Filkcon

So we've been at 2emi6reve (pronounced Semibreve), the 26th British filk convention, held as in recent years at the Ramada Hotel in Grantham, and we've had a great time. We travelled up to Ely on the Wednesday and stayed two nights with valydiarosada and her husband David in their amazing new house, had a leisurely Cosmic Trifle rehearsal on the Thursday, and did the rest of the journey on Friday in similar leisurely fashion, arriving, despite a classic Nyrond navigational error, well in time to see the whole of Friday's programme and settle in, as opposed to our usual tactic of dragging in between ten o'clock and midnight feeling like death. It all worked really well.

And on Saturday night, after the circle broke up, we had a long chat with the night manager, who had heard a rumour that we weren't going to be coming back next year. He told us how much they enjoyed having us, how polite and well-behaved we were, how the staff looked forward to our regular visits. We assured him that to the best of our knowledge it was just a rumour.

So imagine our surprise when we heard that the next filkcon is going to be in Colchester.

Now, I know (because I've heard) all the good business-sense reasons why it's not a good idea to allow these hotels to get uppity and complacent and take our business for granted. And I know that all the dwellers in London are probably fed up with having to drive over a hundred miles to get to their convention--not to mention north of Watford, which as everyone knows is a wilderness peopled by hungry ghosts where they know not the ways of civilisation. (Actually, having looked on the map, Colchester is north of Watford too, but sssh, don't tell them.) And I know that the filkcon used to move around from place to place, and that there's no earthly reason why we can't go back to that.

I also know that we've just found the perfect way to get here. That it's Jan's home turf and she feels comfortable here. That far from being complacent, the hotel staff have always been eager to find ways of improving our stay, and that this is the first year they haven't run out of bitter lemon halfway through the weekend. There have been problems, but there are problems with every hotel, and the solution to my mind is not to start again with a different one every year, but to pick one, stick with it and get it right. And I know that filkers used to gather in stairwells and get trodden on, and there's no earthly reason why we can't go back to that. (Some look back on that lost era through a rosy glow of nostalgia. I can't understand it.)

None of that matters, of course. We are but two. And we've booked for next year, so I'll have to get us to Colchester somehow. But it's a shame.

And so it goes.