Griffish Isles, Saturday: A Tale of Two Venues

Marvel at the stunning architectural flair of my hotel

I'd set my alarm for six o'clock on Griffish Isles Saturday, and I was pleased when I woke up a few minutes before it went off. I was somewhat less pleased when I dozed off again... the next time I looked at my watch, it was 6:46! I'd wanted to be out of the hotel by seven at the latest, but this wasn't going to happen now. Thank Celestia I'd packed up the previous night. One quick shower later, without even tasting the complimentary coffee, I was checking out.

It was still only around 7:12 when I left the hotel, and happily it was a sunny morning, the weather much nicer than it had been on Friday. Irritatingly, I just missed a tram, but that gave me time to work out the ticket machine and buy a tram-and-bus one in case I needed buses later on. (I didn't.) When the next tram appeared, I was off into Manchester, marvelling at the area's weird combination of mighty skyscrapers and near-derelict plots.

Fooooooooood!

Once I was back in the other city (meaning Manchester; Salford is a city too!) I headed for the Paramount, an early-opening Wetherspoons in a former cinema. It was fairly empty and quite relaxing. Breakfast is the most important meal of con days, so I pigged out on the large fry-up and a couple of mugs of cappuccino. Then it was back on the tram (past the Bridgewater Hall and Manchester Central again) to Piccadilly, from where I'd be walking to the con venue.

Ardwick has a slightly dodgy reputation, but I didn't have any problems on the short walk from the station. Okay, it may be different after dark; I don't know. I arrived outside the venue a little after 9am – nearly an hour before the scheduled start of the con, but at UK PonyCon this is necessary if you don't want a long wait! At this smaller event, it... wasn't. There were about five of us for a while, until some of Team Custard emerged from the house they were sharing nearby.

The St Thomas Centre. A former church, as you'd doubtless guessed

More past the cut!

Eventually, those with VIP tickets got to go inside, so the rest of us watched enviously as the likes of Zen and Griffin bought all the merch. Or so we imagined! At this point, I want to praise the security guy (Morris) on the door. He was relaxed, cheerful and utterly confidence-inspiring. After the con, he even took the trouble to leave a thank you for the many messages of appreciation. Can we have him back next year?

Inside at last, and with wristbands and (nicely produced) conbooks issued, most of us headed first for the merch stalls. These spilled into an adjacent building (they couldn't fit them all in) and so there was a fair bit of back-and-forthing. Apparently this wasn't too popular with some vendors, maybe because Venue 2 wasn't well signposted, but I'm not really sure how it can be avoided. HypnoHooves ran a perfectly solid opening ceremony, which was like opening ceremonies at every con ever in that half of the crowd didn't listen.

HypnoHooves officially opens Griffish Isles 2019

Panel time now! This was a real highlight: "MLP and the Meaning of Life", an interesting and what you might call "accessibly academic" discussion of some of the deeper issues the fandom can offer. It was co-presented by Drs Ewan Kirkland and Andrew Crome, neither strangers to pony conventions and the latter one of the organisers of GI itself! I even summoned up the courage to ask a question – which I rather mangled. I might work it up into a blog post here instead.

After The Two Doctors (as I now think of it) I did a little more shopping and then headed for the karaoke room. The session was winding down as the cosplay contest approached, which meant there was basically no atmosphere in the nearly empty side room. Still, Griffin was kind enough to join me in a duet of Aviators' "Friendship", on which I scored 9,340. Not my PB for the song, but under con conditions I'm really quite happy with it!

The G2 section of the Pony Museum

Time then to return to the main hall for (some of) the cosplay contest, which was a nice experience as they generally are. Lee Tockar was there for a photograph with the cosplayers, since his panel came next. Mr Tockar proved an engaging and varied speaker, with topics ranging from his sometimes unhappy childhood to what he was doing now FiM had finished. At the end, he played us a poem he'd written and produced: "The Grym Possession of Chesterfield Couch". As this was a world premiere, I can't link you to a recording, but think "Jabberwocky" as written by Spike Milligan.

I wavered a bit then, as Midnight Dynasty's "G1-G4 Fans Talk" would doubtless have been fun, especially her opinions on certain generations – but in the end I felt UK PonyCon covered me for this. For the same reason, I only looked in briefly at the Pony Museum room, which had a layout of MLP toys from the 1980s to the present day. Instead, I headed back to the second venue to buy a print and autograph from Lee Tockar. He told me he loved the name "Logan", too!

Lee Tockar, posing with a bunch of cosplayers

There was then time for a bit more shopping. I originally intended to spend very little on merch at this convention, but... um... well. Yes. You'll see what actually happened in my Merch Haul post next time. Anyway, after that it was back to the main hall for a Skype call with Ali Milner. You will probably not be shocked to hear that the call was not entirely free of lag. Still, the voice of Ember was pretty expressive and had an infectious smile, so it was still an enjoyable way to spend half an hour or so.

And then, suddenly, it was time for the closing ceremony! Of course, it wasn't the end of the convention, as there were several more hours to go in the evening (including the auction – an unspecified "restriction" meant they couldn't have that in the daytime), but it was going to be the end of my Griffish Isles. In spite of paying about as much for seven hours as I'd pay for two days at UK PonyCon, I felt it had been well worthwhile. There was a (deliberate) two-hour gap between daytime and evening sections, though...

Dragon Lord Ember scares Skype into submission

...which gave a bunch of us time to head back to the city centre for food! Oilyvalves had asked me whether the Paramount would have done – and it would, except for being on the wrong side of the city centre. So we went to the Piccadilly Tavern near the station, a rather noisy and crowded place but with a reasonable menu. There was a brief hitch when Patrick almost got refused entry for being underage (he's not, but he was wearing a Rainbow Dash hoodie...) but it was quickly sorted out.

So I sat at a slightly cramped table with Ace and Alliminaro and half a dozen others, plus a new friend in a Bulgarian guy whose name was something like Ivolin Ivelin. Edit: thanks to The Cloptimist for the info! I was very glad of this, since it softened the blow of having to head for my train before too much longer. Most of us didn't even have booze. :P We did notice a few other con attendees in the same pub, but it was really too loud and crowded to talk to them properly.

Seated, from left: Ace, Griffin, Alliminaro, Patrick, our Bulgarian friend. On table: ponies

And then, sadly, it was time for me to depart. The others began their walk to Powerleague (the evening venue, a little beyond the daytime one) and I began my 100-mile trip back to Worcestershire. It felt sad to be ending a convention Saturday while the sun was still quite high in the sky, but I just had to grin and bear it. There's nothing of interest to report about the train journey, and I was home by about 10:30pm, while PrinceWhateverer was on stage in Manchester. I slept pretty soundly that night!