Unfinished DWcon Saturday

[chess]

We got up at 6:30am; direct cause, Vicky Cook's mobile phone alarm, reason, the 8am Maskerade Parade Rehersals. After wandering about in a daze for a bit, then making myself acceptable for company (i.e. having a bath), we went down to find breakfast in 'Harga's House of Ribs'. We started with lots of fruit (I had pineapple, melon,and half-pears) then went onto the hot buffet, but it was all the wrong type of horrendously greasy (no fried bread! how can you have a decent cooked breakfast without fried bread?), so after some mushrooms that tasted mostly of grease and some hash browns that were a bit soggy and a bit mashed up inside, I went back to the cereal and got myself a bowl of Alpen.


At 8am precisely, we arrived at the door of the Dysk, ready for the rehersals. (Well, actually, completely unready for the rehersals - Naath had almost vaguely worked out a script type thing with me and told Delirium she was going to be in it, I didn't have anything even remotely resembling a costume, and Delirium was absent, presumed asleep.) After about five minutes we finally discovered which door we should be going in by. We spent a further ten minutes wandering around aimlessly cooing at other people's costumes and props, and finally found out who we needed to talk to - about ten seconds after she'd wandered off somewhere else. We talked to the tech crew and found out that they did indeed have Ride of the Valkyres, so it wasn't a big issue that we'd both forgotten to bring any music. Sorcha kindly gave us some of this thick blue thread to use as the life-thread of the camel, which unfortunately didn't show up too well in the end. And eventually we got to sit down with Gytha and tell her what lighting and sound effects we needed (we didn't know about the lights, so she asked us what colour our costumes will be, and when we said 'mostly black' she said 'ahh, goths - you'll be wanting a purple center wash, then', so we just agreed with her). All of this took somewhere between fifteen minutes and half an hour, which was nothing like the two hours that it was meant to take. Previously I'd been hoping it wouldn't take too long, because I'd been planning to go to the other Troll's Guide if it actually had been an introducing-new-people-to-people type thing, but as it wasn't I was left with little to do.


I wandered down to the Hub, and noticed a sign-up sheet for GURPS, which was full. This did not make me the happiest of bunnies, as I'd been planning for that to take up a considerable chunk of my day. Certain people complimenting me on my hair did also not make me the happiest of bunnies. So I got my digital camera and started taking photographs, for want of anything better to do. Naath went off to the Slaughterthon - which didn't sound like my kind of thing at all. So I wandered around the corridors aimlessly for a bit, and eventually ended up talking to a nice friendly goth called Steve Milligan who was standing outside the bar talking to Valerie. Valerie soon had to disappear off somewhere (the Great Hedgehog Race, I think), and we talked about airlines and plastic forks and where to get decent goth clothes from, until it was time for me to visit the Slave Auction.


All this talk of the bar reminds me of something else that must have happened on Friday due to it not fitting in any other time. After eating dinner and before finding comfy seats in the Hub, our first port of call was the bar, where the initial order was Pepsi all round, then I pointed out that I don't like fizzy drinks, and that my criteria for drinks was 'nonfizzy, nonalcoholic'. So I got this weird green stuff which tasted of limes, but most definately did not taste of alcohol, and due to having not spent enough time around the handy watercoolers that were dotted about, it tasted just fine because it was liquid. Because of all the nasty cigarette smoke in the bar we went outside. When we'd finished our drinks we left the glasses there (that particular part of outside being basically an extension of the bar) and went out by the fountain where there was even less smoke around, but it was getting a bit cold to be outside, so then we moved in to the Hub.


Originally I thought I was going to have to miss the Slave Auction due to GURPS, but since I missed the signup-sheet for that, I went along to see Naath, Katl'c and Delirum auctioned off as a job lot of goths. The auctioneer was a fairly small geek who began by telling us that he hadn't know he was doing this until about thirty seconds ago, and generally didn't seem very confident at all. So, naturally, the first slave up was the Big Scary Goth Guy, with enough sharp metal jewellry to destroy small continents. He kicked down the chair in front of him and strode forwards determinedly, and the auctioneer nervously asked him who he was and what he was offering, and said 'any bids?' in a timid manner. Silence.

The Big Scary Goth Guy soon got impatient with this, and informed the auctioneer that he was meant to be selling him. Eventually it was decided that the Big Scary Goth Guy could sell himself, so he proceeded to leap up onto a chair and do so, claiming that he had nice clean teeth and was very good at fetching and carrying. Eventually poeple stopped being scared and someone bought him for £3 or so, which he took very good-naturedly.

I can't remember much of the rest of the auction. Donal went for quite a high price, and the auctioneer was sold for a very high price indeed to look after someone's 2-yr-old (he started bidding for himself at this news :-) ). The three goths went for about £20 or so. The auction finished a lot earlier than the hour it was meant to take due to the terribly lacklustre pace of bidding - it seems that no-one who really wanted to spend money was there, it was just people who wanted to auction themselves and people who wanted a good laugh at them.