Boring breakfasts? Not at a Discworld convention.

by Marie Kirby

This year approximately half the attendees were first-time con-goers, myself included. The sheer amount of people milling around the hotel lobby on Day One is enough to send even the most brave of us con virgins running for the dried frog pills. Even with the assistance of the ingenious Voodoo* board, it's difficult to locate the small group of people you met on the first day; especially at breakfast**.

However, the often quoted 'come to the convention and leave with fifty friends for life' has truth to it. I soon discovered the best way to avoid looking incredibly lost and lonely with your breakfast tray is to gravitate towards the table with only one person on it and introduce yourself.

Finding myself in this particular predicament on Saturday morning, I made a bee-line for the back of the room where sat an intriguing lady by the name of Siobhan. You may have seen Siobhan gliding serenely around the lobby carrying an intricately-carved goat staff. The staff has mythical powers. No really, it has. Siobhan has many interesting tales to tell about the sceptics and the simply curious who have questioned it; including one Sir Terry.

As Siobhan tells it, Mr. Pratchett approached her in the lobby on Friday, at first innately curious and then sceptical about said staff. Terry made no secret of the fact that he had no belief in the spiritual, but when invited to, held the staff for just a moment. According to Siobhan, he went quiet then said, "I don't believe in this. But something unexplainable definitely happened there."

Funnily enough, inflatable kangaroo-wielder Sue (Weatherwax) then joined our table and made her own addition to the story: she had held the staff some time before Terry and had a similarly strange experience. Then she told us that she had just been speaking to Rob and Terry had spontaneously confirmed his attendance at the 2011 Australian convention!

Stranger things*** have happened!

* Because the best way to get someone's attention is to stick a pin in them.
** Regularly attended by Bilious, Oh God of hangovers and his zombie contingent.
*** Mostly also at the Discworld convention, but we're not admitting to that.