An Accident In Space And Time

It was a busy summer, and here we are closing in on Yule already! I don’t know where the year has gone; it’s as though I blinked and missed it!

But the summer was wild, and fun, and beautiful, and very much in the spirit of Sir Terry Pratchett (GNU, good sir, and may your ripples never fade).

Discworld:

The absolute highlight of the year, for me, was the biannual Discworld Convention. The hotel was terrible (it always has been, but just as we think it can’t get worse it outdoes itself) and we all suffered from lack of air conditioning – and yet it didn’t once detract from the pure joy of celebrating Sir Terry, or meeting up with old friends who I don’t see in between conventions due to distance (so many of my best friends these days live in or near my home town! I’ve never regretted moving away and I never will, but I can’t help but wonder how different my life would have been, had I only known these amazing human beings when I still lived there). And new friends, of course, because there’s always somebody new at the convention who needs “adopting”.

At the previous convention I had decided – last minute – to actually costume up. For me that had been an incredibly brave move, as I’m shyer than a shy thing and normally prefer to blend into the background – but when you know you’re among friends and safe people it’s a different kettle of fish entirely. Lady Webz went down a storm in 2022, and so I’ve spent the past two years planning to cosplay actual characters (Tiffany Aching, Mrs Gogol and an Igorina). Because I can’t see without my glasses a friend volunteered herself to do my costume makeup for me (I wear contact lenses now, so I can do my own – but in August I was still purposely hiding behind big frames).

And lo; Mrs Erzulie Gogol went to DWCon – and had a fabulous time!

Don’t worry: Discworld fans don’t mock people and none of us played with this stand while any JWs were in the hotel. The few that we did meet were fascinated rather than horrified, and we were happy to answer any questions they had. We also met people from a quilting convention, who were interested enough to ask which books they ought to start with.

“The Turtle Moves.“

I don’t know quite what was different about this convention. I’ve been going to DWCon for 15 years and all of them have been good – but for some reason this particular convention held some sort of magic. Not only for me, but for most of my friends as well, apparently. All of us felt it: there was a lightness; something intangible, but beautiful. Perhaps the spirit of Sir Terry walked amongst us – who knows? Certainly, it felt as if he did.

I think that this beautiful little ballad by our friend Sebastian “The Hobbit” Barwinek, which he performed at the closing ceremony, sums up the mood of the 2024 Discworld Convention better than I ever could. There was love everywhere at this convention, and the song left not a dry eye in the house:

None of us really wanted to leave at the end of the convention, I don’t think. But all of us are already making plans for 2026, and I’m going to improve on my costumes and perhaps bring in some new ones. For now, we’ve had to say farewell to The Chalk – but here’s a hat full of Feegles for you, courtesy of my friend Danielle – who knitted all six for me while she was on the plane to the UK because she’s awesome like that.

Samhain

Here we come to Samhain; the Pagan new year – and still the time that we all get together and celebrate whilst remembering our loved ones. It’s a beautiful way to bring in autumn, whether you believe in a veil separating us from those who have gone before or not.

I’ve lived here for 17 years and never attended the street party further down the estate – and this year I decided to change that. I brought out Mrs Gogol again… but with something new:

They look great, don’t they? Just one small problem: both of my eyes are astigmatic and you can’t get toric costume lenses beyond changing your natural eye colour somewhat. And so these floated everywhere and I couldn’t see a thing! And yes, that is why the makeup is somewhat slapdash (I was also incredibly hot in the costume and beneath Mrs Gogol’s wig, so by the time we got home and my husband took this photograph most of it had actually melted).

With that said, everybody I happened to meet told me I looked great (as did a fair few of the adults, to be honest: it’s so wonderful when adults let their inner Weird Child out) and the kids weren’t shy in approaching the lady with the big cauldron full of sweets! I chatted briefly with a Dementor while Iron Man divested me of popping candy chocolate eyeballs when he thought I wasn’t looking; I met “Mad Witch Mary”, who had run out of blood cake and snot cake, and I handed out my home-made soul cakes to anybody who wanted them (apparently I can come again lol).

Just before bed, and once I’d got the offending lenses out of my eyes and the makeup off my face, I placed half a soul cake and a lantern in the garden for any departed family who wanted to come by. The field mice ate it the following night, after I’d broken it up into little bits for them. With the hedgehogs in hibernation somewhere, it’s nice to see that we still have some wildlife out in the garden of an evening besides the dunnocks, collared doves, and the dopey but adorable wood pigeons.

Steampunking

It’s not all been about Discworld and swamp witches. This year I have also been steampunking locally! There’s an event at the Museum of Power in Maldon every year, but last year I had to miss it. This year I decided that, not only was I going, but I was going to costume up for it. It’s only a very small event, and so it’s one that my anxiety and I can just about handle.

I absolutely wasn’t going to take part in the costume competition – but all of a sudden that’s what I was doing (I wasn’t going to take part in the tea duelling either, but where there’s tea there tends to be me). I did not plan this; I had to invent a story about myself completely on the fly. Who on earth could I introduce this smartly-dressed, slightly breathless redhead as??

And then it came to me: for several minutes I became Madeleine “Max” Maxwell of St Mary’s, and I had been tasked to bumble around time in search of a missing colleague – on the proviso that there would be gin and cake at the end of it (thank you, Jodi Taylor, for those wonderful books). I didn’t win and I didn’t expect to; I was just there to have fun. I did, however, meet new people – and I have some new friends who meet up regularly now! I’ve yet to get to any of the meetings, but hopefully I’ll be able to do that once I’ve had my minor surgery in December.

Yes, more surgery. Because, apparently, a hysterectomy wasn’t enough!

I think that brings me reasonably up to date. I lead a very quiet and stay-at-home life because my disabilities and my chronic illnesses mean that I have no choice, but now and then I have the energy and the wherewithall to take part in things and enjoy them. I need at least a week to recover afterwards, but I’ll take those good days where I can because life is for living.

Let’s see what Yule, and then the new year, brings for Tribble Towers.