didgeri-douze report

Allison and I got back to Toronto at about 12:30 am this morning, bleary-eyed but happy...what a great UK adventure! Jodi is still there, doing business meetings. I am probably going to be spending most of today in bed; I got a cold near the end of the trip and it got gradually worse. Jodi caught it first; I'm hoping she's doing okay...Phil and Lissa have it, too.

Allison's working on a detailed con report. Didgeri-Douze was amazingly fun; many, many congrats to the concom: Phil and Lissa Allcock, Tim & Annie Walker, and Smitty. Everyone went out of their way to make us feel welcome...it was tough saying good-bye to so many new friends at the end. Wonderful to see some familiar faces such as Phil & Lissa, Dave Clement, Bill and Brenda Sutton, Godfrey Joseph (I hadn't seen him in about ten years!), Talis Kimberly, Rika Körte, Katy and Ju. I got meet meet Fox in person for the first time (Talis introduced us in email shortly after she was GoH at FilKONtario several years ago). It was a special pleasure to hear Phoenix (Lissa & Phil Allcock, Anne & Mike Whitaker, Annie & Tim Walker) live in concert; theese folks are AMAZING. Wow...my cheeks hurt so much by the end of the concert because I couldn't stop smiling (did a lot of yelling and screaming, too, especially when Tim did his Elvis impersonation). Great to meet some others who have posted recently in Blatherchat, like Anke and Chris and Teddy.

Loads of talent at this convention....more details in Allison's report. Very cool to meet (and hear!) Chris Conway in person; he opened the convention minutes after arriving with a splendiferous concert set (I've never seen anyone play TWO PENNY WHISTLES at the same time so well!!!). Other fun concert sets: B&B (Paul Bristow & Dan Bennett), Talis, Just Playin' Folk (Zander Nyrond, Valerie Housden, Magician (Chris O'Shea), Fiddler Rachel (Rachel Shurmer)), Lawrence Dean, Patchwork (Minstrel/Chris Malme, Neil Chambers, Martin & Andy GK/Gordon-Kerr), Brian Biddle (the UK GoH), Erica Neely & Phil Allcock ("Erica and Phil's Depression Session"), Phoenix, Dave Clement, Taking The Mic (Mike & Alison Richards, Rick Hewett, Miki), plus the main concert consisting of 1- and 2-song shorter sets.

Our main concert and children's concert seemed to go over pretty well; everyone was having lots of fun (I know we did). :-) Wow, what a responsive audience!!!! We closed with the Neurotic Love Song and got a standing ovation, did Tom Jeffer's "Gone Filkin'" as an encore. Open filking was also lots of fun. Okay, so maybe IT WAS *ALL* way too much fun. :-) :-) Lots more details in Allison's report, and I'll be adding tons of comments as well. I suspect I'll also be blathering about special highlights for weeks to come (between jet lag, post-con blues, and illness, my brain is not quite all here right now, so forgive my incoherence).

Going to unpack and recover...