Early Arrival - Ssrienna's Story Part 1

by Jan Uzzell (Ssrienna)

Being the impatient person that I am, I had to arrive on Thursday!

My husband agreed to drive me up, so that he could have the car. I was hoping to have introduced him to people, but with the parking charges at 0 to 30 mins - free and 30 mins to next time slot - £5, we decided not (L). However, he was able to see my room before he left.

I decided to be a good con person and “Go To Ops” to see if I could help. That’s where I got my Gopher badge and followed the other gophers to Registration, having helped unload a large white van with LOTS of boxes. All of which were books ready to give out at Registration on Fri and Sat.

I then joined the people in the room setting stuff up for Registration on the afore mentioned days. Managed to get my envelope early (as I was helping) so with “Ssirienna” in place I felt much more real! We then started a huge circular treadmill stuffing goodie bags ready for the masses. So children, how do we stuff a DW Goodie Bag? Grab bag and put one of everything from a long table (pens, bookmarks, programmes, booklets, balloons, etc), hand to the nice people on the end and repeat!

As we were obviously a chain gang, Xris (Chris Boote) started us singing to pass the time away. I think we got all the way through the Rocky Horror sound track, but we may have made it only as far as “Creature of the Night”

Then it was a flurry of meeting people as they arrived – Lottie for the main and I started thanking her for making my hooped skirt to go with my Maskerade costume (I think I stopped thanking her on Monday?). My apologies if I missed people’s names but we heard that over 400 people had arrived on Thursday!!

Then there was the insanity of the “Unofficial Fiendishly Difficult Pub Quiz” where I was on a table with Winterbay, Marlies, Goofgiant, Red Head, Torak and his wife (whose name escapes me now – I blame the alcohol!), Fi and others – we called ourselves “Smwgrttf” (or something like that) with (bless you) in brackets. Our idea being that when it was read out we’d all shout “Bless You” unfortunately we’d added that at the top so it was read out at the same time as we shouted it – so the joke got lost a bit – but we laughed!

The winners of the Quiz, who cheated as they had Min Lacey on their team, got 24 points! Um… we didn’t but I don’t think we were last on 16, which we thought was rather good! Then there was Biers and drinking and some singing and I got to bed somewhere round midnight.

And so it begins:-

by GazHunter
The tweet, from our steamed Vice Chair read So, the day dawns on #dwcon set-up. Now: coffee and Internets. Soon: get up, shower, breakfast. Then: hunt gophers to unload car.

Well. I am HuntGopher, so clearly this was addressed to me, and as I was about 1/2 hour away by car, and I had planned to Goph...what was a man to do? Casting caution, pyjamas and 2 days growth of beard to the wind I decided to goph forth, then went back, got dressed and went forth again

My timing was perfect. I arrived just in time for the Vice Chair to have almost emptied his car, so had but a small box to take to Ops, a duty I performed with skill and dexterity, and only got lost the once. Once there I quickly signed up as Gopher and suchlike, and after a quick round of musical tables, musical boxes, musical stationary and musical printers, as Ops was transformed from a base, characterless hotel room into a magical fairy grotto [1] my co-gophers and I were herded, cat-like, onto our first mission-critical job. Envelope-stuffing. There are 900 of you. Each have an envelope with *stuff* in it. These are not magical self-stuffing envelopes. 4500 money notes, 1800 sheets of guild appreciation tokens and a sticky label were adhered and stuffed in and on the blessed things. By hand. Now...you may like to try this at home. Count out 600 lots of 2 sheets of paper, one after the other. Then change to counting out lots of 5 sheets. Your brain will rebel, and you will fail to remember how to count to five...

Ops opened, and I wandered, heading for the bar, and coffee. And a wireless connection for the laptop. I geeked, and people happened. Music was played. And then The Management turned up and forbade the playing of musical instruments because of Licencing Laws. Which is really annoying. Part of the 'con tradition is playing and group song-murdering in the bar. This year it seems this is not to be...

I was called upon to move a load of boxes from a van to Ops. Then having just bought a coffee I was called upon again to move some boxes from Sator Square to Lord-Knows Where. Then, just as the coffee cup reached my lips I was called again to move some more boxes. Hypothetical, metaphysical boxes. When I arrived the boxes were gone. Not there. Having no physical existance. So I went back to my coffee. At the point the cup touched my lips the boxes, out of sheer spite, recorporialised, and off I went to Registration with them, wherein I was caught in a weird dance...collect a bag, proceed down the table adding a pen, a balloon, a notepad, a magazine, a lanyard, a bookmark...all done, amidst many MANY more people, and set, weirdly, to music. At which point my caffeine-starved braincells rebelled, and forced me back to reclaim my now cold beverage...

Once again many wonderful people were arriving, and before many minutes a group of strangers became old friends. Rolf and Uwe, Bjorn, Edmund, Suzi, Gid, Eric, old friends all, mixed and chatted with new faces, people I have never met yet through the magic of Discworld have known all my life. The conversation flowed from Henry VIII to Edward I, lyrical poetry through the age, erotic symbolism in Warehouse 13 and Eureka...yes, this was a Convention.

Sadly I'd forgotten that I was merely mortal. Worse, I am having to rely more and more on Pharmaceuticals to keep bits from dropping off. And in my hurry to renew old friendships and forge new ones I'd managed to leave the most important ones behind, so had to flee before the pub quiz. Again...

However, energy and Miscelaneous deities willing, tomorrow is another day. See you there!

[1] I hadn't had much coffee, and they had My Little Ponies[2]. That's close enough...
[2] Don't ask, okay? Just don't ask!

Thursday night pub quiz

Well, we’re back!

A lot of conventioneers show up on the Thursday night before the Convention and it has become traditional to hold a pub quiz to keep them entertained that night. After all, we’ll be spending a lot of time over the next few days making our own entertainment.

But the problem is that Discworld fans tend to be very very good at quizzes and so the pub quiz was handed over to a warped soul who dug deep into the twisted recesses of her mind (and Wikipedia) to produce a work of torture that was greeted with loud groans, death threats and much gratuitous heckling.

With that in mind, it’s time to share the pain. This year, there was a Roundworld question loosely based on each Discworld book, excluding the Young Adults and spin-offs. The maximum number of points varied and are listed in brackets after the book title. The answers will appear in a couple of days.

This is no ordinary pub quiz. This is the Discworld Convention 2008 Pub Quiz.


1. The Colour of Magic (7)
Name the colours of the rainbow.

2. The Light Fantastic (4)
Name the four planets that the Voyager probes have done fly-bys of.

3. Equal Rites (1)
Who was the first woman to be elected to the UK House of Commons?

4. Mort (1)
In Greek Mythology, what was the name of the ferryman on the Styx?

5. Sourcery (1)
What city has the tallest completed freestanding building in the world?

6. Wyrd Sisters (1)
In Hamlet, what is the name of the play performed by the Players?

7. Pyramids (1)
What was the original name of jelly babies?

8. Guards! Guards! (2)
Name the magistrate brothers who founded the Bow Street Runners

9. Eric (1)
Who was Dante's guide through hell?

10. Moving Pictures (1)
Who has won the most number of Oscars ever?

11. Reaper Man (3)
What band recorded the song "Combine Harvester", in what year was it released, and what was its highest point in the UK charts?

12. Witches Abroad (1)
Name the man commonly credited with inventing the package holiday, which began with an 11-mile journey in 1841.

13. Small Gods (2)
How many Theses were there in "The Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences" and what door did he nail them to?

14. Lords and Ladies (1)
In the town of Kilorglin, Kerry, what is a puck?

15. Men at Arms (1)
Which police force, still in existence, is commonly reckoned to be the UK's first organised police force and has been based on the same site since 1798?

16. Soul Music (1)
What was Kirsty MacColl’s first single to reach the charts in the UK?

17. Interesting Times (1)
How many World Heritage Sites does Unesco list as being in China?

18. Maskerade (1)
Which opera, first performed in 1728, was said to have made its writer rich and its producer gay?

19. Feet of Clay (1)
Which English monarch founded the College of Arms?

20. Hogfather (1)
Who was a frequent visitor to Number Seventeen, Cherry Tree Lane?

21. Jingo (1)
Which novel, adapted into a film starring Peter Sellers, described the war between the USA and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick?

22. The Last Continent (2)
What pet did Matthew Flinders take with him on his circumnavigation of Australia, and what was its name?

23. Carpe Jugulum (1)
Name the eponymous vampire in Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novel.

24. The Fifth Elephant (2)
Which British politician said: "Only three people understood the Schleswig-Holstein Question. The first was Albert, the Prince consort and he is dead; the second is a German professor, and he is in an asylum: and the third was myself - and I..." How did he complete the sentence?

25. The Truth (1)
Which UK national newspaper was founded to campaign against the Duke of Cambridge becoming commander in chief of the British Army?

26. Thief of Time (1)
Who invented the marine chronometer?

27. The Last Hero (1)
What was the name of the 1902 film commonly reckoned to be the first science-fiction film ever?

28. Night Watch (2)
What were "Winchester Geese" and where would you find them?

29. Monstrous Regiment (2)
When was the most recent FIFA Womens' World Cup and who won it?

30. Going Postal (1)
"It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed". Herodotus said that of the postal service of which country?

31. Thud! (1)
What is the rank below Grandmaster as awarded by the Federation Internationale des Echecs?

32. Making Money (1)
In what year were women first admitted as members of the London Stock Exchange?

And so it begins...

Will be setting off shortly for the drive north-west to Birmingham. This will be a first for me - actually being an attendee, rather than one of the organisers - I may even get to some programme items this time! I look forward to finding out what a Discworld convention is actually like :-)

See you in the bar...

Colette