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BRISTOL '73 (OMPACON)

RATFANDOM GOES TO A CONVENTION

by Roy Kettle




First published in True Rat 1, edited by Roy Kettle


AMAZING SERIAL!!! Wow, kids, read this.
Ratfandom goes to a convention -- Part one (1) in which nothing happens.

As usual Pickersgill opened his bottle of wine slickly and smugly; I spilled wine right up the inside of my sleeve; Brosnan was totally unable to remove the cork and collapsed worn and old in his seat while Hall attacked his with a complete lack of sense using the corkscrew as an instrument of destruction and demolishing the top of the cork. He sat back in amazement wondering why the cork hadn't flown out at the first touch and Pickersgill helped him as is often the case. The adoption papers will be through soon.

"Listen," said Hall, "No Lynn jokes. And if you have to write any spell it right. You were always getting Dierdre wrong,"

"So were you," said Brosnan, (Little Johnny Tact.)

"Hah,"retorted Hall. "hah."

Pickersgill then opened shop and proceeded to sell ham, cheese and rolls to his buddies (even the one who'd given him a free battle of wine) except for Hall, to whom he sold a mass of Turkish delight. Gobble-bloody-gobble Hall went, then wrestled with the wrong end of a coke can for fifteen minutes before discovering that, once more, the Coca Cola Company had, for reasons known only to them, put the ring-pull at the top.

"It's going to be a great con," said Pickersgill, once more.

"Some people have got more to look forward to than others," hinted Brosnan. "Why didn't you bring Jackie with you?"

"And spoil my chances?"

"The queue," I said," for the delights of Picky's hot body stretches from here to there. The mysteries of his sticky little loins will be revealed to myriad young ladies --"

"And some not so young," said Brosnan.

"Nothing wrong with age," said Hall automatically, although by now we've all seen the unforged birth certificate.

"--- such as Little Malcolm, Piggy, Ian's precious Jule as they tear away the wine, dirt and semen encrusted clothing to show - no -- no -- there are some things women are not meant to see, Blah!"

"Smack," said Pickersgill with actions. "Jealous."

"What's going on?" asked Hall, consciously breaking off from his perpetual battle with indigestion.

"Pickersgill spilled some wine on his lap and thought he'd reached puberty when he saw the stain," I said laboriously.

"Not funny," said Hall.

Well, by the time I'd got over laughing at that I realised I should mention in this report that we were on the train to Bristol. The journey is blurred in my memory due to well-known mental deficiencies and also the fact that Pickersgill substituted his empty bottle for Hall's full one ("Bloody sod", said Hall late, always one to show off his wit.) and we shared it unknown to Brosnan who couldn't see well from behind the shades he had put on so that no-one could see his eyes rotting. He leaned his umbrella between his legs like a burned and bent erection (and less of that later) and told the others how annoyed I'd be when he showed me his Ratfandom Artshow poster which he"d created on the back of a Gollum poster that had fallen off the back of a lorry in suspiciously large quantities into the grasping hands of J.N.D.Hall.

"Not in the train, though," he kept saying fearing for his creation's safety in the confined space, but after three-quarters of the wine had made the familiar but tortuous journey to his gut he got out the poster.

Pickersgill was depicted as Captain Buggery, his favourite role; me as the failed lecher, not my favourite role but one of my most frequent; a John Hall joke about his power over women (and what else could it have been about other than his power over baked beans) and a small, little-exaggerated picture of Pickersgill saying, "Me? Ludicrous? Me?" Contrary to D.K. Brosnan's predictions I couldn't have cared less about his snide, rotten little joke but Pickersgill went into a cosmic sulk when no-one would explain the rather obvious 'ludicrous' joke to him. He became a small, brown, fuming heap in the corner and was almost shovelled off the train but brightened up later when Hall showed him Zimri with his picture on the back picking his nose. "Fame," he cried, forgetting his previous comments about the magazine. "What an issue." He had yet to open it.

Brosnan looked at the picture, "You? Ludicrous?" he said.

Pickersgill looked up at the sky, and pointed at Brosnan. "This one," he said. "Now."

But Brosnan had noticed his own photograph. "Wheee," he kept saying and jumped up and down as much as his pace-maker could stand.

Hall then began cursing Conesa who had not put his picture on the cover, which was typically illogical of the Secret Master of the Overhead Cam both because of his much-publicised lust for the lady and because he hadn't been at Chester where the pictures were taken. Pickersgill stopped Hall's tirade by clutching his balls. His own, strangely.

"Aaaaaagh," he said.

"What's the matter?" asked Hall, ever watchful over the only person who praised the articles he had had rejected from Cream, Let It Rock and Black Knight.

"I haven't had it for two days," said Pickey, whose woman was in Spain.

"Had what?" said Brosnan who hadn't had it for ninety seven years although someone does think him as pretty as a page-boy.

Then he remembered,

"Oh, that. Well, this is terrible, How're you going to get through the con? I'll tell everyone what's wrong so they'll be nice to you."

"No," screamed Pickersgill. "Don't tell (the next eight names have been deleted owing to big husbands and/or fiancees(some of whom have got married since as well)). I'll be all right."

And as the sturdy little chap bit his lip against the horrific pains of two days seminal pressure the train pulled into Bristol.

We were leaping about and shouting in the sunlight like someone in a film who's just had his first screw (but there was no sea) and would have got arrested but for the absence of policemen. "Gonna be a great con," shouted Pickersgill, "I wanna drink."

The pub at the bottom seemed a reasonable place and we continued ruining our health and having a good time in there, even meeting a nice sailor with a beard like on the cigarette packet who gave the others some cooking sherry which I refused as I'd seen him fill his lighter with it and also having heard Fortey's Fantom Gobbler tales about merchant semen.

Then, in a real blur, we moved on to the hotel, Brosnan prancing ahead doing his suspiciously clever camp bit both on his own and with me (in my case it's latent, of course). Then he got his umbrella, stuck it between my legs and pulled. (That's his other witty joke.) Something bent and black fell to the pavement. I looked down in horror but it was only the umbrella handle. Brosnan staggered the rest of the way to the hotel, hand on his brow, muttering, "Why my umbrellas? Why only at conventions? Why always Kettle?"

We weren't expecting the hotel lobby to be full of Hemmings and Longs and Brunners but it was, Cowering away from these people we made the reception desk.

We gave our names to the nice young women there, who didn't laugh, and they gave us keys in exchange. I gallantly offered to share with one of the receptionists but of course she had a job to do.

"You were almost in there," said Brosnan.

"I was going to work on the ugly one for you," I said gallantly.

"I can work on ugly ones for myself," he replied.

"I know," Pickersgill and I said together, and Hall guffawed, because he knew too, didn't he children. (This is all very true of course, even though he's as pretty as a page-boy according to one notoriously unreliable source.)

When I got up to my room I was excited by the telly and immediately switched it on because I was paying for it (though I never watched it) and opened the bathroom door to leap in and see how big it was when I found myself up to my ears in coat-hangers. Only seven rooms out of the 120 had no bath and mine was one. It didn't help to discover that Brosnan had a double room and bath to himself, Privilege of age, I suppose.

The sequence of events in the evening is somewhat confused due to the fact that liquor was being sold on the premises. Fred Hemmings kept coming up, hitting me, stealing my glasses and demanding £ 1-50 for the programme and badge I had removed from the table under Gerald Bishop's watchful eye with what I thought was undetected stealth. Later in the evening, a young friend of Keith Bridges came up and recognized me from the Globe. He wanted to know where the big scene was as Keith had somehow given him the impression that cons are one huge orgy (maybe they are for him, I must ask. But then, inquire sometime not in print what I know about Brian Aldiss and a laundry basket). Well, it seemed he had a car and offered to drive us to Peter Roberts place where the man himself was giving a party, However, he had to phone his mother first to see if it was 0.K. It wasn't. We left him looking for the scene and the four of us bombed out into the city to try to make it to Roberts' and merely ended up (as we didn't know where he lived) forming a powerful bazooka squad (except for Brosnan who disowned us) which destroyed most of Bristol and almost destroyed us as the cars we annihilated from our middle of the road site refused to play dead.

Back at the hotel we roamed about a bit and saw a group singing folk-songs with Howie Rosenblum blowing into a jug to provide red-faced and entirely inaudible rhythm.(Maybe he was just trying to cool his coffee). After laughing for a while I grabbed a fire-hose and started blowing into it in what I thought was a remarkably clever and funny and totally unexpected parody until the unamused hotel staff disarmed me. Then we blundered into the con-hall and climbed onto the stage and Pickersgill and I fell off it. At the other end of the hall we found a wheelchair and Hall pushed Brosnan in it into the neat rows of chairs which provided him with his first bruises of the convention. Then Brosnan pushed me into the crowded bar with my leg in the air,shouting, "Look out, it's Captain Cripple," and similar words which lead to widespread rumours the next day that certain people were trying to get us blacklisted (though Delany denied it) for offensive behaviour. Once again the hotel staff wearily disarmed us and we wandered around a bit more.

That was in many ways the best night of the con and I remember so little about it. Later I got separated from my buddies and roamed about the hotel in a stupor. There was no one around. I got in a service lift by mistake and went down to the huge basement full of beer and spiders and up to what I later discovered was the manager's office full of telephones and teargas. Into a woman's toilet so full of mirrors that you wonder they have any time left for normal bodily functions. I had been deserted, not surprisingly, I finally decided and not then knowing anyone's room number except my own I set the brain to getting there. Inside I tore off my clothes and stumbled into bed. I crashed onto the floor on the other side as some cretin. had seen fit to leave the bed two feet away from the wall. I can't remember climbing back into bed. I just lay there wondering what they did with all those mirrors in the few seconds before I passed out.

To be continued. (Tough luck)

-- Roy Kettle



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