabbed me and sent me on a quest to remove the posters from the walls all over the hotel. After finishing that, Vince handed me a small fortune in spare groats! With only a few hours left to spend them, I bought a drink for myself and one for Bazooka, attempted to buy one for Mad Elf (the bar had run out of cider), then came to the conclusion that I was never going to get rid of them at that rate and it really wasn't worth stressing out about it, so I went and handed most of them to a poor student who no doubt was able to find a productive use for them.

I'm back home now and have unloaded Fenchurch. There was one incident of Lorry Rage[1] on the way home. I would like to know who the person in the Volvo estate was who waved at me as they passed, then did it again a couple of hundred miles later. I'm not sure if they were somebody from Eastercon or just a random Morris Minor enthusiast. ETA: That was feorag.

How to summarise Orbital? Having worked on it for over two years (since before I went to my first Eastercon!) I have so many different feelings that I don't think I can adequately articulate them. It seemed to go pretty well from the comments I've heard. We had possibly the biggest Eastercon programme ever, and the highest membership count for over twenty years. The highlights for me personally were the ceilidh, the Beer Hunt sketch in the cabaret, Mitch Benn's act, and directing the second episode of Torchwood Wobblevision. I really hope we can have ceilidhs again at future Eastercons - it's such a fun social thing to do, much more so than a disco in my opinion. I'm already planning to do more episodes of Torchwood Wobblevision and have some ideas for ways to make it run a bit smoother.

The post-con blues haven't hit yet (that will probably come tomorrow when I have to go back to work) but the post-con lurgy has already begun to attack my throat. I'll try to get Torchwood Wobblevision posted up within the next day or two. I have registered my interest in helping out with Odyssey 2010 - watch this space. Finally, I'd just like to say get well soon to multiclassgeek and tracey_jane!

[1] When I'm doing a long journey I tend to cruise along behind a lorry, keeping pace with it for long periods of time. It's less stressful and more economical than constantly overtaking. Often another lorry will creep up behind me at less than 1 MPH faster than the lorry in front, and the driver will decide to overtake. For some reason they expect me to slow down so as to open a gap for them instead of continuing to keep pace with the lorry in front. Sometimes they get quite pissed off when I don't, especially if the gap in front of me increases and I speed up to close it again. One of them today gave me a long blast on the horn and flashed his headlights several times when he realised his speed-limiter wouldn't allow him to go fast enough to overtake a Morris Minor.