Wadfest 2008 - A blog written by Angua and Ratdeath

Thursday, 28th August 2008 (Ratty's POV)
6.45am German time (GT)
I was woken up. For a change I was actually wide awake the moment I opened my eyes (at least compared to usually), so getting dressed took hardly any time at all.
7.00am GT
We (Sp and I and the rest of the family) were waiting for AltogetherAndrews to turn up for breakfast. As it turned out later, he had set his alarm clock to two hours too late....
8.00am and a bit, still GT
We set off to the airport to catch our plane to Birmingham.
10.25am GT
That was when our plane was supposed to set off. Which, of course, it didn't. They never do.
11ish am English time
We landed in Birmingham, got our baggage and a Subway for lunch (why don't British people know what capsicum is?????).
12.00pm ET
Ponder txted to ask if we knew when Mr Scrub was planning to come to Bradford or if we had his number. We knew neither.
12.30pm
We got our car and off we were to Bradford to meet the others. The drive was exciting in a boring kind of way (which, admittedly, doesn't make much sense). But SP had never driven a car in England before, so that was quite exciting, and of course I kept annoying the others by reading out loud what the SatNav (Doris) said about how much longer we have to drive every quarter an hour or so (the intervals shrank to some 2 minutes towards the end of the trip).
2.59pm
We arrived at Ponder's place and I finally (after 10 months and 13 days) got to meet my wife . Whooooot!!!

Thursday (Ang's POV)
I woke up on the Thursday morning after little sleep and jumped out of bed, falling over my bag and nearly landing on the floor in a heap. As you can probably tell I was excited to finally be able to meet all the thud gang that I have got to know over the past year on thud, if I’m being honest I was a tad nervous too. Since Sp, Andy, Ratty and Mr Scrub weren’t arriving until around 3 onwards I had a few hours to spare, which seemed to last an eternity. Also if you stare at the clock for a long time you can’t make time speed up which I for one am gutted about. Finally after a few hours of staring at the clock and trying to stay still the doorbell rang, and I literally could have jumped up done a lap of the living room, then Sp, Ratty and Andy walked though the door…

Thursday after 3pm
After hugs and greetings, we all crammed into the living room, and had a cuppa. Everyone talked and caught up, having a good time, but we didn’t know what time Scrubby was going to arrive, so after looking for his number everywhere and being unsuccessful, he texted Ponder at about the exact time we were going to stop looking saying he would be about
an hour, (I’m sure his senses told him we were trying to find him!!). The 6 of us headed for Bombay Store, when we got back to the house, scrubby arrived around 15mins later, after hugs and greetings we all headed off to Tesco, which was probably the most entertaining shopping trip ever!
We arrived back home with several bags of shopping and quite a few cookies! Sp, Lina, Ponder and Andy made supper which was very nice I must say J after we had cleared up, we got the cards out and drink, and played a few games of cards, which was very fun and entertaining with some very comments coming out like:
"If you divide the number of toes in this room by the number of legs, how many toes pe
r leg do you get?"
And
"Scrubby's pump sounds like two elephants mating"
"It's 1 in the night and I'm still a N"
After much food and some alcohol we decided
at around 3.30 we should probably get some sleep, we said our goodnights and headed off to bed.

Friday, 29th August 2008
We got up 10ish. After some breakfast, showers, packing the stuff etc. the first car with Scrubby, Angua and Ratty set off to Wadfest at around half past 1. The other car with Mc, Andy, Sp and Ponder was to follow once Ponder had finished his exam.
Despite Car 2 having the SatNav, both cars got lost on the way (not badly, but still). Car 1 left the A1 onto the wrong A57 towards Sheffield instead of Lincoln and only noticed some 15 miles before Sheffield. Halfway back to the A1 the plastic covering of the wheelhouse came off, giving everybody in the car a bit of a scare. After collecting the pieces from the street and deciding that they were not vital we continued and, while not in one piece, made it to Wadfest some time between 3 and 3.30pm, where the 3 of us set up three tents....
Not too long after we finished setting everything up, Car 2 arrived at around 6ish. Not long after that, SANEAlex arrived too, bringing a tent for Andy, which we set up immediately. Also, we decided, that we needed a Thud flag. Luckily Sp had a spare white rag, which was just the right size and Ang found a black marker in her handbag. So we made a flag and attached it to Scrubby's tent.
After dinner, Scrubby and Andy changed their minds and decided that they, too, would wear dresses for the cocktail party that night, if there were any left that fitted them. There were and so all of the Thudders were dressed up as the opposite gender, causing quite a bit confusion about whether Ang and I were wife and wife or husband and husband (or even hife or wusband ).
The cocktail party was a lot of fun and we got to talk to lots of new people and made new friends.
The night then ended late with all 8 Thudders seated in the middle of the small group of tents under the Thud flag.

Saturday, 30th August 2008
We slept surprisingly long and finished breakfast just in time to go to the tent with the merchandise only shortly after it opened. Ang, Ponder (for bwoohaha) and Andy each bought a beathty and Andy got a Blue Blood one!
Sp, Andy and Ratty dressed up as Omnian priests and walked around giving out little turtle necklaces.
At 1pm everybody played Dodgeball, which was a lot of fun for everybody except Ratty's nose which got hit by a ball thrown by Scrubby. After Dodgeball it was time for Smack the Pingu. It turned out that Scrubby, while being very talented when it comes to hit Ratty with balls, chocolate etc, can't hit penguins...
We spent most of the afternoon first making a mask for Scrubby, putting the Thud flag on a proper flagpole and then playing Frisbee with an absolutely unpredictable plastic plate. At 6 we went to the winner's reveal for the murder mystery, masquerade, haggis hunt and stuff. Without knowing it, Sp, Andy and Ratty had taken part in the masquerade and actually won!!!!!!
In the evening there was the masked ball, which was awesome too, and all the masks were so pretty!

Sunday, 31th August 2008
We woke early Sunday morning to fog covering the site. We had breakfast which consisted for most of us of a bacon or egg sandwich, which was very nice!
We went to watch the luggage wars, which was very entertaining to watch, they looked awesome and it’s funny to see this walking luggage walk into a hedge. After watching the luggage wars we headed back to the tents to pack up most of the tents leaving just Scrubby’s and Andy’s. There was an auction at 12am which Sp, Ponder, Andy, Mc and Ratty went to, but Angua and Mr Scrub stayed behind to play a game of Thud! Sp had made a mug for the auction, which was sold for £41, more than twice as much as she hoped for! After the auction Mr Scrub and Angua joined the rest to see the goodbye speech, after this had finished we all headed back to the tents to lower the Thud Flag, which was sad in the fact that we would be leaving soon, but also good in that it signified that we have had such a good weekend. We packed the remaining tents away with the help of SANEAlex and put everything into the cars. Finally the time had come to leave Wadfest. We said goodbye to SANEAlex and separated into the two cars and headed back to Bradford.
After arriving safely at Bradford we settled into the living room and got some pizza and chips. After this we watched Bill Bailey but afterwards we decided as we had had little sleep through the weekend we decided to get an early night around 10.30-11ish.

Monday, 1st September 2008
We had to get up early on Monday because Sp, Andy and Ratty needed to return their car in Birmingham at 11.30am. After a quick breakfast, it was time for very sad goodbyes before Scrubby followed in his car the Sp, Andy and Ratty to the motorway and then headed home himself, while the other three went back to Birmingham where they would spend the night and then catch the plane back to Germany the next morning.

All in all, I, Ratty, have to say that it was a most awesome weekend, if not the best weekend ever (so far ). We had a lot of silly fun, met nice people and generally had a good time in a way that you probably only really can when a lot of mad people meet. Hoping to meet you all (and more) again at Hogswatch and maybe Wadfest next year! May Om be with you! (and remember, the turtle squeaks (if that does not make sense to you... what can i say, you had to be there ))

Ang: "I had the best weekend, I met some great people, got to meet my wife and the rest of the thud group, after everyone had left Monday and I could reflect upon the weekend and I don’t think I had met any group of people so nice and welcoming so I would just like to thank people for making my first event fun and it will defiantly not be my last."

A lot of Ratty's pictures can be found here: http://s249.photobucket.com/albums/gg208/Ratdeath/Wadfest%202008/

And of course there's the Thud image gallery: http://www.thudgame.com/image/tid/501

--When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. – Mark Twain

Save the rats, eat a dwarf!