Up in good time to finish collecting stuff together for
writerconuk - my last year as chair and, as a local person I tend to accumulate a lot of the stuff – if it’s ordered online it makes sense for it to be sent to me. The evening before had involved 
curiouswombat doing a lot of ironing to create bags with our logo on and we (including S2C) had put goodies into the goody bags.Later in the morning our bathroom turned up and was stored in the garage. To clarify – after a mere 20 years in this house we are finally replacing the very dated 70s green suites in the bathroom and downstairs loo with something a little less Thatcher-era in white. So, a man with a van brought a bath, a shower, two loos, two washbasins, a range of taps, outlets and chrome stuff, a vanity unit and a heck of a lot of tiles. These were all stored tidily away and I still managed to get the door closed. Use a garage to put a car in? You have to be joking.
Around lunchtime (which I sort of forgot to have) I gathered together the last of my things and headed to Sainsbury’s for last-minute white wine and fruit juice, then down to Coventry, to meet folks at the Ramada Hotel, the venue for our Event for quite a few years now. Several people had already arrived, and during the afternoon more and more trickled in. The hotel staff were sweet as usual, but more than a bit fussy this year – I had to have private conflabs with Szholt and Jyoti, and was asked to proof-read the menu! (Just as well – since the draft I’d seen on Tuesday, one mistake (of two) had been removed, but two more had appeared.) Mid-afternoon arrived swiftly and I went to collect
tlanti from the station, just missing brutti_ma_buoni, and shortly after that went upstairs with my The hotel staff had provided us with sign-up sheets, so people were encouraged to select their suppers before we went upstairs to kick off the proceedings. This was where I mustered all my dignity as chair and instructed people to take out their pterosaur kits from the bags, colour them in (felt tips thoughtfully provided from the 99p shop) and then throw them at each other. Ice-breaker activity in keeping with the seriousness of the event. Several people realised too late that they should have turned them into Nazgul.
After that was the Quiz. I was in a group with
hils, whose knowledge of fandoms is way beyond awesome. We came first and were thus awarded a bottle of Blanquette de Limoux. The other two groups had runners-up prizes, by sheer chance also a bottle each of Blanquette de Limoux. kazzy_cee created the quiz, using her impressive PowerPoint-fu to give us clips of music and dialogue as well as pictures and actual questions.We descended to the restaurant for a meal at around 8.30, and most people seem to have enjoyed their food very much. It was only as I began to eat my enormous veggie pizza that I realised I hadn’t actually eaten since breakfast, which is both explanation and excuse for the speed and thoroughness with which I polished the lot off.
We retired upstairs to the breakout area, now officially the Executive Lounge, for cocktails and chatter. I had a mojito, which I found a little too sweet, but somehow I managed to force myself through it.
Gradually folks gave in to their tiredness and drifted away to bed. When it was down to
bogwitch, quinara and me I gave in as well and called a taxi. He needed my instructions to find his way to Windy Arbour, but this allowed me to take him the most efficient way, so that it cost me rather less than last year. When I arrived home Dave was still awake, so we were able to catch up with each other and discuss plans for stripping out the bathroom (such an exciting relationship we have) before we got to bed in time for Sailing By.Tags: writerconuk2014
