Twll-Ddu 5

Yet another instalment of the memoirs of DAVE LANGFORD -- of little fame and 22 Northumberland Ave, Reading, Berks, RG2 7PW, UK. -- Previous episodes are now being filmed by Hammer, under the titles I WAS A TEENAGE UNDERGRADUATE! and I MARRIED A WOMAN! /November '76/

[Novacon 6 report]

Take a sheet of graph paper. (Carefully: the store detective may be watching.) Place a dot in the middle to represent Mancon. Tear the graph up and throw it away.

The dots for Skycon (in ink) and Channelcon (faint pencil) go on another page. Keep the rubber handy.

On your third sheet, draw horizontal and vertical axes, and put in two dots: Seacon and Tynecon. Draw a line between them. Somewhere not actually on this line is the position of Novacon 6, This doesn't mean a lot, since we haven't labelled the axes -- but you get the idea. Or perhaps not.

Novacon was like that.

Oh Astral Leauge, oh Astral Leauge,
Oh Leauge it is of thee
I sing this song of Astral Praise
And Cosmic Harmonee.

Driving up on Friday, I was lulled by the comforting sounds of the slipping clutch, the loose silencer and the death-throes of Martin's stomach as it writhed in the grip of post-Tun pre-Con depression.

I thought about writing a con report.

Interesting things had already happened at the Tun: Chris Priest coming out with deathless lines like "Harlan is the only person in the world who wears two pairs of elevator shoes -- one for his feet and one for his mouth", while Tom Perry tweaked my nose and Simone Walsh denied having just said "I almost hope Skycon wins the bid so I won't have to organise a con!". Moreover, I had just been chosen by D. West for the Astral Leauge; fumbling with the pin of my Leauge badge, I noticed a runic message on the back. It translated as Hope you stick it in yourself. Lots of interesting material, yes, but ahead lay the struggle with the cruel forces of Channelcon.

"Are we now to see real bids for the next few years," suggested Joseph Nicholas, "with battles in the corridors between rival members of the committees, with poison-tipped flyers for the cons wafting into fans' bedrooms as per the darts in Frank Herbert's Dune? Will there be armed guards to protect the sanctity of committee-members' persons against the wanton assaults by crazed death commandos inveigled into their suicidal attacks by the promise of free drinks should the rival bids succeed? Will each member of each committee have a personal food-taster to protect him/her against sneak poison attacks ...?

"Heathrow versus Brighton!" he continued. "There will be bloodshed] Murder! Mayhem! Violence! Stupendous courage, foolhardy heroism! An epic to rival even Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Bits Of Stone Hewed Out Of The Side Of A Mountain By Unnatural Forces Prom A UFO Parked On The Dark Side Of The Moon!!!

"And now we all know what to expect," he concluded, "we can all sod off to the con bar and leave them to get on with it."

This could be serious: the idea of a conrep was cast aside like a used copy of Fanzine Fanatique, as '78 politics displaced all else. This was the time of trial. This was the hour which would separate the smeerp from the thoats!

Almost immediately, I woke up on Monday morning with a fistful of beer-stained scribblings. Don't blame me, blame the autopilot....

We arrived early. Pillaging the Peyton stocks as fast as they were unpacked, I spied a familiar-looking ****** labelled Jean Frost ... not until I noted her Easthope-shaped consort did it occur to me that this was the former Mrs Staves, subject of Astounding Revelations in TWLL-DDU 4. Kev Easthope offered his comments upon said revelations: "You're a bloody liar!" he shouted monotonously, alternating this with "You've got a bloody eidetic memory!". I was hurt, since with immense tact I had merely hinted at the happenings within Kev's car, and entirely omitted the final tableau of the day, in which Dave Staves, holding open the car door, said with painful clarity "That's my wife you're doing that with."

A disconsolate Dave later gave me his new address; Jean gave me hers, but it was torn up by Hazel, who does not wish me to associate with such ******s... The subsequent Kev-Dave punch-up was futile in the extreme, being quelled almost at once by a horde of waiters; Rog Peyton then took firm hold of the situation and of Dave Staves, who was not seen again. Poor guy.

The Astral Leauge shall overcome,
False BoaKs and foes shall flee,
And Astral Peace shall rule us all,
And Cosmic Harmonee.

But where -- you ask -- does the Astral Leauge come into all this? Only D. West knows for sure. I failed to recognise him on Friday, for he seemed taller, less glazed and possessed of more hair than the West of last Easter. With something very like affability D. told me what a twit I had seemed at Mancon. Soon, producing an empty glass, he uttered a Leauge invocations "Give! Give!". Hypnotised, everyone in range fumbled for shillings. Joseph, under suspicion of having donated tuppence only, was severely questioned by D.... Presently the Master had enough for a drink, and the transformation began. In the course of an hour his eyes became glassy, his hairline receded and he began to lean.

It was uncanny. No ordinary man can safely lean at such strange, unEuclidean angles. ("I can," said Ian Williams. "I have a low centre of gravity.") One current theory is that West's spiral oesophagus sets his beer spinning as it slithers down; the whirling fluids within act as a sort of gyroscope. This makes him one with the gods and gives him the fabled ability to pee with circular polarisation.

(Dave "I was a Worldcon BNF" Rowe. learnt without enthusiasm that according to Kev Smith, he is another messiah of the League*: the Revealer Of Wisdom Entire. D. says that this is fallacious.)

Turning to less cosmic matters, I discovered David Lewis -- Suffolk's answer to Mike Glicksohn -- the man whom Tom Jones refuses to admit is editing the next BSFA yearbook and thus leaving Alan and Elke Stewart free to devote all their time to postponing TTCCH. With him and Ray Harrison (Daventry's answer to David Lewis) we sought out the Oxford room party, wad found Real Scrumpy. I smelt; I tasted. The way it swirled in the glass somehow suggested circular polarisation. Your editor opted instead for some Chateau Pis-de-Chat wine, and talked himself into a stupor while staring blankly at the floorshow of Andrew Stephenson and Liese.

Saturday morning. Throughout Tom Shippey's talk, the lobes of his Gosseyn-like extra brain throbbed visibly as the tide of erudition poured forth. Then, attempting to regain his image as a secret master of authoritativeness, Peter Nicholls told the world that Dr Rhine of parapsychic fame is a doctor of botany. I crept away for a super-cheap meal (bread and cheese in my room) and ingeniously missed the GoH speech of which Tom Shippey later said, "Dave Kyle caused my testicles to retract in horror!" The horror was induced by a red-blooded-all-American stand against New Waves and that sort of thing:

"The Beat Generation and Mainstream Fiction are evil! Moral SF is good and immoral SF is bad! Anyone who disagrees isn't a member of the human race! Adolf Hitler spoilt a good idea by taking it to extremes! Stamp it out! Tolerance and mercy are not virtues! This new SF seduces you into wallowing in mud!"

The rabble failed to be roused.

BBC men drenched the bar and con-hall in blinding light, in order to get the goods on John Brunner; the thread of his talk was broken as sunstroke cases thudded rhythmically to the ground. We drank more grossly overpriced beer (for cooling purposes alone) and asked Fred Hemmings why he wasn't the Channelcon bid treasurer any more. He didn't know. But throughout the weekend the dread con-politics seemed remote: never a hint of massacre on Joseph's bloodthirsty scale -- some mealy-mouthed canvassing was all. And John and Eve Harvey are nice people, it's not their fault that their bid isn't as good as Sky-con or that all these riff-raff have fastened onto them -- oops. Talk about something else quickly, Langford.

After a fine banquet, strange things continued to happen. D. West offered Hazel a snail. Tom Shippey refereed a game in which one has to name a book which everyone but you has read....

Kevin Smith: "The Hobbit."

Tom: "Good grief."

Others: "I've read that --" "So have I --" "We all have --"

Tom and Others to Kev, very loudly: "BOOOOOOOOOO!"

Not a game for weak hearts. And then, of course ...

THE CHARNOX ARE HAVING A ROOM PARTY ... SEE PAT CHARNOCK BATTLE 100 FEROCIOUS SHREWS CLAD ONLY IN CAMI-KNICKERS! SEE PETER ROBERTS DO AMAZING THINGS WITH A GLASS OF GUINNESS WHILE OTHER RATS DIVE FROM A GREAT HEIGHT INTO SEVERAL GLASSES OF BACARDI AND COKE! HEAR THE WILD JUNGLE RHYTHMS OF VERA JOHNSON WAFTING THROUGH THE VENTILATOR SHAFTS! CHEST-HAIR EXTRACTION UNDERTAKEN T0 ORDER BY THE FABULOUS D. WEST! SEE THE RITUAL CASTRATION OF AN ENTIRE BBC CAMERA CREW!

The strangest thing was the pigeon, Graham said it had been sitting on the windowsill all day; it would not move. Greg opened the window viciously, hoping to knock it off, but it ducked and sat there ruffling its feathers, gazing into the night. I think the Charnox smeared glue on the ledge in order to trap them a conversation piece; either that, or they gave it one of those cigarettes.

Leroy sat in a corner, immobilised by a rush of wit to the forebrain. "Tell us some cocktails, Rog!" he said to Mr Peyton. (Applause.) "I don't care about bloody conventions," he said after a little. "John Steward supports Skycon?" he said? "Rubbish! I can put pressure on him." Pressure was promptly put on Leroy, by Greg, who sat on him while we explained to Eve Harvey that she couldn't be a trufan without a breath of scandal. She looked at Greg and decided the price was too nigh. "Someone," quipped Leroy, "is annoyed about your quoting him on the Nova Award." "Who?" I said in bafflement. "Can't tell you now." I was stricken, but Leroy's conversational powers did not fail him. "Hey," he cried, "John Wyndham died quite recently!" Then he argued awhile with Liese and announced "She's a woman who knows her own mind, just like me." He paused. "When she can find it." How long could he keep this up? We never found out; Peter Roberts pulled fannish rank and took Leroy's chair, and in burst the Astral Leauge Male Voice Choir, and they sang --

When Dinosaurs did rule the earth
The Leauge was yet to be,
And now we stretch from Pole to Pole
In Cosmic Harmonee.

At 6am on Sunday morning, I decided against finishing my latest glass of rum, and went to bed. Hazel poured the drink away before I woke up, because she didn't like the smell. Thriftless woman.

The Authors' Panel effectively destroyed that hoary myth, the Sense of Wonder.

"A sense of wonder," said Chris Priest, "is the hobgoblin of little minds."

"Sense of wonder is the last refuge of the incompetent," agreed Andrew Stephenson.

Something beautiful had gone out of my life forever. I struck out at the cruel world and photographed Tom Perry, who immediately revenged himself by reviving OMPA. Following this, I pointedly did not photograph Jake Grigg; his vengeance was wreaked upon Rog Peyton, who found himself unable to auction Grigg SubPrimitive Art as fast as Jake could draw it.

In the course of flogging some arty T-shirts, Rog pulled one over his muscular gut: "It'll fit anyone now," he grunted, half-suffocated, as he peeled it off. A voice cried "Sell it to Tent-con!" Rog glowered, a thing he does rather well.

The N*O*V*A A*W*A*R*D was given to Maya, amid tumultous yawns of surprise. Rob tottered proudly awry, secure in the knowledge that his fanzine had utterly defeated the Trekkiezine Alnitah, and the Cambridge group's newsletter, and TWLL-DDU. (All other nominees had, said hearsay, been withdrawn.) "It was very boring of Maya to win the Nova," said Kev Smith afterwards: true, but Rob did deserve it.Then Malcolm Edwards came shaking a beermug of cash. No-one, he said, could fail to contribute to the BEST Award!

"The best what?" said Kev.

"The BEST!" Leroy told him. "It's for the BEST! You can't say fairer than that!"

They shambled away.

D. West appeared a few minutes later, jingling the money in his capacious pockets.

"Glad I only put in a penny," I said a little too audibly,

He leaned in several directions before internal gyroscopy brought one pale eye to bear on me. From a range of two inches he gritted through clenched nostrils:

"You tight-fisted sod."

From Star to Star the Astral Leauge
Is there for all to see --
Galactic Empires live in peace
And Cosmic Harmonee!

Harry Bell summed it up. "D. West," he said, "is Different." In silent agreement I fled to Reading, which seemed a good place for a nervous breakdown....

end conrep: fade out & in: start credits:

• A Good Novacon by Stan Eling and Others
• Hymn of the Astral Leauge by (I suppose) D. West
• Joseph Nicholas on Con Rivalries by
• Joseph Nicholas Dave Kyle's Speech Paraphrase by Tom Shippey
• Charnox Room Party Invitation by with & from the Charnox (thanks)
• An Anthology of Witty Sayings by Leroy Kettle
• Apology for TD4 omitted by request of Gray Boak (sorryallasame) No Mention For Some Strange Reason of
• David Bridges & many others Picking-Up of Unconsidered Trifles by Me Nasty Scandalous Bits by Not Me At All

Final Message from D. WEST (yet another runic inscription, translation credit to the ever-lovely HAZEL):

"May Langford's Camera Go Blind."

Oh. Well.... If you were offended when I photographed you at Novacon, I apologise profusely: the negatives will be returned to you on the usual terms.

In the words of L. Ron Hubbard: SEND AN ENGRAM -- QUICKER THAN THE TELEPHONE!!!

* a misprint, of course.