Greetings
We have recently come back from a couple of weeks away.
For about twenty years Teddy, Barbara, John and me have been running an item at Eastercons, Discworld cons and ( when they have been on mainland UK) worldcons.
This was a sort of workshop-y thing called Chaos Costume.
People donated fabrics, trim and accessories from their stashes and we brought it to the con and invited folk to make costume from scratch. Folk also donated old sewing machines and we lightly invested in glue guns, safety pins and fixings.
This was generally great fun at the con. Teddy, Barbara and I gave advice and help and , in the old days, a couple of extra entries were in the Eastercon Masquerade.
When we started going to Discworld cons, there were sometime several new entries...
..But, unfortunatley, over time, the percentage of chaos entries at Eastercons began to outnumber what I would consider the 'True ' entries and , also, commitees started to take it for granted that chaos would be there to 'take up the slack'
Also there was a lot of work involved in storing the crates of fabric, servicing the machines, lugging them up and down stairs, into and out of cars- not to mention hours of folding lengths of cloth to fit them into the crates.
The principal operatives, Teddy and Barbera, therefore decide to retire this year and ( giving people LOTS of notice-in case anyone was willing to take the lot off our hands and keep it for the future) announced that Chaos would go to the Discworld Con this year and then to Worldcon in Glasgow- but that was it .
There would be no more Chaos and- if necessary- any surplus cloth etc would go into a skip after Glasgow. I also made it very clear that I would not drive any of it hither and yon after Glasgow.
I should mention here that there were only a few days between the end of the Discworld can and the beginning of Worldcon and that Discworld was at Birmingham( so well on the way to Glasgow).
Teddy does not drive, so I had to do all the driving. I therefore insisted on a night's stop between Birmingham and Glasgow, which we booked at a Travelodge near Carlisle.
Our relations with the Discworld con committee could not have been better. We were provided with memberships and given a free invite to the banquet ( normaly a pricey ticket ). We spent most of our time in Chaos, though I did manage to see the masquerade.
All in all, I enjoyed the con more that I had the previous time I attended (well before covid). I enjoyed the masquerade, but my inner costumer/ masquerade participant kept noting overlong entries.
I greatly enjoyed the pre-banquet drinks and the banquet was excellent. The food was very nice and excellently presented. They were even able to provide food in every course that Teddy would actually eat ( He is not easy to cater for).
We had little glass swans as gift and every setting had a little packet of turtle shaped gummy sweets-every setting but one- They made sure Teddy got gummy bears.
We even discovered that-in a sort of reversal of Disc-fact- four teddies can hold up a turtle...
Here are a few pictures I took at the pre-banquet drinks, include the most excellent Mr Steven Briggs and a Gonagle (out of uniform) showing off a fine set of Mousepipes.
I will post more later.
Until next time
Adieu
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