Part 2

So at 8pm the opening ceremony err, opened. Terry appeared on stage after a dramatic opening based on Maskerade, grabbed his hat off the ghost of the opera houses and said a few words along the lines of "Is it only starting now - didn't it start last Wednesday?" before the guild heads were introduced.

The Assassins Guild Head was Stephen Briggs (apparently he didn't get to head them last time and so paid the Assassins to assassinate their head so that he could take over). The Alchemists were headed by Jack Cohen - one of the authors of the Science of Discworld books, Unseen University were led by one of the other co-authors of the series, Ian Stewart. Bernard Pearson aka The Cunning Artificer and the man behind Discworld Stamps was head of the Fools Guild - can't imagine why they thought that was appropriate.

The Conjurers were headed by Trevor Turan, who designed the Thud game and the Priests were led by Colin Smythe - Terry's agent and therefore our intermediary with "The Creator". Diane Duane (who wrote the Young Wizards series) was head of the Seamstresses Guild and her husband (and author of the Horse Lords series) Peter Morwood was my Guild head (but I already knew that having had discussions via email with him about the laws of Ankh-Morpork)

Please excuse the rubbish photo of Peter - but you should be aware of him and be warned - this man had the worst puns of the convention. In his acceptance speech as Head of the Guild of Lawyers he referred to his members as the "wee fee men".

After the opening ceremony we had our first guild meeting (ours was in the room labelled Leshp - quite appropriate I felt for people being guided by me who didn't know what the heck I was doing - would we sink or would we swim?). Peter came along and bamboozled us with his interpretation of the Laws of Ankh- Morpork (which I swear had grown since I last heard about them) and left us with the problem of how to make each lawyer aware of them (resolved the next day by giving one of our members a wad of cash & sending her into town to do some photocopying). We adjourned the meeting as quickly as we could as we were all desperate to go to Terry's bedtime story.

We had been warned at the Trolls Guide to Conventions that some people would attend the Bedtime Story in nightwear. They also said that not everyone who did so would have gone out and bought nice, clean respectable pajamas. They were right about this.

Terry started his storytelling by reading to us from "Wintersmith" (the next Tiffany Aching novel - due out in October) although Terry though we should probably be reading it to him as we had apparently "denuded ebay of proof copies". He read a few extracts, one where Tiffany starts to dance with the Wintersmith, another where the feegles are reading Tiffany's diary and my favourites were about the Book of Witch Catching for Really Stupid People, and Miss Tick's conversation in the post office when her stealth witches hat malfunctioned.

He then went on to read passages from "Making Money". The next book to star Moist Von Lipwig who is becoming bored of the lack of challenges in the Post Office and so Vetinari offers him a new position at the Royal Mint. The conversation between Moist and Vetinari, and Vetinari and Drumknott were fabulous, as was the extract where Moist goes to visit the largest shareholder of the Mint and her dog "Mr Fusspot" - who put us all in mind of Tricky- woo from All Creatures Great and Small.

I could happily have listened to Terry reading all night and yet I was so tired I was desperate for him to stop so I could go to bed, he finally finished at about 11.30 after reading for about an hour and a half, at which point I headed straight for bed - after all it had been a bedtime story.