Bits of the convention I can remember: Part 1

Well, I arrived Thursday afternoon courtesy of Dad's Chauffeuring Services (and my first trip down the M6 toll road) . It took about an hour to check into the hotel as they'd had a new computerised checking in system installed the day before and so the staff hadn't quite got the hang of it. The hotel had recently been refurbished (okay they were still doing parts of it) but my room was very nice (not too sure why you needed 6 pillows on a double bed though...)

I registered in "The Hub", the central space from which all the corridors to the bedrooms led off from and collected my registration pack and goody bag. The goody bag contained amongst other things, a Discworld convention balloon (inflation required), a pen, a leather Discworld Convention Bookmark and a glossy copy of the programme - which had my name in print as the Deputy of the Lawyers Guild!

After registering I wandered round and met Jax (Basement from the forum) in the bar who kindly took me under her wing for the evening which meant I got to meet other people from the forum and had people to talk to whilst queuing for the buffet - of which we shall gloss over - other than to say the best part of it was probably the chocolate that Jean offered me at the end. I'm afraid I wimped out of the pub quiz and had an early night as I was shattered.

I made it down to breakfast the next morning - you could tell the Hotel hadn't yet switched into convention mode - " Would Madam like me to pour her coffee?" and spent most of the morning wandering around trying to spot people from the forum - oh and avoiding the cheerful fairies. Five women with sensible clothes, wings and whistles and a book of cheery songs to sing were terrorising guests and entertaining the queue in Hotel reception, Terry's imagination has a lot to answer for!

At some point during the afternoon I went to the "Trolls Guide to Conventions" Basically a talk for first timers to give pointers about what to do and what to expect. Here we learnt the mantra, "Go to Ops" If you lose someone or something, GO TO OPS. if you find someone or something, GO TO OPS. You're probably getting the gist of it right? We were also introduced to the weapons policy (all weapons must be passed by ops to reduce the risk of injury) and introduced to the concept of stabby, pokey and slicey weapons in a most entertaining manner.

We were also informed that there is a guest during the convention by the name of Silas T Firefly, who is the absolute double of a certain Mr T Pratchett, but is not him, honest guv, and if we see him we are to leave him in peace. If however we see Silas T Firefly remove his name badge and swap it for one that says Terry Pratchett we can go and chat to him and buy him a drink (a bottle of lager for preference).

I also attended a Deputies briefing at which point I realised I had absolutely no idea what I was doing as a deputy and then went to a guild registration meeting where we could recruit new members, oddly despite it all being very disorganised we did get an increase in numbers.

Still to come: The convention is officially opened!