Dan Q

Tag: memorable

Troma Night 300 (Hindsight)

For those who couldn’t make it to Troma Night 300 on Friday, but don’t want to miss out on the experience: here’s what you missed (along with lots of links to some videos for you to watch – note that some videos might be considered NSFW):

  • 8:00pm – in exaggeration of the tradition, everybody present threw a sponge across the room; meanwhile, simultaneously, Paul threw a sponge out of the window of the Commodore Cinema and clear onto the roof of the nearby shopmobility scheme portacabin.
  • 8:05pm – “Kit, order the pizza!” As was the case in years gone by, Kit – in attendance by speakerphone – asked “What does everybody want?” and, via Scotland, relayed our order to Hollywood Pizza. Meanwhile, trololololololololololo man sang in the background (a comparatively recent tradition).
  • 10:30pm – Our second film again sees an introduction supplied by Matt in the Hat:
    • Matt’s video introduction – nobody, not even me, had seen this video before it was shown at Troma Night, but it had us rolling on the floor with laughter. I’ve had to modify the video for YouTube (imagine that the pint of Guinness isn’t there), which reduces its impact somewhat, but I hope that putting it online will afford those of you who weren’t there the opportunity to enjoy it almost as much as we did.
    • The Deadly Bees (MST3K edition) – a Troma Night classic and a particular favourite of Adam’s – he owns several different copies of this film. We have some technical difficulties towards the end of the film and switch to the original version to finish off, but this doesn’t make the film any less awful.
  • 12:10am – we wrap up with another screening of Matt’s introduction to The Deadly Bees, for those that don’t leave the room fast enough to avoid watching it again (the cowards): the final frame is left as a freeze-frame on the screen until everybody departs

All-in-all a fantastic Troma Night by anybody’s account: a huge thank you to everybody who made it special by coming along, by taking part remotely, or by sending well-wishes (Kit’s blog post, Liz’s blog post, comments on my announcement).

It was particularly important to me to have a Troma Night like this one, as this is likely to be one of my last Troma Nights in Aberystwyth: as I indicated last year, I plan to leave Aberystwyth during 2010. I’m currently looking into a possible window of opportunity that would give me the chance to move to Oxford within the next nine weeks, and it’s very unlikely that I’ll be around for another dozen Troma Nights here. In some ways, Troma Night 300 was – for me – a send-off of the concept of Troma Night in Aberystwyth (although you can be sure that we’ll be kicking off Troma Night Oxford once Ruth, JTA, Paul and I are settled there).

In other news, Alec’s LiveJournal account has been mysteriously deleted: did anybody else notice that?

https://danq.mebe around/2010/04/12/troma-night-300/

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Dan Q found GL3FWHCM PC-004 Not Quite The Thames Path

This checkin to GL3FWHCM PC-004 Not Quite The Thames Path reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Third cache in today’s expedition. The trees and fence made the GPS signal spotty, but a quick walk up and down a few times got us a good fix on this beautiful little cache. I’ve never found an ammo box cache before, so this is my first, and it was quite an experience: a whole trove of treasures! Took the Seattle Compass-Thermometer travel bug (but didn’t think to take a temperature reading at the time, will try to remember to do so when I drop it off) and the Poker Events Geocoin (not listed as being in the box, listed as being with it’s owner!), and left the Red Jeep Travel Bug.

Thanks for a great cache!

Dave!!! Highlights From Robin’s Birthday

Right now, I’m out in Oxfordshire for this a “code week” – a get-together for the purpose of hacking some code together – for the Three Rings project. That’s got nothing to do with this post, but helps to offer a framing device by which I can explain why I was in such proximity to London in the first place.

JTA at the Ops Room table
JTA at the Ops Room table

Last night, y’see, Ruth and I hopped on the bus down to London to meet up with Robin, her brother, for his 21st birthday. Starting out at The Dove in Broadway Market, we began an adventure of epic proportions, backed up by some of the least-consistent planning ever encountered in a pub crawl. At times, the revellers and I were as one unit, moving together through the capital, shouting “Dave!” in unison. Other times, keeping the group together and headed in the same direction was a little like trying to herd cats.

But progress was made, and a milestone birthday was celebrated. Highlights included:

Pub Jenga

Pub Monopoly is so last week: Pub Jenga is the new hotness. At each bar, we brought out a set of Jenga, the bricks of which had each been emblazoned – using a marker pen – with the names of diferent areas of London. When the tower collapsed, the brick responsible dictated where we would go to next.

Pub Jenga - The Next Big Thing
Pub Jenga – The Next Big Thing

The person responsible for the destruction of the tower was required to drink a penalty shot of Jägermeister and be the bearer of the Jenga set and The Trowel until the next pub. Oh yeah, The Trowel. Robin’s plan was that, at the end of the night, the Jenga set would be buried forever at a secret location. As we’d left before this point to catch the bus back to Oxford, I’ve no idea whether or not this actually happened.

Another gripping turn of Pub Jenga
Another gripping turn of Pub Jenga

Mystery Pockets

Ruth and Robin’s older brother, Owen, had come prepared: having numbered each of his eight pockets and placed a mystery item in each, Robin was periodically charged with picking a number, at which point the contents of the pocket were revealed and used. Some of the items revealed were:

Face Paints


One of the first Mystery Pockets contained red and green face paints, with inevitable results. Also, I’m not sure what was in them, but quite a lot of people at the table started itching quite a lot after they were applied: whoops! Click the thumbnails for bigger pictures.

Party Poppers

After these were chosen, everybody managed to get ahead of Robin by sprinting down a tube station fire escape staircase, and hiding around the corner at the bottom. Which might have been more effective if not for the fact that it’s quite hard to hide a dozen people in a tight stairwell. Also, that Robin had decided by this point to “fall” down the staircase.

Silly String!

Silly string! It’s so silly!

It’s silly. ‘Nuff said.

People Of London

Our travels put us into contact with a variety of people from around the city, like:

The Moon Man

In Covent Garden, we got a small audience as a result of our various exploits, but this one – persuading a random stranger to bare his colourful underwear to the world, might be the best. In the background, you can just make out an unrelated group of partygoers, about to tie themselves together with a long rope left lying around by a street performer.

The Moon Man pulls his trousers down

Owen’s Fans

The two women at the next table from us in a bar in Oxford Circus, who seemed quite pleased and impressed when Owen tore his shirt in half in a show of manliness. I’m pretty sure that if he’d have asked, they’d have paid to see more.

Jamaican Me Crazy

A busker with drums who we persuaded to play the most reggae interpretation of Happy Birthday To You that has ever been heard.

Lay down some beats! Dancing might have been involved on my part.

Dave!!!

I can’t even remember how, but it quickly became our callsign that – in order to make sure that everybody was together (at least, after we’d lost the enormous Papa-Smurf-penis-styled balloon, fresh from Owen’s mystery pockets, that had previouly been our beacon), we’d all shout “Dave!!!”, as if we’d lost somebody by that name. No, I can’t explain it either.

Robin and friends on the London Underground
But… where’s Dave? DAVE? DAVE!!!

A Cornish-Pasty Themed Pub

Seriously, such a thing exists. We almost gave this one a missing, mistaking it for merely being a late-night Cornish Pasty Shop (yes, that was more believable to us at this point), before we noticed that it had a bouncer. “What kind of bakery needs security?” “Ohhhhh.”

Playing Jenga In Unusual Places

Like the game on the steps of St. Paul’s Church.

I’m still amazed that we didn’t attract a larger audience than we did, playing Jenga in this famous spot for street entertainers.

Racing Around The Transport Network

You know all of those signs about not playing on the escalators, not running up the escalators: all that jazz. Apparently some of the group didn’t think that they applied to them, with hilarious consequences. Honestly, I’ve never seen somebody slide all the way down the central reservation of a 100-foot escaltor before, “bouncing” over every sign and emergency-stop-button as they rocketed down along the polished steel. And if I never do again, that’ll be fine, because I’ve seen it now.


Meeting Some Fabulous People

Turns out, everybody who came along to Robin’s birthday – most of whom I hadn’t previously met – were all awesome in their own unique ways. It’s been a long time since I’ve hung out in the company of such a lively crowd. Thanks to you all for a fantastic night out.

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Dan Q found GL3DVXT1 Idiom cat

This checkin to GL3DVXT1 Idiom cat reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

The first time I saw this cache was the very first time I looked for it, weeks ago. I worked out exactly where it was, looked there, and stared right at it. I even thought to myself: “Wow, that gives me a great idea for a cache!” Little did I know but my idea WAS the idea that this cache’s creator had had…

Then today, I saw my idea implemented in a photo of another cache, on the web. “Hey,” I thought, “That was my idea.” Then the penny dropped, “Hang on… I’ve SEEN one JUST like that.” Sure enough, that was how Idiom Cat was hidden, too.

Should have brought tweezers to get at the log, though; I snapped my pen levering it out!

The Break-Up

Yesterday, Claire and I broke up.

We’ve had several rough months, and several even rougher weeks, and this seemed to be the best solution to a variety of difficulties we’ve faced recently. It’s hard to answer the question as to whether the split could be described as mutual, but it can certainly be described as amicable, if that’s enough. If not, then perhaps it might help to understand that we’re both, little doubt, unhappy, but that it’s better to end things now in a friendly way than, say, in six months time in an unfriendly way.

I’m sure that neither of us want to go in depth into the issues behind this break-up in the public forum, but I’m sure that those of you who are our friends are more than welcome to ask privately, “what happened?” I apologise to everybody for whom this comes as a shock (i.e. most of you, from what I gather).

I’ve no doubt that Claire and I will continue to be close friends and will kick arse in all the fabulous ways that you’re used to, whether in one another’s company or apart. And I expect I speak for both of us when I say that there’s a slap on the wrist waiting for anybody we catch “taking sides”: there are no sides to be taken.

Virgil wrote that omnia vincit amor – love conquers all – but he was wrong. Despite our love for one another, if Claire and I had carried on the way we were, people would have ended up hurt. I’m feeling drained and miserable, but it’ll pass, and all will be well again. For a quarter of my life thus far I’ve been Claire’s, and she’s been mine, and through one another we’ve done so much. For the last seven and a half years I’ve been thankful for the great richness of experience that my relationship with Claire has brought. There will always be a special place in my heart for her.

Thanks for reading. I think I shall go and sit quietly for a while, now.

Edit @ 21:20 01-Nov-2009: Claire has a few things to say, too.

Saw It A Mile Off [Drink!]

Can I be the first to say “Saw it a mile off!” (the giveaway was Sian “getting organised” by looking up people’s addresses).

Can I also be the first to say, at least via the digital interwebworknets: congratulations! You’ll get my RSVP very soon.

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Your Experience May Differ

To: Daniel Hill <dlh9@….>
From: Dan Q <dan@….>
Subject: Aberystwyth University Is Awesome! Warning: Your Experience May Differ.

Dear Daniel,

There’s an age-old tradition amongst Aberystwyth graduates, and in particular amongst Computer Science graduates. But to truly understand it, you first need to understand a little bit about Aberystwyth University. Also, to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion (you’ll “get” that joke by your second year, if you don’t already).

As you know, your username is “dlh9”. There’s a reason for that: The letters are your initials. “But I don’t have a middle name,” I hear you cry (or, at least, not one that the University know about), “Where’s the ‘L’ come from?” Well, it turns out that Information Services, who look after all of the computer networks, have a System [TM]. And their System [TM] is that staff get usernames like “abc”, undergrads get “abc1”, postgrads get “abc12”.

(this has lead to some awesome usernames: for example, “bed” used to be the username of somebody from Residential Services, and “sad” was once the username of one of the counsellors at the Students’ Union)

Anyway, I digress. I was talking about usernames. The digit in your username is the year you started your course. So, because you’re starting this year, yours is “9” (see, ‘cos it’s 2009 – get it?). You’re not allowed to spend more than nine years getting your degree, so that’s a pretty good primary key (you probably know what one of those is, but if not, you will before the academic year is out). Postgraduates get two digits because they often hang around for years and years. I don’t know what would happen if somebody spent a century getting their PhD, but I’m guessing that it wouldn’t be pretty.

And so there’s been a long-standing tradition amongst Aber grads, and particularly Comp. Sci. Aber grads, and especially particularly Comp. Sci. Aber grads-who-graduated-and-got-jobs-in-Aberystwyth and never got around to leaving… that when their username comes up for “renewal” – when a decade passes after they first started their course – they finger (you’ll learn what that means soon enough, too) the Aber computer systems and check if their username has been re-assigned. It’s a great way to make yourself feel old, as if the annual influx of younger-every-year Freshers didn’t do that perfectly well already.

Over the years, I’ve seen many friends play this little game. Some of them won, but most of them lost – it turns out that the odds aren’t really on your side: there are 17,576 conceivable username combinations each year – from aaa9 to zzz9 – and only 3,000 new students, so odds are less than 50% whether or not you ignore the statistical biases that mean that things like “qxz9” (Quentin X. Zachary?) are basically never going to turn up.

So imagine my surprise when I, for the first time, get to play the game, today… and I not only win, but I get a double-win, because the person to whom my old username has been recycled is an undergraduate in my old department!

Yes: I was the last owner of “dlh9”. I was “dlh9” from 1999, when I started, to 2004, when I graduated, an alumni of the Computer Science Department at what was then the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (it changed it’s name to Aberystwyth University shortly afterwards – this, combined with the fact that I have since changed my name by deed poll, means that I am the proud owner of a degree certificate that contains neither my name nor the name of an existing university!). At the time, my name was Daniel Huntley – I didn’t have a middle name, either – and I spent five years getting a four-year degree in Software Engineering before I started working for a software company here in this very town. I haven’t yet got around to leaving.

It still feels strange to write an e-mail to your e-mail address – my old e-mail address. It feels like I’m writing an e-mail to myself. I wonder what I’d have made of it if I’d have received this e-mail when I first arrived at University. It’s not so hard to imagine: the person I am now would be unrecognisable to the person I was back then, just like I am a complete stranger to you, but writing to you nonetheless. But even if you discard this e-mail and never think of it again, you’ll have done me a wonderful service by allowing me the chance to participate in a fascinating thought experiment that has granted me a great and deep nostalgia for the time I spent at that University.

(by the way; I apologise if your e-mail address is still getting the spam it used to get when it belonged to me)

Like me, Aber’s changed over the last ten years. The University’s changed, and the Computer Science Department has changed too. But I’m sure that you’ll find the place as beautiful and as satisfying as it has always been: this remarkable town on the West coast of Wales, where the mountains meet the sea, full of strange and quirky characters, a million miles from anywhere, and truly unique. I find myself longing for you to have *my* experience of Aberystwyth; to do all the great things I did, to meet all the great people I did – but you won’t. You won’t have the same lovers; you won’t discover the same music; you won’t join the same clubs; you won’t have the same beautiful sunsets while you roast burgers on disposable barbeques and the rising tide laps at your ankles; you won’t have the same hangovers; you won’t scrape through the same exams; you won’t steal the same traffic cones; you won’t climb the same mountains. A different story told differently.

You won’t have any of the things that made my time here in Aberystwyth so wonderful for the last ten years, but don’t dispair, because you’ll have something far better – you’ll have all of your own marvellous experiences. Mine are mine in nostalgia alone, but yours are yet to come. And I hope you have an ass-kickingly good time, because that’s what every Aber Comp. Sci undergrad deserves when they come to this magical corner of the world.

When you get as far as your lectures, tell Richard Shipman I said “Hi”. That’ll put you in his good books, I’m sure. ;-)

And if you see me around town, give me a wave and I’ll buy you a pint. If you got nothing else from reading this old man’s drivel, you just earned yourself a free pint. When I was a student, I’d have called that a win-win. Your experience may differ.

Good luck, and best wishes;

—
Dan Q

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BiCon 2009

This weekend, I was at BiCon 2009 (my third BiCon – I guess that makes it a tradition), and it was awesome. Here’s a short summary of the highs and lows:

Travel

Worcester’s closer than I remembered, and – once Claire‘d gotten used to the Vauxhall Astra we’d rented – we made good time there and back. It’s a really simple journey, really – you just drive along the A44 until you get there, and then you stop (well, okay, there’s a brief stretch on the A470 near Rhayader, but that doesn’t really count, does it?). The biggest difficulty we had was on the University of Worcester campus itself, which is a maze of twisty little passageways, all alike.

University of Worcester campus residential area

Accommodation

The usual student halls affair, although with rooms far larger and kitchens far better-equipped than those in, say, Penbryn. Also, the organisers must have run out of regular rooms, because the flat Claire and I were in had en-suite rooms, which was an unexpected luxury.

An interesting quirk in the halls of residence at Worcester is that they’re very, very keen on motion-sensor-activated lighting with very short timers. The lights in the hallway outside my room would come on for barely seconds, and when I first checked in, I’d only just worked out which was my door and dug my key out of my pocket before I was plunged into darkness and had to leap around to get the attention of the sensor and get the lights back on. The one in the kitchen was even worse – while playing board games on the first night, we eventually grabbed an anglepoise lamp from one of the study bedrooms to use, as it was simply too frustrating to begin your turn right as the lights turn off, and have to wait for a few seconds until your movement is enough to turn them back on again.

On the other extreme, the light (and the – noisy – linked extractor fan) in my bathroom was so sensitive that it would turn on if I so little as walked outside the door to my bathroom, while it was closed, and often wouldn’t turn off for several hours.

Registration

Registration was the usual fun and games, with less time than usual setting up our badges in accordance with the “sticker code” (sort of a handkerchief code, but with a key and an atmosphere of being a little more playful). As usual the sticker code started small (and, unusually, with a distinct and separate “official” code) and expanded over the course of the weekend, such that by the end of the conference it looked like this:

The sticker code at BiCon 2009

I didn’t spend very long on my badge and stickers this year: just enough to get a core message across… plus a not-on-the-key “Q scrabble tile”, as a reference both to being a board gamer and to Claire and I’s unusual surname. There’s probably at least half a dozen others I could have legitimately added to my pass.

My BiCon 2009 badge

To save you squinting at the pictures (or clicking on them to see bigger ones: that’s allowed, too), I’ll decode my badge for you: polyamorous, likes hugs, possibly available (as in: I’m theoretically open to new relationships, but seriously – where would I find the time?), and the aforementioned “Q scrabble tile” and another “Q” that I found in the sticker stash.

Claire volunteered for a shift of reception desk duties, which is cool, because they’re always in need of more folks there.

Other People’s Workshops

I didn’t go to as many workshops as I have in previous years: many of the things I was interested in clashed with one another, and other slots were simply full of topics that didn’t catch my attention. Also, I’ve found that going to a workshop in “every other” timeslot is a perfectly good way to get by, and spending the alternating periods hanging out, meeting people, and playing board games is a great way to keep energy levels up in the otherwise quite draining busy-ness of BiCon.

  • Right at the start of the conference, I narrowly missed going to Genital Show & Tell, which I later heard was awesome – I’d gotten carried away talking to people and got there after they’d locked the door, putting a sign up on it that read “This workshop is closed. Sorry.” and underneath which somebody had added “Yes, it is possible to have too many genitals in one place!”
  • I enjoyed Fun & Games, at which Ele joined me and we shouted lots of rude words, although never in as articulate a fashion as Nomad.
  • Went to the Smutty Bisexual Storytelling workshop for the first time this year, and it was amazing: huge thanks to the amazing Jacqui (is that spelled right?) for that fabulous (hot!) session.
  • Loved the talk and the discussion at the Quaker Marriage workshop (much thanks to the facilitator, whose low-key online presence suggests might prefer to remain unidentified), and the fabulous religion/marriage/sexuality conversation I had afterward with another participant in that workshop.
  • Hung out at two of the three scheduled Naked Lunches, at which I enjoyed bonding with several other (naked) geeks over a shared love of Interactive Fiction. Who’d have thought?

My Workshops

This year was the first year that I ran a workshop (last year’s impromptu purity test party doesn’t count), and, because I like a challenge, I ran two:

  • Alongside “fire_kitten“, I got bullied into (well, okay, I sorta promised) running a workshop entitled Different Approaches To Polyamory. As the only official poly-workshop on the programme (that’s why I offered!), it was somewhat over-subscribed, and we actually ended up with almost a quarter of the conference attendees present, and for part of the workshop we had to split them between two rooms. A lot of people grabbed me later during the conference and thanked me for the workshop, which was pleasing, especially as I did very, very little: mostly I gave the participants some conversation topics and split them up into groups, and chaired a bit of a chat about it all at the beginning and at the end. But if it worked, it worked, and it sounds like it worked.
  • When I’d first heard that there was a minor shortage of workshops, I felt compelled to provide one, but I couldn’t think of anything that I knew enough about to stand up and talk about, that people might actually be interested in hearing about. And then I thought of something. I did my other workshop on Listening Skills for Supporting Others, and it also went really well. It was a little under-subscribed, probably because it was timetabled against the time that many people will have been preparing their BiCon Ball costumes (hell, if I’d have been doing so at that time, it’d have made things a lot faster and easier for me!). However, it got some fantastic feedback, even from folks who seemed skeptical at the beginning that any good could be done by listening and supporting feelings, rather than by providing practical help.

BiCon Ball

The theme of the BiCon Ball was Crime and Punishment, and so there were – predictably – plenty of burglars with swag-bags, police officers, superheroes and villains, and the like. The standard of body-painting was even better than normal (a number of people opted to wear virtually nothing, instead being painted as, for example, Wonderwoman, who didn’t wear much to begin with).

Just to be that little bit different – and to take a metaphor to it’s illogical extreme in our characteristic manner – Claire and I decided to actually dress as a crime itself. She dressed as a salt shaker and I dressed as a Duracell D-Cell, and together we were… a salt and battery. Get it? Everybody else we spoke to that evening did, too, eventually, although many of them needed some prompting.

Dan & Claire on the way to the Ball

And There’s More…

Other highlights and notable moments include:

  • The “settling in” period seemed a little worse than usual this year than last year. Somehow it took me a little while longer than normal to “get into the BiCon groove” and to start appreciating BiCon for the heap of awesome that it really is. It’s always challenging jumping into that environment, and that’s to be expected, but something made it a little slower this year. Perhaps the lack of a beer in my hand!
  • Thoroughly enjoyed the last-minute late-night picnic party we helped kick-off after the BiCon Ball. Some of the coolest people at BiCon found their way to the quad not far from the students union, carrying their leftover food supplies, and we broke bread and exchanged hugs and chatted and it was fabulous. After all that and one thing and another, I finally got to bed at almost 4am, knackered but happy.
  • Discovered some cool new board games that might be finding their way to a Geek Night near you (assuming you live in Aberystwyth) soon, including Frank’s Zoo, Snatch, and Type Trumps (Top Trumps, but with typefaces; yes really).
  • Feeling like I’d helped make BiCon a success by volunteering to do a variety of bits and pieces (like the workshops, above) and generally being useful. It feels great to contribute back to the event and the community.
  • Katie managing to accidentally break a pool cue between her breasts. I didn’t even know that such a thing was possible (apparently, it’s left quite a bruise, and I’m not surprised).
  • Catching up (albeit only in passing) with Henri and Pascale, with whom we shared accommodation at our very first BiCon.
  • Spending an hour and a bit chatting to somebody who seemed to coincidentally know their way intimately around pretty much every interest I’ve thrown myself at over the last twelve months. But better. The killer was when it turned out that she spoke Esperanto better than me (if it’s any consolation, she made up for knowing everything by being gorgeous).
  • Watching another somebody dancing. Honestly, I could have watched him all night.
  • Everyone seemed to like the campus, which is cool (presumably they didn’t have rooms with extractor fans that whirred until three in the morning, which is quite irritating if you happen to have gone to bed before then, which happens sometimes).
  • Didn’t see as much of my flatmates as usual, which is a pity, because it included some fabulous people.
  • Having common sense. Knowing what to say yes to, and what to say no to, and why both are okay.
  • Not too bad a “coming down” post-BiCon period, this time.

Right; that’ll have to do for a BiCon 2009 Roundup, because Ruth‘s cooking me dinner so I need to go eat.

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Repost #13158

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

This repost was published in hindsight, on 12 March 2019.

Ruth wrote:

Since I last posted, I’ve been fairly busy, one way and another. First, Dan and I travelled up to Preston where I was forced to allow that it isn’t a complete pit after all because it does have a couple of nice bits (viz, a pretty park by the river and a nice museum/library with a ball on a really long bit of string in the lobby).

We also visited Blackpool, which was a new experience for me. Incidentally, the entertainment value of eating giant eclairs and then riding on a waltzer is limited. I kicked Dan’s arse at crazy golf, on a really nice course with astro-turf and little streams.

Later, we travelled up to Scotland with some crazed, drunken bus company employees (they were an ok bunch apart from their habit of getting up at 5am) to canoe the Caledonian canal. I managed the 18 mile first day, got out of our boat and found that my RSI had flared up and I couldn’t move my arms at all. Dan sympathetically fell about with laughter, but on the third day (Fort Augustus to Drumnadrochit) the winds on Loch Ness were so bad that he and the other canoeists were forced off the water so we both finished up walking the Great Glen Way to Inverness.

On the way back down, the planets were aligned correctly (or something) so we were able to do the surprise thing that Dan had been planning for ages as my graduation treat. We got up at 5.30 and drove out to a deserted farm shop on the outskirts of Preston, where we sat in a car park for 10 minutes or so before a battered landrover emblazoned with “Pendle Balloon Company” arrived towing a large basket on a trailer. I was surprised.

Ballooning was amazing. First, we got to help put the balloon up (which was really cool). The inside is full of wires and cables which are used to control it in various ways. We went up to 5500 feet before coming back down so we could get a better view of the countryside. It was cold at that height but there was barely a breath of wind for reasons which I am sure you can all figure out by yourselves (I felt colder when we eventually touched down and could feel the breeze again). The views were stunning, the gentleness of the flight was quite something, and I had a great time. When it was over, we drank champagne with the pilot and other passengers (which is apparently a ballooning tradition, although I don’t know whether the plastic beakers are traditional or not).

It was a good trip. Knackering, and full of unexpected events, but highly enjoyable. Now I’m settling in for a summer of alternating basking in the sunshine with working like buggery on voluntary projects. All I need is a part time job so I can carry on eating and paying the rent, and I’m set.

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Scotland Etc.

A quick summary of a holiday (and a series of associated trips on the side) that Ruth and I took a fortnight ago (yeah; I’ve been busy). Ruth has already written a little about the trip. I’d hoped to blog “on the move”, but a combination of low signal and low energy after a day of paddling made this pretty much impossible, so here’s the “grand catch-up”:

Wednesday 27th May

Ruth and I travelled to Shropshire to visit Ruth’s grandma in hospital, but it turned out that she’d been discharged about an hour before we arrived, so we briefly visited her at home.

Then we drove on, up to Preston.

In the evening, we played Chocolate Teapot with my family. I haven’t written about Chocolate Teapot on here yet, but the short summary is that it’s a “light” board game I’ve put together in the style of Apples to Apples meets Chrononauts… meets Dragons’ Den. So far, folks seem to like it, although I’m still ironing out a few kinks in the rules.

Thursday 28th May

This morning, we were supposed to do something special I’d had planned to commemorate the occasion of Ruth finishing her final exam, but we weren’t able to on account of the weather. I’d kept secret from Ruth what it is we were eventually to do, and the tension of not knowing (she’s not good at surprises) was very obviously boggling her poor little mind by now.

Instead, we went to Blackpool, rode a few rides (and felt ill thanks to eating a huge chocolate éclair each and then riding on the waltzer on the Central Pier), and played adventure golf, which Ruth won by a significant margin. And then ate fish & chips, because that’s what one does in Blackpool.

Got tied up with some stuff in East Lancashire early in the evening and missed our chance to get to see Pagan Wanderer Lu on his weekend mini-tour. Damn.

Ate far too much Chinese food at an all-you-can-eat buffet and gave myself nasty indigestion.

Friday 29th May

Did things in Preston, like buying lots of really really cheap clothes to wear for the remainder of the trip while paddling around in Scotland.

Saturday 30th May

Travelled up to Gretna Green with my dad and Ruth. Left the car at the services there and transferred to a coach full of Go North East employees. Travelled up to Fort William, in the centre of the Nevis mountain range and close to the Great Glen Way and the Caledonian Canal.

Despite it by now being late in the afternoon, my dad suggested we walk up Ben Nevis, so Ruth and I – joined by two others: John (fellow canoeist) and Dave (the bus driver, although – that said – about half of the folks on the trip were bus drivers) – followed my dad up the mountain. Dave, who’d apparently never climbed a mountain before, made it about 200 feet up before he had to give up. Ruth and I got to about 3200ft before we realised that we hadn’t actually eaten since breakfast and had to turn around and get some food, and only my dad and John made it the extra thousand feet or so to the summit, keeping a spectacular pace going as they did.

There’s photos from Ben Nevis here.

Sunday 31st May

This was our first day in canoes. Ruth and I took one, John and my dad took a second, and the third was taken by a pair of the bus drivers, Yvonne and Claire. We were to paddle our way up to Inverness, towards the North Sea, over four days. The remainder of the group were to walk the Great Glen Way – about 13 miles longer, and – of course – hillier, but at least they’d be powered by their legs and not their arms!

The first day was the hardest. It was the longest, which made an impact, but it was also the hottest. I’d not planned for this kind of heat (I’d thought – hey, Scotland, that’ll be a few degrees colder than Aberystwyth, but it turned out that Northern Scotland was in the middle of some kind of unseasonal heatwave): my case held lots of long sleeves and not enough pairs of shorts! Out on the lochs and canals, there’s no shade, and on our first day’s paddling, there wasn’t any breeze either. Combine that with 17 miles of rowing, and you’ve got a recipe for exhaustion.

Ruth overdid it somewhat, and triggered a relapse of her RSI, and she wasn’t able to carry on rowing for the rest of the trip: instead, she joined the walkers group, and a walker called Martin took her place in my canoe.

Among the many canoeing photos I took, there’s a very cute one of Ruth with one of the walkers helping her to drink a glass of lemonade because her arms were too broken to lift the glass for herself.

Monday 1st June

The second day’s canoeing was a lot shorter, and a lot easier. Martin and I – after a little bit of weaving around the canal and failing to paddle in a straight line – found a great synchronisation and made a great rowing team. We easily led the other two canoes for most of the remainder of the journey.

On this, the second day, we even beat the walkers along the first half of the route, meeting them part way for lunch on a pebble beach alongside Loch Oich.

One of the hardest bits of canoeing the Caledonian Canal is that British Waterways no longer allow canoes to use the lock gates (there’s a concern that if your boat tipped over you could be sucked into a sluice gate and held underwater for quite a lot longer than most people can hold their breath for). So we had to pull ashore, lift the boat out, and carry it up or down each hill. Walking rather than rowing gave our arms a rest, at least, but it’s not easy to lift your boat, your day bag, and your oars and then carry them up a hill.

Tuesday 2nd June

On Tuesday, we were supposed to cover the first half of Loch Ness. At Fort Augustus, we got into the River Ness (it was easier to get the boats than the canal would have been, from the back garden of the building we’d kept them at), and appreciated for awhile the current helping us along a little. We passed the smallest lighthouse in the world and headed out onto the Loch.

The wind had picked up, and it was choppy on the Loch. Paddling over waves and against the wind was more challenging than what we  were used to, and the six of us adopted a tight formation in order to keep an eye on one another in case we got into any trouble. We hugged the shore to avoid the worst of the wind, and took an early break at the bottom of the garden of a waterfront house, where we ate our morning energy snacks.

The wind felt okay in the bay we’d sat in, but as soon as we got back out onto the Loch, we could feel the wind: it was getting stronger. Paddling was very hard, and Martin and I redoubled our pace several times. It felt like we were making great time – a hard wind in your face and an ache in your arms will give you the illusion of speed – but when we pulled over and took a break, we looked at the map and realised that we had travelled about half a mile in the last hour. At this rate, we’d barely reach the next Youth Hostel in time for breakfast… the following day.

We pressed on, and stopped again and I looked up the shipping forecast on my phone. The wind was due to get worse still, with gusts of up to 25 miles per hour. We were already at a point at which we spent almost as much time going backwards that forwards, and turning sideways to the current resulted in the boats rocking alarmingly and very quickly filling with water, so we ran them aground, dragged them ashore into a building site, and called for backup to come and pick them up.

The building site turned out to belong to a chap who I’ll hereafter refer to as The Friendliest Man In Scotland, who was quite unsympathetic to the idea of us sitting around and waiting for rescue from the backup vehicle, and shouted and swore and threatened legal action quite a lot. While we waited for the rescue vehicle, I used my phone to find XSS vulnerabilities in his website. You know, like this one.

After we’d got rid of the canoes, we raced to try to catch up with the walkers, who were a couple of hours ahead, finally reaching them a little while after they’d reached the cabins in which we’d be spending our next night. It was disappointing to not be able to canoe the rest of the distance, but it really wouldn’t have been possible to go any further this day, and the weather forecase didn’t look any better for the day after (it turned out to be wrong, but we didn’t know that when we had the canoes returned to their owner).

Wednesday 3rd June

And so we canoeists joined the walkers for the very last day of the Scottish trip. The walk was long and arduous, and Ruth and I probably ought to have set off earlier, because we were right at the back of the group when we entered Inverness, and we actually had to cheat and catch a bus for the final mile in order to not keep them waiting at Inverness Castle for any longer than we already had.

In summary, canoeing across Scotland was… exhausting. Even (and perhaps especially) for the bits that we weren’t actually in canoes. But it was also a great opportunity to see that beautiful country from a new angle – from water level, looking up at the Munroes and along at the Lochs. It could be beautifully still and calm out in the middle of the bigger lochs, and it was great to just stop and sip some water and take in quite how magestic the mountains of Scotland actually are.

At Inverness, we took victory photos (here they are), had a quick McDonalds meal, and got back on the coach to Gretna, then drove back down to Preston.

Thursday 4th June

On Thursday morning, we finally managed to do the thing we’d tried to do the previous week… weather conditions were at last favourable for: a trip in a hot air balloon (thanks, Pendle Balloon Company)!

Ruth was suitably surprised.

The whole experience was a lot of fun, and everybody present got roped in to helping lay out the balloon, inflate it with cold air, check and disentangle the control lines (and all the same stuff again but in reverse at the opposite end).

It’s amazing quite how gentle a balloon take-off is. While the pilot fired the (hot!) burners in a full burn ready for takeoff, I glanced out of the side of the basket and down at the ground… and realised it was slowly moving along underneath us – we were airborne, and I hadn’t even noticed!

We sailed around at 3,500-5,500 feet for awhile, looking down over mid-Lancashire. We got a great view of Houghton Tower, where I’ve been to their annual open air classical concert a number of times (including some I didn’t manage to blog about). Ruth geeked out about different kinds of road junctions and their comparative space/throughput efficiency trade-offs. We came in low over fields of cows and horses and confused the livestock as they trotted towards the barns for their morning feed.

And after an hour of sailing around, we bumped down into a field (which happened to double as a microlite runway, which was convenient) and all helped to pack the balloon away. And it was awesome.

There’s photos from this, too: here they are.

Afterwards

Finally (after a celebratory friend breakfast at a restaurant near where the balloon launched from), we hit the road and got ourselves back to Aberystwyth. It’d been a busy, exhausting, but fun week.

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Claire And The Dwarfers

I think Claire would appreciate me sharing the following photograph with you all. Click for a bigger version:

From left to right – Kryten 2X4B-523P (Robert Llewellyn), Arnold Judas Rimmer (Chris Barrie), Claire Q (playing herself), and The Cat (Danny John-Jules).

In the background you can just make out the tail fins of what I’m told is “Carbug.”

You can keep up with what Claire’s up to in London with the Red Dwarf cast and crew via her Twitter feed. Go take a look.

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Sleepless? Priceless!

  • Time for this iteration of a software project: 4 months
  • Time left after the client changed their mind about the “must have” requirements: 2 months
  • Amount of sleep within the last 40+ hours: 4 hours
  • Number of JOIN clauses in an eleventh-hour SQL statement that suddenly fixes everything: 12 (LEFTies, RIGHTies, INNERs… and also a UNION)
  • Time internal deadline missed by: 55 minutes… which isn’t actually that bad, considering everything that went wrong in the 55 minutes before them
  • Money earned: nil
  • Feeling after delivery complete: priceless*.

* also: knackered – guess I’d better get some sleep!

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Year One – A Happy Post That Everybody Will Misunderstand To Be An Unhappy One

Ruth and I celebrated the first anniversary of our being a couple, this weekend. She came down to Aber and we took the steam train up to Devil’s Bridge, wandered around the waterfalls, and spent a good few hours sitting in a pub (pretty much the pub in Devil’s Bridge, tiny place that it is) playing darts.

I’ve never really been one for celebrating anniversaries. A birthday is an ocassion to go out for a pint, and new year is when you… well, that’s when you go out for a pint, too. But it was really quite good to spend some time with Ruth (something I’ve not had a lot of while she’s been living in Oxford, this summer) doing the coupley things we don’t often get to do.

Fuck knows where we’re going to be in another year’s time. If her plans play out the way she’d like, she’ll be leaving Aberystwyth again this time next year, and I’m still going to be here. Neither of us are particularly confident about the prospect of pulling off a long-distance relationship that will work in the same kinds of ways that the relationship we have now does, and I’ve suffered a smidgen of anticipatory grief about the possibility us coming to an end.

On the other hand, we’re both keen to see what we can do to make sure it doesn’t have to end unless it absolutely has to, and that’s reassuring. And I am, as always, optimistic. We’ve got today. We’ve always got today.

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Quickly, Before They Turn The Glass Into Lesbians!

So, what have I been up to this weekend, you ask. Well…

“Cover The Mirrors” Launch Party

On Friday I took the train up to Preston. The train I was on broke down at Machynlleth when they linked it up to the carriages that had come down the Pwllheli line, and the repairs set me back by almost an hour, but it turns out that the rest of the rail network was running behind schedule that day, too, and so I didn’t miss any important connections. I arrived in time for a quick “birthday tea” with my family (for my dad’s birthday) before rushing off to the Waterstones for the launch party for my friend Faye‘s first published novel, Cover The Mirrors.

Dan with author Faye at the book launch

I drank as much wine as the store were willing to give me and bought myself a signed copy of the book. I even managed to get the photo, above, under the proviso that it’s only allowed to appear on the internet thanks to the fact that I’m holding a carrier bag in front of Faye’s face (she’s more than a little camera-shy). I haven’t started reading Cover The Mirrors yet, because I’m virtually at the end of The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, and I’d like to finish that first, but little doubt you’ll hear about it here in due course.

Dad’s Birthday

After the book launch, my sisters and I took my dad out for a few drinks to celebrate his 51st birthday. It turns out that, in my absence, Preston’s nightclub scene has really taken off. We started out in an 80s-themed bar which is part of a chain called Reflex. It’s so 80s it’s unreal: all 80s hits playing, David Hasselhoff and Mr. T decorating every wall, glitter balls and spots and mirrors everywhere… deely-boppers available at the bar… and so on. Really quite a fantastic theme venue. Then, under my sister Sarah’s recommendation, we tootled up the street and into a cafe/club called Manyana, where my dad got hit on by somebody young enough to be his daughter.

My dad and some 20-something year-old

I snatched this picture. I’ve no idea who she is – we didn’t get her name – but she seemed genuinely surprised to hear my dad’s age. So I had the DJ announce it, just to make sure there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that there was an old person on the dancefloor.

This influx of Preston nightclubs is making them all remarkably competitive with their drinks prices, too. I bought a few rounds for the four of us and none of them ever came to over a tenner, and one – thanks to the “buy one get one free” policy at Manyana – came to under £6, which is quite remarkable for a city nightclub on a Friday night for four people!

Back To Aberystwyth

On Saturday I had brunch with my sister Becky, my mum, and her boyfriend and then got back onto the trains to head back to Aberystwyth. Owing to line maintenance, the stretch of track between Crewe and Preston is unusable every weekend within sight, and so I was re-directed via Manchester Piccadilly. Yet again, my train ran late, and I found myself sprinting across Piccadilly station, trying to find a train that was heading Shrewsbury-way…

…meanwhile, my friend Katie, having slept through her stop, woke up in Manchester Piccadilly and, not quite awake, clambered off her train in an attempt to find a connection. I’d apparently featured in her dream, and so she was quite surprised (and not quite sure if she was seeing things) when I sprinted past her. She sent a text (which I chose to ignore: my pocket beeped but I was too busy looking for a train to take the time to get my phone out) and then phoned me before she was able to confirm that yes, it really was me.

As we were headed the same way, she joined me on my train for one stop, which was a nice surprise for what was a long and overcomplicated train journey. A few folks have suggested that this might not be a coincidence, and that she might be stalking me, but I’m yet to be convinced.

In any case, I don’t have a picture to go with this part of the story. Sorry.

Jimmy, Beth, and Troma Night

YATN. If you were there, you know how it went. Big thanks to Jimmy and Beth for coming along.

Lloyd Kaufman’s Visit

In case you’ve not been anywhere that I can pounce on you and go “squee!” recently, here’s what you missed out on. You’ll remember that last week I mentioned that Poultrygeist – Troma‘s new movie – was coming to Aberystwyth. Well, it did. And it rocked…

…and better yet, Ruth, Claire, JTA, Paul and I got to hang out with Lloyd Kaufman, president of Troma Studios and producer of The Toxic Avenger, for a couple of pints and to share a bowl of nachos. The guy’s fabulously chatty and friendly, and if it weren’t for the awestruck feeling of “wow, we’re just sat here chatting with Lloyd Kaufman in Lord Beechings” we’d have probably been more interesting company.

Dan, Claire, !!!LLOYD KAUFMAN!!!, JTA, and Ruth

When he said goodbye, kissing the cheeks of each of the girls, I genuinely thought that they were in danger of exploding with excitement. Thankfully they didn’t, because I’d already bought them tickets to see Poultrygeist later on.

Which was, as I’ve said before, fantastic. It’s even better seen with a nice, energised audience, and better still when the director and several other people who worked on the film are hanging around afterwards to answer questions, chat, autograph things and so on. There are apparently 15 prints of Poultrygeist and the capacity to make more on demand, so if you want to see it and can’t wait for the DVD release, go speak to your local cinema now and ask if they’ll show Poultrygeist, even if only for a week (as Lloyd himself said, it’s better than showing Transformers on all 24 screens of some soulless megaplex). And hell, with Troma’s current financial situation, they could probably do with a helping hand with getting into as many projection booths as possible!

The title of this post – Quickly, Before They Turn The Glass Into Lesbians! – is a reference to one of my favourite lines in the film.

Paul might have bitten off more than he can chew, though, as he hinted on his blog. After some discussion with Lloyd, Paul is likely to be responsible for:

  • Re-establishing the UK division of the Troma fan club.
  • Acting as president of the above, for the forseeable future.
  • Investigating UK distribution of Troma films.
  • Oh, and making an official DVD subtitle track for Poultrygeist: Night Of The Chicken Dead, which describes the Troma Night drinking rules and reminds you when you should be drinking. He’s got a few ideas about things that should be in such a subtitle track, too, and if you’re familiar with the rules you’ll probably be able to guess what he’s thinking about.

I’ll leave it to him to go into detail, if he wishes.

Matt In Hospital

Between places, we also joined a growing crowd at the foot of Matt‘s bed in Bronglais Hospital. His operation was a success, but he’s reacted unusually to the general anaesthetic and they’re likely to keep him in for observation for another few days. If you haven’t had a chance to visit him already, he’d probably appreciate the company (although Sarah seems to have barely left his side): visiting hours are 3pm-5pm, 6pm-8pm: just ask if you need to know what ward he’s in and how to get there. If you’re feeling particularly cruel, mock him by talking about how well your bodily excretions are working, or swap his drip with his catheter bag while he’s not looking.

But seriously: I’m sure we all wish him well.

Curry!

Finally – as if we weren’t full enough from a large Sunday lunch – after leaving the cinema, Gareth, Penny, Amy, Ruth, JTA, Rory, Paul, Claire and I slipped down for a late-night curry at the Spice of Bengal. Which was delicious, although there was a little much food for those of us who were already quite full.

Dan eating curry!

Nonetheless, a fantastic end to a fantastic weekend! I’m sure everybody else will have a different story to tell (Paul spent longer with Lloyd and went to more films; Claire and Jimmy got horribly drunk together on Friday night after she, Ruth and JTA failed to see a Meatloaf concert; Matt’ll have his own morphine-fuelled tale to spin, and so on), because it’s been a rich, full couple of days for many of us abnibbers.

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QParty – Part 2 – The Party

After extended delays, here’s the remainder of my “looking back at QParty“ post.

The party kicked off at 6pm, and guests trickled in over about about half hour to either side, which gave Claire and I ample time to try to greet everybody as they came through the doors. At least, it did until about 6:30pm, when a sudden rush of the remaining guests swept us off our feet and made us spend much of the remaining time running around everybody who’d appeared since to make sure we at least got to talk to everybody. Paul – with help from Matt P and Rory – manned the door, taking people’s coats and offering glasses of champagne… well, sparkling white wine. In the cases where he liked the look of the people coming in, he remembered to tell them about the bar tab, too.

Reception Dan and Claire greet Andy Pandy Dan greeting people Dan and Claire find time to sneak a kiss in the corner

We began to collect people’s contributions for the QFrames – the large clip frames we planned to fill with mementoes from the event. These were many (so many, in fact, that when Jenny was filling them for us while on our QMoon, later, she ran out of clip frames and some contributions have had to be overlapped or – where people brought multiple items – some have had to be left out entirely). We were overwhelmed by the thought and sincerity reflected in many of the items that are now in QFrames (some of which we’ve already mounted in The Cottage: others we still need to find room for!). Just off the top of my head, I’d like to draw attention to a few things (can’t possibly list everything here!):

  • A selection of fantastic photos from Claire and my life so far. Some reflect our family lives (Claire’s dad brought a huge number of pictures of her as a child), some our lives with our friends (not-gay Gareth brought a great picture that he took at an early Murder Mystery Night; Sundeep supplied a brilliant snap from a trip we took up Snowdon; Gareth and Penny gave us a picture that really sums up Claire and I’s life in Aber – the two of us looking out to sea by a bonfire – and so on), and some are reminders of the people we care about (I was particularly impressed at the courage of my college friend Andy, who, in reference to a long-standing joke, supplied a photo of himself edited such that he looked like Andy Pandy).
  • A collage of photographs of me at different stages of my life, from my mum, overlaid with transparencies of the details of key events in it, from my birth certificate to my graduation.
  • The specification for a Turing-complete programming language called Q (it’s a little like Brainfuck), and a program written in it that outputs a congratulatory message, from Andy, my mum’s partner.
  • A page from “a physics textbook,” describing many different kinds of scientific terms and units using the letter Q, with an “addition”: the Q-unit, used to measure weirdness of the Dan and Claire variety. Thanks to Jimmy for that one.
  • A map to the star “Q”, registered at the International Star Registry by Ele, Lee, Helen and Pete.
  • Several wonderful letters, including an excellent dialogue between Ruth and JTA, and a tear-jerking description of our friendship over the last few years from Matt R.
  • A fucking scary mask from Liz.
  • Not one but two pieces of knitting on the theme of the letter Q – now these were difficult to squeeze into clip-frames! – from Jen and Beth.
  • A piece of my last laptop, somehow recovered and kept by Paul, who was present at it’s destruction.

And so on, and so on, and so on. There’s far more than we ever imagined we’d get: so much that the half-dozen A1-size clip-frames we brought were actually insufficient to contain them all! From the sweet to the nostalgic to the crazy, all of these unusual gifts (and the dozens not mentioned here) have really made us feel loved by you all: thank you all so much.

Sarah and Alan by the QFrames Examining QFrames in the distance Dan receiving champagne from Alec Kit and Fiona

Thanks are also due to everybody who – despite our request to the contrary – brought more conventional gifts as well. In particular, we were surprised (in a good way) by the sheer number of bottles of champagne we were given. A side-effect of this – and of all the cake left uneaten from the party – was that when we returned from our “honeymoon” – QMoon – a week later, the only things we had in the house to eat and drink were cake and champagne. Oh, the horror!

Once everybody who was going to appear had appeared and gotten themselves a drink or two, we decided that it was probably time to get on with giving the speeches that are so obviously mandatory at this kind of event. We’d planned the order of events only the night before. Then changed the plan. Then changed it again. In any case, we’d decided that I’d introduce, in turn, Claire, my mum, and Claire’s dad, and then say a few words myself.

Claire would talk about how she and I first met – delicately censored, of course: the finer details of the actual story are not only more long-winded than is appropriate for a speech of the length that Claire wanted to give, but also aren’t so repeatable in polite conversation (if you feel like you missed out on some juicy details, see us after class). Claire spoke well about the early days and months of our relationship, addressing her audience well and taking the piss out of me just about enough (it turns out to be quite easy).

Dan's mum's speech Claire's speech Claire's dad's speech Dan's speech

My mum was next. We’d decided between us that what she would like to talk about was family. Her speech was simply fantastic, and earned her a great deal of respect from many of my friends, based on the number of people who later came up to me and told me how “brilliant your mum is!” Despite a meandering into a discussion on the breeding of alpacas, her musings made their point: that families – defined not by blood or lineage but by groups of individuals bonded together by love – are one of the most fundamental building blocks of society as we know it, and that everyone in the room was, by Claire and I’s action and through Claire and I’s love for one another, joined and related as a huge extended family.

When everybody was done wiping their eyes and laughing about alpacas, Claire’s dad took the mic. He talked a little about Claire’s upbringing and her unusual ways, embarrassing her just slightly in the way that a modern father of the bride is expected to, before reading a poem that he’d written for the occasion. It talked about his respect for his daughter, and his love of her, and her upbringing, and then took a change in pace at the point in her life where her dad first met me: And what’s this I find? / A man in bed with a girl of mine! / Who is this, me’s a thinker’, / Who is this bounder? What a stinker! It gets better, of course, and finishes with lines asking me to take care of “his Claire” for the rest of her life. Which, longevity-permitting, is my plan.

Listening to speeches Listening from the bar Fighting to the front

Finally, I stepped in to talk about Claire and I’s unusual and conversation-inspiring name change: why we did it, what it means, and how we came to choose the letter Q above all the other letters in the alphabet and, in fact, all the other combinations of letters that we could have possibly considered (I still think it would have been cool to change my name to Plugh Xyzzy – pronounced pl-urh zuzzie – and if you understand why it’s such a cool name then you’re as sad and geeky as me, and when you say it in your hollow voice, nothing happens anyway). My speech came across okay, I think, not helped by the fact that I’d put off writing it until the day of QParty – something which, in itself, wouldn’t have caused me any problems, if it weren’t for the fact that I had to spend the afternoon cleaning up and otherwise preparing the venue.

That’s when we opened the buffet.

Becky plus gatecrashers Sarah and Matt socialising Dan, Claire, and friends

My sister, Becky, had offered to take charge of catering and other tasks, and, with the help of one or two volunteers, had assembled a fantastic spread of foodstuffs, all carefully labelled to indicate whether or not it was “meaty” or “veggie” (curiously, these signs were later seen being worn as badges by party guests). It took a reasonable amount of time for everybody to be serviced at the buffet queue, not least because several of our friends – who are more excited by buffet food than others – had managed to get back into the queue for a second helping before other guests had even got their first portion yet! Nonetheless, there was still a little food left at the end, and not just salad and other things that everybody hates, so I think Becky and her team got the quantity of food about right.

Next up came the ceremonial cutting of the cake, or not-so-ceremonially. Hmm… I suppose it’s the symbolically ceremonially cutting of the cake. Kind-of. In any case, we brought out the cakes, my mum lit the Q-shaped sparklers thereon, and we cut them so that everybody could have a piece or two. easy).

Dan's mum lighting sparklers Dan & Claire cut the cake Alec helps with the ignition of the sparklers

Sian & Andy eat cake Cake-cutting

Finally, having done all of the complicated and stressful (but still fun!) bits of the party, Claire and I could get on with enjoying the celebration ourselves. We tried to make time to talk to and sit with everybody who came, but it was difficult to spend as long as we’d have liked talking to some of the people we see less often than we’d like, because there were so many of them. Nonetheless, the atmosphere was fantastic and the experience unforgettable. At one point, Claire and I were sat at a table with a group of people who, three years ago, wouldn’t have looked out of place all sat around a table in a pub in Aberystwyth, but have since moved elsewhere… and just for a moment, I forgot that we weren’t at some early Troma Night or sat in the Ship & Castle playing Chez Geek. Quite remarkable.

As the night wore on and the music became more recognisable a good number of us migrated to the dance floor, spending much of the evening leaping around and sweating excessively in the warmth of our suits and dresses. Another party arrived (after 10pm, the management opened the doors of the venue and turned it into a regular nightclub; although it didn’t attract much traffic anyway, being a student bar outside of termtime) in fancy dress, and somebody must have been tipping them off about the nature of our event, because several people in strange costumes came over to congratulate me and to offer to buy me drinks.

The evening wore on, and many of the guests excused themselves, but for a small group of particularly hardcore party people who stayed on with us until the very end. All in all, it was a fantastic night. Thanks again to everybody who helped to make it a success, to everybody who came, and to everybody who sent well-wishes even if they couldn’t come. There’s loads of photos up now in QParty Gallery – here are some of my favourites (with captions):

I will EAT YOUR FACE! “I will… eat your face! Ha! Didn’t see that coming, did you?”
Aww Aww.
Peter noticed that David's trousers were leaking. Peter noticed that David’s trousers were leaking.
"Fingers! Nom nom nom." “Fingers! Nom nom nom.”
Permission to be smug? “Permission to be smug, Dan?”

“Permission granted.”

Peace, brother! Peace, brother!
Mafia boys. “Boss wants ta see ya, Andy.”

“Look; I can get the money next week!
I just need a little more time, please!”

Alcohol's working! “Y’know… I shhink th’alcohol’s workeeng.”
Hokey Cokey “So, what? I put my right leg in, then my right leg out?”
Liz tells Jen exactly how big Jimmy's penis is. Liz tells Jen exactly how big Jimmy’s penis is.
Off camera (left), Beth is dancing on the other pool table. Off camera (left), Beth is dancing on the other pool table.
No way, no how! “No way, no how!”
Scotch Pete Do you remember this? This is what Pete used
to look like when he had hair!

There are loads more, of course, and so many of them are so good. Take a look in at QParty Gallery (or at the lower-quality ones on Facebook) and see for yourself.

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