Electric Quaker II

Qparty: Afterword.

OK, so I didn’t post about Cropredy. I know I should’ve, I just failed to get round to it, somehow.

And, yeah, I didn’t post about Edinburgh, either, and I really should’ve said something, even if it was only “Hoorah!” (although we didn’t see Brian and Krystal this year), but by the time I got back I owed about eight hours of flexitime, so I never got round to it.

Still, I might yet manage it; I’ve got pages and pages of very cramped diary entries for both of ’em, so in the event that I find free time, and nothing else to distract me, I’ll bung something up, and post-date it to annoy and confuse people.

Meanwhile, got back from Preston this afternoon, dropped the suit back at Moss (very aggravated that they didn’t check it was all there; I could’ve filched that waistcoat which, though not the fanciest I’ve known, was still pretty damn nice!)

I’m really glad we didn’t leave ’till this morning, it gave me some time to wind down after the whole thing – for those of you who didn’t see Roper Hall as it was at the time we got there, I’ve got a few “before” shots as well as later ones from the party, and Dan‘s given me sufficient access to the Qparty gallery that I’ll be able to upload some (also, I guess, since he and Claire are off on Qmoon, at the moment, he won’t object if other people send me their photos, too, and I can chuck some of them up as well.

But, yeah, once I’m home and have uploaded those you’ll be able to see why I swung merrily out of retirement (for the few of you who don’t know, I used to cleaner at the Union building in Aber, and then the County Hall on the seafront, and some crazy offices in Portland street) and grabbed a broom and started scrubbing things up, along with pretty much everyone else who was there (except the staff, who spent some time standing round and offering to hire me, and not knowing where stuff was – at one point I asked for a few J-cloths, or something, with which to clean the bar, and the poked ’round in the storeroom for about ten minutes, before I got bored and started opening up their boxes of supplies and found some).

It was, in a crazy slightly worrying way, really good fun to be desperately trying to get things ready against a fixed deadline, especially with all the usual suspects equally rushed and efficient. It must be a September thing…

And, as everyone’s been saying already, the party was fantastic (and, yeah, some of the speeches made me cry, as did some of the clip-frame contributions. Happy tears, though, so it’s all OK!)

Glad I left when I did, though, I don’t really like nightclubs full of random crazies. Also, a big cheer to the huge number of people who turned up for LASER Quest bowling; that was great fun, so many thanks for coming and contributing, even if you weren’t bowling yourselves.

Great to see everyone again, even though travel is exhausting, and even though I think I’ve done something horrible to my back (because moving or staying still hurts) it’s been a great weekend, and thank-you all for being there and being ace.

And, of course, extra thanks and congratulations to Dan and Claire, who are both wonderful people, and to whom I’m not ashamed to say I felt really, honestly, proud of the pair of you, and thank-you for an amazing party, and the chance to see everyone again.

Anyway, some of us have got Green Dragons to catch up with, so I guess I’ll see you around.

Have fun!