Novacon 28 Conreport

A conreport from this year's Novacon

Well, first I need to apologise to Sharon Sbarsky, because I said to her we'd send news, gossip and photos of Novacon to Orycon for the newsletter. Except in the event I partied like a wild thing from the moment I arrived to the moment I left, and didn't open my laptop once.

I thought it was the best Novacon I've been to for years; loads of excellent conversations, real ale in the bar all weekend, a better-than-averagely thought out programme, and a hotel in an excellent location that actually seemed to enjoy having the con there, and had nice staff. Shabby rooms though, and no parking.

We missed a few familiar faces, though. Dave Langford, of course, who was Guest of Honour at Orycon; but Greg Pickersgill not being there came as a surprise to most of us. Dark rumours abounded as to the reason; but nobody told me what they were. Other missing faces were Rob Hansen and Avedon Carol, and Dave Mooring and Sarah Dibb.

Arriving at the con late on Friday evening, we assumed (incorrectly) that we were too late to catch the band, the excellent To Hell With Burgundy. THWB are rapidly becoming one of my favourite bands that nobody has ever heard of. Goodness knows what the committee thought they were doing putting them on Friday night rather than Saturday. Saturday was reserved for the aptly named Bad Influence, a band who made me thankful for the seven floor difference between the programme hall and the bar.

Marcus Rowland bounded up to us with apologies for missing our wedding party, and a round wrapped present of indeterminate shape. "Thanks," I said. "It's not a snake, is it?" Marcus looked crestfallen. I carried the snake around for the rest of the evening tucked into my fanzine bag.

A fair to middling crop of fanzines: new issues of Banana Wings, Bob and our own mini bijou Ploktette (which we wrote on our hols in the Lake District - furriners will probably have to wait for it until the mailing of the next full-size one, though it's better than 6 1/2, which we never mailed out at all. (Though you can of course see it here). All of those were expected, but there was also a new Arrows of Desire from Nic Farey, another Did I Say That Out Loud (with a slightly different title which I've forgotten) from Debbi Kerr and an Andy Hooper/Victor Gonzalez ensmalled one-shot, Skink. Hooper used his half of this to accurately predict the Nova results, but I wonder if his prediction had the effect of influencing the results? I have a little rant which follows this, but you'll have to get me drunk to do it, and never on the web. The Bristol group had produced another Balloons Over Bristol, and Christina's new chap, Doug (running joke around the con: "How can you spot Christina's new boyfriend? He's the one with his tongue down Christina's throat."), had a fanzine ...and stuff. A beautifully laid out Guardian spoof, fandomGuardian, from Dave Hicks; knocking Plokta into a cocked hat in the pretty fanzine stakes. Though Dr. Plokta complained bitterly about the detailed layout and typesetting, the overall effect was rather splendid.

Funniest programme item was Sorensen's rock opera, My Claire Lady, about the famous Professor Plummer grooming a sad media fangirl until she could pass herself off in trufandom. Ian was helped by Julia Daly as Claire, Chris O'Shea as Mark and Noel Collyer as Noel Collyer. The real Claire stood at the back singing along, and the real Mark sat at the back looking embarrassed.

The TAFF auction suffered from being seven floors away from the comfortable bar: it's very hard to raise a lot of money under these circumstances. I was late to it due to a chain of events involving infeasible quantities of Japanese food, but did some auctioning. I particularly liked a book called You can have Wood Lice to Stay, all about, well, wood louse husbandry. Marcus Rowland seemed particularly interested. It turns out that he was the only person in the audience who actually keeps wood lice as pets.

Parties: well, Nic Farey had a party. I know; we were in the room next door. Except I wasn't, because I stayed up late and out every night of the con; it almost felt like being young again. Lilian went around the con waxing poetic about fans who looked like Ewan McGregor. She told me there were two such at the con. I reckon she must have questionable vision. Or rose coloured glasses. Or something.

Saturday night was dressup night for the girlies; as usual we went shopping on the Saturday afternoon. I was quite sedately dressed, but I got Marianne real clubbing gear: a sleeveless top in black and gold, with a pair of bootcut velour leggings, and play tattoos for her arms. She thinks the tattoos are brilliant and keeps pointing them out to people "Too! Too!" I also wore a tattoo, which looked terrific and which loads of people asked if it was real (both during Novacon and while shopping in Birmingham today). I had resolved to wear it to work tomorrow, right up until I remembered the meeting with Terribly Important People tomorrow afternoon. So reluctantly I took it off with a thorough application of Stroh.

On Saturday night I got so completely ratfaced that my eyes stopped moving in the same direction; largely thanks to a large quantity of sake and a helpful bottle of tequila. "Tequila is almost always a mistake," said Anne Wilson, supportively. I believe I spent a couple of hours staring into the middle distance while conversations went on around me, and every so often interjecting a complete non-sequitur and collapsing in fits of giggles. Pretty much as usual, in fact. But I had an almost hangover free Sunday, so the gods of Inclement Inebriation must have been looking out for me.

The closing ceremony was once again marred by the traditional Novacon exhibition of How Not to Organise a Raffle With Lots of Prizes. I get more and more pissed off with this every year. <RANT> Hint: you do not need to draw each prize at the ceremony, reading out the number, forgetting to say which colour ticket it was, waiting to see if the winner is in the room, having people walk up and choose the best prizes first, so that certain prizes get left till nobody wants them, and so on (the worst case of this I ever saw was one year when one of the prizes was a book by the GoH, and it didn't get chosen for about 20 minutes). Try, instead, pre-drawing all the minor prizes, and labelling them, and then, in the ceremony, drawing three large prizes "and the bottle of whisky goes to Green 38" and then reading out the list of all the other winning tickets. Total time taken: about two minutes instead of 15 </RANT>

The Novas were awarded; Maureen was astonished and overwhelmed to win best Fan Writer and D West was informed rapidly by mobile phone that he'd won best Fan Artist. Claire Brialey looked thrilled about Banana Wings' hat trick, while Mark Plummer looked embarrassed. The Plokta cabal scurried away, either (a) to bathe their wounds in a nourishing solution of sour grapes, or (b) to get the results uploaded to PNN before anybody else.

Mike Siddall, who does not look like Ewan McGregor, had a party on the Sunday night; Victor was helpfully handing round his Sinutab to anyone who was looking for a cheap thrill. I declined, preferring to stick to whisky and beer. This was quite a small party: Siddall & Hicks, Lilian, Christina and Doug, Tommy Ferguson and Mark McCann, Martin Smith, Jae Leslie Adams, and various incoherent Swedes. I can't remember any of the conversation, which is extremely worrying. Especially as I think Siddall was taking notes.

KIM Campbell arranged a farewell breakfast for Ian Gunn on Monday morning at 8am. At about half past four, it began to look quite likely that I wouldn't make this; and we had a toast to Ian at the party just in case. I did dutifully set my alarm in time to get up, but an hour and a half's sleep just wasn't going to cut it.

The end of the convention was signalled by the traditional Monday morning series of fire alarms. We didn't quite manage to evacuate the hotel then, but we did soon afterwards. One key problem of the Britannia is that it's missing the comfy lobby that you sit around in on the last morning, drinking coffee and getting up the strength to leave. The hotel doesn't really have any public areas that are conducive to this sort of behaviour, and we left much earlier than normal for a day of idle shopping in Birmingham.

-- Alison Scott

17 Nov 1998