zotz | This week, including Samhain.

Well, Samhain was good. I knocked off work early, and helped put the stage up in Parliament Square. This took a couple of hours, and was rather satisfying (although not as much as finding that people trusted enough that they'd happily dance on it afterwards). I slipped home to pick up some stuff and then went down to the old Bongo to get painted. It all went very quickly and we were ready in good time. The stewards were supposed to be up at the esplanade for eight, and they were. We had to pick up torches and balls behind the stage, but even so we were there by ten past - as Stu said, this is notbad for a procession leaving at nine. I left my records at the stage - although the club organiser had actually phoned me and left a message on Friday, I didn't actually get it until Wednesday. I don't check for messages often, OK?

Anyway, after some hanging around at the top (with much pissing about from jesters and red men) we moved off on time, past a much larger crowd than I'd expected. I was at the back (Amy opposite and with only Nicky and Jane behind . . . plus a nervous guy from the council) near the musicians. A couple of them were playing the pipes, and although it was mostly just a single repeating figure, I rather liked it. It wasn't like any pipe music I'd heard before, so it made a nice change.

Back at the square, the blue men got us through the crowd easily, and we took up our place on the line of the rope without losing an inch - several feet extra had been left to allow for the crowd pushing forward, but they didn't. Excellent. The performances were a mixture - summer dancers first, jesters and red men, and then the winter court arrived. The jesters were irritating at times and funny at others. The red men were . . . well, red. The summer and winter dancers danced. There was some wonderful stuff from some of the winter crew with firesticks and poi, burning an incredible icy green. We think we know what they had to soak them in to get that, and all I can say is "rather them than me".

The swordfight went on a bit, and I wasn't really convinced. Most of the crowd know even less than I do about these things, though, so they probably enjoyed it a lot. I haven't asked Nicky for an opinion, though. The Wild Hunt, when they arrived, were very impressive. I'm sure the kids in the audience were actually scared. I was very amused by hearing a woman behind me explaining to some kids during the fight that the good people and the bad people were fighting - I wonder what she told them when the "bad" people won?

Anyway. It finished, I did a runner to the club, and found that I had 45 minutes about half an hour later. No problem. I chatted to a few people and waited for everyone else to arrive. And washed most of the paint off. I think I started with Ladytron and finished with the Cult (it was a request, OK? I'd been meaning to finish with $10 Bill). I played Kerosene, but nobody danced. Ho hum.

After that I caught the end of the Orchestra del Sol's set (a lot of polkas, as I recall - not bad at all) and then heard the drummers be excellent. Astonishing, indeed. Sandy had been saying that they felt underrehearsed and a bit crap during the procession (nobody listening to them agreed, by the way) but in the club, even they had to concede that they rocked the house.

So, good club. I didn't go on to the afterparty at the quarry. You have to draw the line somewhere.

I even made work by Tuesday lunchtime, as planned.

Tuesday night was a quiet one in, I think, but Wednesday was our own little postmortem in the Holyrood (the larger general postmortem is on Sunday, I think) and then to the Hoose. Thurday was Cthulhuing at the Saunderses' place. Tonight I'm not sure about. I actually felt like I'd done some work yesterday, as I've managed to extract prices for kit from people. Surprisingly reasonable prices, too - do you know that we can get a really really good stereomicroscope for 15 grand? I still don't have definitive prices for those lightbulbs, though.

I'd also like to draw your attention to this pome by Oliver-Michael and these posts by

anonymouseth.

There's also this remarkable silly subwoofer for any of you that are interested in such things and have a medium-sized castle to put them in.