Sunday 1st AprilARCHIE MERCER:I forget whether this was the particular morning or the previous one that I first met John Greengrass. His principal claim to fame, apart from providing some excellent illustrations in Nebula, seems to be that he (like me) lives in a caravan. Something may yet comes of this. Alan Barclay's another caravan type - though he only uses it for holidays and was in fact combining the Con with a caravan meet that was being held nearby. It is now reported in New Worlds that Theodore Sturgeon, too, lives in a caravan. Ladies and Gentleman, or words to that effect, -- may I call your collective attention to Carafandom - The Thing of the Future? Thank you.
ERIC JONES: By the time I had put my specs on and had got the breakfast plate in focus I was feeling very much better after last evening's party. Wandering down the stairs to the Con hall where a jazz (?) session was in progress only made things worse so I adjourned to some undefinable place where Terry Jeeves found me and said that Arthur Thomson would like some snaps taken with me in the Bem outfit... this was- duly done with a vast crowd of passers by (not passing by) looking on. These might possibly appear in the next issue of TRIODE but there's no guarantee to this.
GEOFF WINGROVE: The Jazz session on Sunday was due to be held from 11.00 to 12.00 it the morning. I intended to get up early in order to be there in good time and help get it going, maybe. But I didn't wake up till 9.30 and had to rush round getting dressed and shaved to be down for breakfast before ten. I was last down and found the Hammetts, Rattigans, and the Kidd busily restocking. I eventually reached the con hall about 10.30 and found the jazz-sesh in full swing. Most fen were gathered round Ken Slater's book-laden stall when I arrived and there were a few on the stage around Archie's record player. All went well until noon when the rest of the con crowd (including the committee) who had merely poked their noses into the hall during the past hour and quickly withdrawn them, decided they would have a bit of the programme; and they quickly swept the record player and us off the stage and settled down to a nice howly debating session. Mike Wallace and I went to lunch. We got back to the con hall just as everyone else was leaving for lunch - although one or two other fen had also had lunch at the same time as us. So Mike and I started Jazz session #4 which terminated at 2.30 because the con committee (again) wanted to stage yet another part of the programme. In fairness it was the discussion on the '57 Worldcon. ERIC JONES: Things just went quietly along until after lunch when the discussion began on The 1957 International Convention. On the Platform, for the discussion was Dave Kyle (from America and President of the '56 Worldcon in New York), Ted Carnell who is Chairman of the '57 Convention, Jan Jansen, Pam Bulmer, Joy Clarke, Bobbie Wild. A full report of this discussion was taken down in shorthand and will be issued to all attendees at a later date.
GEOFF WINGROVE: John Greengrass had brought forward the suggestion that the con be held in a holiday camp, which suggestion after discussion was turned down. In the end, London or somewhere just outside was decided on as the location. The period was decided for us by Dave Kyle. Easter, he said, was fine for UK fen, but it was too soon after the Summer holiday for Amerifen to think of spending out more money. They would prefer to make their visit to the UK a holiday and combine the con with it. Thus August/September would be a better period. Roughly seventy five American fen would be willing to make the journey and a special plane could be chartered to bring them over at about $115 per head (about £38) - which is very cheap even for the one way journey. So in all it looks as though London has a pretty good chance of being elected for next year's Worldcon. ERIC JONES: Apparently some small difficulty has arisen re finding a suitable Hotel in London, but investigations are still proceeding. The main Committee is based in London and is comprised of London fen. I cannot quote names here off-hand as I did not take any notes. and there are also provincial members of the Committee of which I (Eric) am one. Doubtless further (much more reliable) reports will follow in due course about this discussion. GEOFF WINGROVE: This brought us round to 4.00 when it was decided to have the tea break. I teamed up with Pete Taylor, Mike and several others and went round to the London Grill and we found they didn't dish up such bad stuff after all. The waitress - a nice young foreign thing - brought round plates of bread and butter and egg and chips. Three tables were pushed together and we had tea with the GESTALTers and Brian Burgess. Archie and Ron (Bennett) (I think) drifted to gulp three sandwiches and remind me the OMPA meeting was at six o'clock. 'Twas then ten to six. I hurried through my egg and chips when it arrived and hastily left at ten past six.
I arrived back in the Residents Lounge to find no-one there and most of the OMPAns in the basket lounge awaiting their tea. Joy pleaded with us not to order any as it had taken her fifty minutes to get hers. The meeting eventually started at 7 p.m. We were in the con hall holding (yes) jazz sesh #5. ARCHIE MERCER: The OMPA meeting finally got under way with a lively discussion that could easily have gone on for another hour or two. John Greengrass was supposed to be keeping the others entertained in our absence, but I still haven't a clue as to what he did. Which isn't surprising really - some of the time, I haven't even much of a clue as to what I did, let alone other people.
The official part of the Con was eventually wound up with more auctions. I think I'm correct in saying that the last item to be auctioned was my toy trombone. By now, the former shiny gold mouthpiece had turned a bright crimson. At first I thought this was somebody's lipstick from the night before but after I'd failed altogether to wash it off I discovered that it was the gold paint that had come off, to reveal the red plastic underneath. I was glad to get rid of the swine, because I needed the space it took up in my luggage. Bruce Kidd bought it; I wish him the best of luck with it.
All that remained was the night. And as the saying says, what a night it was. First of all, I got into a discussion with some local Kettering types who turned out to be enthusiastic diggers of traditional jazz. This was a mistake, because after they'd ferreted out the info that I had both gramophone and records on the promises, they insisted in coming up to my room to hear some of them. Daphne Buckmaster came too, to provide the glamour and for an hour or more the glorious music thundered out of the loudspeaker. By the time. I managed to evict the locals, several of the younger set - I forget precisely who - had also infiltrated to add to the chaos. However, it still lacked midnight and I saw the Buckmasters happily reunited in Dave Newman's annual room party, a good time before the drinks ran out. That was quite a party, as tradition demands. Every available inch of bed-space, floor-space, or washbasin-space seemed to be occupied by somebody, as often as not by two bodies simultaneously. I finished up in the corner beyond the wardrobe, talking to Bobbie Wild. It's wonderful the fantastic subjects that one finds oneself talking about in cases like that - and by no means what one might think , either. I found Bobbie a fascinating person. Any other femme-fans who want to test my reactions to serious and constructive conversation during a room-party at a Con will be welcomed with open arms. When the drinks ran out, people began to drift away. As one of the last three, I was detailed by Dave to help carry a tape-recorder to another room - the Shorrocks' I think, though I wouldn't swear to it. We arrived to find them all locked in, and the key missing, so I climbed in through the window to find all the men (except for traitor Mike Wallace) stripped to the waist. Peter Hamilton was there with his gramophone, playing his own personal record collection which seemed to consist mainly of the "Bluebell Polka" - you couldn't hear it from a distance of more than two feet, anyway. The room seemed full of MacKays. It seems that about half the Liverpool group are called MacKay, and most of these are of the female persuasion. I only wish fandom had more families like them.
Why I left there, I'm not quite sure. It was probably another mass-emigration movement, which brought me to the room where Dan Morgan was playing John Brunner's guitar into a tape, with full vocal chorus. So I fetched my concertina and dripped down on the bed next to Bobbie again. If anybody wonders at the intermittent drone bass on that tape, it's me. Intermittent only, because I was simultaneously trying to carry on my previous conversation. But eventually THAT room party broke up too and reassembled somewhat altered in the bar-lounge downstairs. ELLIS MILLS: Sunday evening the manager of the Royal received the biggest shock of the convention. He opened the door of the Residents lounge about 01.30 (alright so it was Monday morning) and was so astounded he could only go "Tch Tch!". There we were discussing of all the unlikely things, SF and fandom. I am not stretching the story a bit when I say there was positively no liquid of any type in evidence and the only items relative to the consumption of any beverage were two tea trays. It is no wonder the manager was nonplussed, looking back I find it shocking myself. We had been in Room 10 at the George until about 11.30 when the congestion became too great for us and we retired to the Royal. Present at this a-typical fan gathering were WAW, LeeH and Larry, Mal and Sheila, HK and Pam Bulmer, J Jansen and self. We gave up about 02.30. I return you now to our reporter from the George, Eric Jones... ERIC JONES: Dave Newman did the ritual shaving... this time instead of half his mustache he shaved half of his face (which was liberally covered with a few week's growth). He shaved the wrong side of his face as the beard came out on the shaded side when they took the picture, (and so on). Entertainment was provided by Ina Shorrock and Shirley Marriott who danced a hula (complete with grass skirts) on Dave's bed.....
I then adjourned to room 12a where a tape was made up of sundry drunken fen singing, telling tall stories, all to the accompaniment of Dan Morgan with John Brunner's guitar. ARCHIE MERCER: It was now that the music really broke loose, with an impromptu skiffle-session that lasted until dawn. John had reclaimed his guitar and was busily chiding it for all he was worth, while I tried to follow on the concertina where I could and on Ina's washboard where I couldn't. At other times, Shirley tried to scrub the washboard - she sat next to me, so I can truthfully say that I've spent a night with her. Phil Duerr, an ex-London Circleite I can remember from my White Horse days, and who has now returned to the fold, has developed an admirable taste in folk-music, and he and Pete Taylor made a fine vocal team. Other people, unfortunately, had differing ideas concerning such matters as tempo, or even the number of beats to a bar, so the session tended at times to be rather a shambles.
Come the dawn - and with it the project of serenading fen whilst they slept. So for the next hour or so we stomped round the corridors giving impromptu performances outside people's rooms. This was not appreciated. Then the party broke up - I think half of them were strictly "Royal" types anyway and had wanted to return to their official stamping ground for a spell. I remained in the bar-lounge with one or two others seeing the new day in. During the next hour or so quite a few characters drifted in and out, like me determined to See It Through to the bitter and. The Rat(t)igans, Jim and Dorothy, a delightful couple with the utterly fannish habit of allocating three "t's" among their two surnames to the general bewilderment; Alan Burns, the only fan I've ever known to flash a formal visiting card. With him I discussed Bushy Hedge and kindred topics; Bill Green, the world's nicest night porter -- Then the day staff began to put in an appearance as well, and I adjourned for a bath and breakfast. I needed both.
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