Follycon

[lexin]

As advertised, I went to Follycon, the 69th British Science Fiction Convention last weekend, which was held at the Majestic Hotel, Harrogate.

Travelling up was fine – there was supposed to be a train strike on Northern Rail, which runs trains between Leeds and Harrogate, but though the service was crowded, the one I was booked on ran. I’m on the side of the strikers, as I will normally be, but in this case because what’s behind the strike is the question of guards on trains.

I normally ask for assistance when travelling by train. The reason for this is because I can be quite chipper and healthy, and able to manage my bag…and I can be really very ill and struggle. This time I wasn’t too bad on the journeys, but I can never be sure. Without guards on trains, I could be in real trouble.

The Majestic Hotel is a Grade I listed Victorian building. This created quite a lot of interesting problems for those with access needs. The dealer room was situated down a steep flight of stairs. I only made one visit to the dealer room, and I managed going down the stairs OK, but had to get them to send one of the golf buggies they’d thoughtfully hired to get back to the main hotel as I couldn’t manage the stairs back up, and certainly not in a long frock.

Mind you, the hotel or the concom can’t be held responsible for the fact that standing makes my hip hurt and standing around in the dealer room made me really hurt. So I didn’t stay long.

I bought a book by Linda Stratmann called “A True and Faithful Brother” about the murder of a Freemason, which I haven’t finished reading. I like Linda’s books, they’re always a well put together murder mystery starring an admirable Victorian woman called Frances Doughty. Go read, she’s good. I also bought some yarn from someone selling that. There are lots of fans who are also crafters, not least aunty_marion.

I spent several hours volunteering on the Information Desk, which I rather enjoyed. I got the same questions repeatedly (mostly (a) where can I leave my coat? (b) where is the nearest cash machine? and (c) how do I get to the dealer room?) and I quickly learned the answer to all three.

The answer to the question, ‘why is the food in this hotel so awful’? I never learned the answer to, but the Info Desk was open to ranters, so I just let people rant at me about the food. Mostly concoms are on the losing end with hotel food anyway – even if it were all Michelin starred, someone would hate it.

This time they did have reason, though. Basically, the food was just below the level of standard mass catering. The breakfast was fine, and they had those perennial favourites of fans, mushrooms and black pudding, so no complaint there. But the food the rest of the day was not great and a bit overpriced for what it was. You also took your life in your hands if you had an allergy – the beef sandwich described to one person as ‘just beef and butter’ inside actually contained mayonnaise and horseradish. Or it might have been horseradish mayonnaise. I liked it, but if you’re allergic to either horseradish or mayonnaise…

The programme was busy and eventful. I attended a panel on Horrible Heroes, in which people discussed the claims of various book heroes to be actually quite unpleasant people was discussed. One person’s choice was Mr Rochester, another choice was Mr Darcy. I forget the others.

I went to a space talk given by Dr Rachel Livermore (I hope I’ve spelled her name right). She wasn’t one of the guests as such, but an attending expert on space from the University of Sydney. (I’ve met her before at a K/S convention but didn’t raise the matter in case she was embarrassed.) Her talk was great, and I came away with the impression that all is more complicated than I can possibly imagine.

I know there was another panel I went to, but I can’t remember which. It was good, anyway.

My favourite item was the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. It was slightly overpriced at £8.50 for two scones and tea, but there was as much tea as you could drink and the convention put on entertainment, one of which was clare_nce telling a story about an Arab prince and a sage and his Ebony Horse. She was excellent. There was also live science experiments and a bloke singing a couple of funny songs that were funny. So, great. Loved it.

I didn’t go to any of the guest talks.

In other news, I’ve signed up for next year’s Eastercon, the unpronounceable Ytterbium which will be in London, at the Park Inn, Heathrow. That will be an interesting one to get to. You wouldn’t expect somewhere further away to be easier to get to, but for me it is.

Now to book aunty_marion to care for Smokey while I’m away. She took excellent care of her this year, Smokey is full of beans and cat food, and currently pretending to be a pile of fur on top of her cat tree.

Comments

[aunty_marion]

Sounds like you had a good time generally! Though why on earth they put the dealers room down a flight of stairs...

Hotel food isn't *always* awful, though it is generally overpriced.

Rachael (with an a!) is a good egg when it comes to science; I encountered her at HP conventions originally, but came across her some years ago doing a talk on astronomical stuff at a science fair thingy being held at the Royal Festival Hall.

Ytterbium is a rare earth element, one of (I think?) two or three named after Ytterby, a town in Sweden where it was first found or something similar. I think the other two are Yttrium and Terbium. Such imagination, these scientists... I don't know why the con is being called Ytterbium. Atomic number, or something? (And hey, look, I remember something from O-level Chemistry! Or maybe from reading an article by Isaac Asimov, who knows.)

I'll happily come and supervise Smokey's 'entertainment' again next year; mind you, this year she mostly ignored me unless I was offering food, and spent her time sulking on your bed. I did offer companionship; she told me to bog off! OK, she did sometimes come in the living room and sit on the windowsill or her cat tree; she tried several times to get me to sit on the sofa, but as you know, I DO IT RONG, and she went off in obvious disgust at my incompetence every time I tried.

[lexin]

Well, I suppose they had to put the dealer room somewhere and it was a reasonably big room. I'd have put it in one of the rooms on the main floor, but then I wouldn't have chosen that hotel having had the experience of a particularly vile hotel in Crystal Palace in my background as a conrunner.

I have no idea why the con is being called Ytterbium. Seems odd. Nor why it's being held near Heathrow, which seems also an odd choice. Getting there from Leytonstone is going to suck like a vacuum cleaner as I shall probably have to do it by public transport.

I hope Smokey wasn't hissy or scratchy. She's fine with me...mostly.

[aunty_marion]

I looked Ytterbium up (I was right about the origin of the name, and the other two elements!), and it is atomic number 70. So for the 70th convention ... reasonable, I suppose. Didn't they call one Dysprosium a few years ago? That's atomic number 66.

[lexin]

Oh, well, that would explain it.

[chelseagirl]

That sounds delightfully Victorian for an sf con! (I did my grad work in Victorian lit, though oddly because I'm at a technical university, I'm more likely to teach science fiction that Victorian novels these days . . . )

Sorry you had access issues.

[lexin]

I could have wished for more lifts, but I suppose they can't put them in a Grade 1 listed building. Sigh.

I read several Victorian novels for my English A level, lo, these many years ago. Barchester Towers was one of them, I recall. I rather enjoyed it, but my fellow A level students mostly didn't. I think we also did Middlemarch, which I remember less about.

[chelseagirl]

Middlemarch is my favorite novel of all time. It is quite long to make secondary school students read, though.

[julesjones]

I also fell foul of the Surprise! Ingredients! in the sandwiches. I'm a supertaster so it was merely deeply unpleasant and briefly painful to find I had mustard with the ham in my sandwich, but mustard is a common and sometimes severe-to-point-of-ambulance-ride-with-sirens allergen, and thus I was a) unamused to find it in my sandwiches, b) further unamused by the kitchen's lying insistence that they had not put mustard in my sandwiches, c) really seriously unamused for my "replacement" sandwiches to be obviously only the one I'd bitten into having been replaced and the ones in the middle clearly the original ones only with even more Surprise! Mustard! than the one I'd bitten into. I suspect what happened is that the chef didn't clean a knife between making someone else's ham-n-mustard before buttering the bread for mine, and there was a wodge of mustard deposited and then smeared out.

Ops went utterly ballistic when I calmed down enough to go and inform them of this cavalier attitude to Surprise! allergans...

[lexin]

I had a feeling there was someone else who'd also had surprise! ingredients in their food, not just the bloke who ranted at me for half an hour by Shrewsbury clock. Justifiedly so, in my opinion, not that I could do anything about it for him.

My sympathies, at least Ops took it seriously. I wonder what they said to the hotel people.

[ridicully]

My work place holds their yearly meeting/training/conference thing at that hotel and the food has been uniformly terrible (except for breakfast) for the last eight years.

Even without surprise!ingredients they have managed to ruin things I wasn't even aware could be ruined. It's a FONDANT POTATO, how on earth do you mess this up?

(Sorry to rant, apparently I have developed feelings about hotel food at some point.)

[lexin]

I gather, though I haven't checked, that Trip Advisor comments on the hotel aren't great. I do wonder why the concom chose that hotel given that they comments haven't been good for years. Maybe they were strapped for choices.