How to describe a British Convention? It's like life really; it can only be described once it's too late. The essentials are there - a campsite, a juggling hall or three, traders, indoor camping, a public show and a parade. Just like any other convention from that oh-so-innocent list. The reality, iceberg-like, lurks deep underneath threatening to upset the ship of sanity of any who pass too near.
What does the word campsite mean to you? What image does it conjure up? Nowhere near. Try a muddy field outside the back of a converted school with about half tents and half vans. Stick a small top at one end (not part of the convention officially, but where the members of Captain Bob's Circus go, there goes the marquee). Stick a load of assorted hippies, freaks and 'normal' people. Throw in spontaneous music jams, people rolling spliffs and lighting chillums in broad daylight and a really friendly atmosphere and you're getting warmer. Indoor camping is weird. Any time of day or night bodies would be sprawled throughout corridors and rooms; comatose, curled up and cute. Many people chose to sleep indoors or during the day as temperatures dropped regularly below zero at night.
The juggling halls. Heh. The main hall was a sports hall. Nice, clean, airy and very full. All the trade stands were here and also the workshops. Most of the flash jugglers were in here and this was the time to spot the hard stuff going on. My first sight of the convention more-or-less was entering the main hall around 9am to watch someone juggling 4 clubs whilst bouncing a football on his head. Then he bounced the ball into a 5-pattern for a bit. Ho hum. Actually there was lots of nice juggling and good tricks, but doubtless others will write about that. The other halls also did a sideline in being sleeping rooms, unicycling rooms, litter bins and all-night juggling venues. Whooosh.
Friday night had us setting up the UV glowroom, a new innovation for conventions. Cosmos and FireNoise temaed up to flood a room with UV light and fill it with glowing props and mellow music. Lots of people came, hung out and had a really good time. Not many of them were on drugs either. Apparently there was a pretty good renegade stage on friday too.
Saturday, main juggling day (Gods it was crowded). The parade. Worst parade I've ever been on. The 7ft high revolving doors were a bad idea. At least they were pinned open but the stlt walkers and giraffe unicyclists had no fun there. We then continued to parade through a shopping mall (what? British shopping malls are small. They leave barely enough space for feline-swinging) and narrow backstreets of Brum so as not to get in a anyone's way. I think two shoppers and a dog saw us. The dog barked. Next year either we crash through the city centre making ourselves very visible, or we don't go. The parade is traditionally followed by the games which are actually quite boring. So back for more juggling and food. The canteen had closed so it was off to Cap'n Bob's tent which was doubling as a cafe, trebling as a beer tent and quadrupling as impromptu music venue. I imagine the IJA has rules against a thing like that :-)
By this stage we had managed to make rec.contact with the net.jugglers around - I managed to find some of them before the parade and put names to the flames (as they say). What an ugly bunch. Makes me glad I'm beautiful I can tell you!
Met up with Tarim again and we passed the time with some alternates (altern8s). He is really into thirds - every third when passing, third person references to himself.... Anyhow, lots of mindblowing patterns there and on to the main show.
This was definitely a high point - the acts were professional and slick. The compere was crap (again!) and the big top (which was full of maybe 2000 jugglers) leaked like buggery but what the heck. I shan't list the acts; I shan't describe them as there were too many; someone else can review the show in detail I'm sure. Steve Rawlings had the audience constantly amused with his show though (Best line of the evening: he is juggling three torches (good routine) and sets his hat on fire. He appears not to notice as the audience reacts, and quips "I know what you're thinking...how can one man *be* so cool". Then notices the hat is on fire, puts it out and adds "Thnak god it was the hat. I thought it was the drugs!")
Sunday morning started earlier than most SUuday mornings have a right to. By 6am I was in the shower and by 6.30 I was passing alternates with Tarim and juggling with the others who had been up all night. Tarim and I sussed out the alternate doubles and triples (4 of one, 6 of the other) and I think he will post about them. When he does, just bear in mind it was *very* early in the morning we worked this out. Sunday also saw the final of the unicycle hockey (silly game), many very dead looking jugglers wandering around, my first experience of passing with radical fish (incredibly easy) and more silly comments. Over breakfast:
A) Do you think Gatto will be at Leeds this year? B) Doubt it. What could they offer him to make him com over? A) Drugs?As crazed hippy drug fests go, we did a lot of juggling. As juggling conventions go, it went.
See you in Leeds.
<Kendrick Zetie> zetie@minerva.cis.yale.edu and zetie@vax.ox.ac.uk www home page: "http://www.cis.yale.edu/~zetie/zetie.html" browse! There ain't no such thing as fact, just opinion. This is mine.