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International Pudseycon
Aug. 19th, 2013 11:25 pmIt has been quite a busy weekend all told, with a convention of international fuzzies congregating at my house. It was great to host them.
Our friend from Vancouver, Trapa, was our first visitor, heading over from Munich on Thursday to spend a couple of days with us in Leeds. He has since headed back to Deutschland to attend EF, but it was great showing him around the north of England, a place he admitted he wanted to see far more than London. I was delighted to welcome him to Manchester in the pissing rain, late on Thursday evening, and he had his first disappointing appearance with a Tesco Value pork pie, which was too dry for his liking. This was on the way back home but we had a great chat in the car before retiring as it was 1am and technically a work night.
As both Wolfie and I had to be in work on the Friday, I left Trapa to his own devices in Leeds. It was a wonderously sunny day and I believe he had a great time exploring, commenting on the small size of the place relative to his native Vancouver. The plan was for Skavi to meet him at around 2:30pm but confusion reigned as Trapa was in McDonald's and Skavi was by WH Smith's. Due to a smartphone mishap, internet was difficult but I eventually managed to organise everything from work and the duo soon met to tour around the Royal Armories, one of the premier exhibitions in my hometown.
I was due out of work about 6pm and we hooked up in North Bar, one of the most well-renouned pubs in the UK. I bought Trapa some traditional English scrumpy, a drink he described as "the worst thing ever", resulting in the croc necessitating in choking it down as he was most adamant he would not let anything to go waste. I bought Trapa some real ale instead, which he found quite palatable, before Wolfie arrived and we headed over to Nash's for some of the best fish and chips in Yorkshire (according to Tripadvisor anyway). Interestingly, the building in which the restaurant was housed, is older than Canada and the server did well regailing the history of the building to us. We all had fish, chips and mushy peas, served with bread and butter, and I believe it went down quite well. I also bought Trapa some dandelion and burdock, a traditional Victorian drink made out of weeds, which he also thought was quite nice. After this, we did an impromptu pub crawl before heading back to the house for some well-earned sleep.
Saturday was the Leeds Minimeet day, always a highlight of the month and we were honoured to have both Trapa and my Singaporean friend Nightdragon in attendence. The latter is currently in the UK on a four-week training course for his job (staying in Loughborough no less) and it was great to catch up with him having met him during my sojourn in Singapore back in June. He arrived on the train around midday and soon everyone was decamping to Baa Bar, our excellent venue, where we all got into the furry groove rather quickly. With rain forecast later in the afternoon, and Leeds United playing at home with an early kick-off, we opted to do the fursuit walk early, which proved to be the right decision as the heavens opened around 3pm. Still, this gave us about two hours to do the walk, but we didn't get much further than Millennium Square around the corner, where there was a special event taking place full of fairground rides and attractions. It had a vague beach theme and it was great suiting around the children who were there, but it was even better when the owner of the dodgems ride said we could go on for free in suit. The only condition was every suiter had to have a handler in the car with them - I had Felixashburn - but the suiters still got to drive and it was excellent fun. Some of the others also got on the narly circular rotating ride, but I have a weak stomach and I feared vomiting in my fursuit head. In the end, I settled with Hook-a-Duck. It was also great suiting with both Trapa and Nightdragon, the dynamic felt right and many fantastic photographs were taken. Once back inside, I also got a fantastic drawing from Ferdy, which summed up my character and my relationship with Wolfie very well. After all, he is so very mean...
After the meet, we had planned to go to the annual BBQ held by Arcais and Draken. We grabbed a quick shower and some supplies before descending there shortly after 7:30pm. The theme was Mexican, so there was a wide range of different foods on offer, from quesadillas to tortillas filled with barbeque chicken and peppers. The salsas and nachos were particularly excellent, but I must admit I was expecting burgers and snausages before I arrived. And puppies like snausages. There were around 25 furs in attendence, which I found a little overwhelming at times, but with plenty of alcohol flowing, inhibitions were soon silenced. Due to the inclement weather, it wasn't as chilled as last year as we were forced to decamp to the house. This meant the drinking games started early, which is something I admit I could have done without, but the conversations afterwards were a definite highlight and the event in general was a good laugh. With Trapa and Nightdragon getting tired though - and the latter needing to have a conference call concerning Rainfurrest 2014 at 1am - we headed off shortly after midnight and left the other attendees to their fursuiting and drinking.
Another reason why we went home early was that Trapa wanted to visit York and having booked a train from Manchester Piccadilly at 5:15pm, we had to get up early on the Sunday to do it justice. Poor Nightdragon had already visited York the previous week, but he seemed happy to come along too and Skavi also wanted to come, so he took a taxi from Arcais's to ours the next morning having been one of the furs who had stayed behind for some communal boozing the night before. He arrived just after Trapa had kindly given us some presents - a bottle of Sirop d'Erable, a Canadian flag, a Trapa Civet pin and a plushie each. I got a lion and Wolfie got a bear.
By 10am, miraculously we were on the road, arriving in York shortly after 11am to find Oracle waiting for us on the corner like a furry prostitute. It was great to see him again and he acted as our tour guide, knowing so much about the history of the city and putting all of the buildings into context. Like with the fish and chip restaurant, Trapa enjoyed the ancient nature of the buildings, saying at many junctures that "This is the oldest building I have ever been in". The number of small churches we saw - York has the greatest number of churches per square metre in the UK - became a running joke, while both Trapa and Nightdragon enjoyed their traditional Cornish pasties from the West Cornwall Pasty Company, which we ate on Parliament Street while watching the world go by. I must admit that York wasn't anywhere near as busy as I expected it to be, which made touring far more fun, but there was still a large number of people down the Shambles, one of the city's oldest streets, dating back to Medieval times. It was a street for butchery - you can still see the meat hooks outside most of the premises - but now it has been given over to tourist shops and tea rooms. Trapa got into a conversation with the owner of a chocolate store, at which Skavi bought a wide range of different confectionary. We also saw Whip-ma-whop-ma Gate (meaning "What a Street!"), the shortest street in York which has an address one-and-a-half Whip-ma-whop-ma Gate and of course the fabulous Minster, one of the most elegant cathedrals in the whole of Europe.
In addition to this, we also walked along the old walls of the city before visiting the National Rail Museum, which, as the name suggests, is dedicated to railways. We saw many famous locomotives, particularly The Flying Scotsman and the Mallard (still the fastest steam engine in the world), as well as the Shinkansen, an exhibit I never tire of seeing. I have been to the NRM quite a few times but it still amazes me how great it is, and for free too, and I was delighted to show our two friends and Skavi (who also had never been) around the attraction. The Rocket was in attendence and in full working order too, with demonstrations of its operation as it was pulling a cart full of kids. We got hit by smoke belch, the thick blackness hitting our faces, but it was great to experience what would have been a daily occurance in Victorian England. I noticed that the Jimmy Savile InterCity rail adverts from the Eighties were conspicuous in their absence, while watching the real time signalling situation outside York was to become slightly ironic as once we had gotten back to Leeds and loaded Trapa and Nightdragon on their respective trains, a huge signalling fault at York had backed up all of the trains, delaying them all. We got lucky, very lucky, and managed to get Trapa off just in time and gave Nightdragon an alternate route, which turned out for the best. Skavi also had to go by this point too, needing to do some work and meet up with Avon for some dinner.
Entei-rah and Rushy were hanging around the Wetherspoons in the station at this point, waiting for Panthras who was headed over to Harrogate from Ellesmere Port to start his new job today. As luck and good planning would have it, Panthras arrived shortly after we had dropped our international friends off, so we decided to go to a new bar which has just opened and sample their wonderful beer. Brewfist's Czech lager and Nogne O's Holiday Ale - 6.7% and 8.5% respectively - were both truly gorgeous brews and aside from the ginger bearded prick in the beret, the ambience in this bar was fantastic. A definite winner! And of course, the furry company was most excellent as we talked about a wide range of different topics, largely furry issues of the day though.
After this, we opted to go to it Bar, a new burger restaurant that Entei-rah, Wolfie and I had tried some three weeks previously when the bunny had been over this way for an interview. It was excellent then - I had the Filthy Pig burger which is 50% beef and 50% pork - and it didn't disappoint again, with me opting for the Mac 'N Cheese Burger, which was the first time I had ever had cheesy pasta in a burger. I like this bar as even though it is done out like a diner, the selection of beer is pretty good, meaning it is quite easy to avoid the dull mass-marketed shite you get in many bars. Once we had had our meal though, we realised time was pushing on and we all headed our separate ways after an excellent weekend.
Our friend from Vancouver, Trapa, was our first visitor, heading over from Munich on Thursday to spend a couple of days with us in Leeds. He has since headed back to Deutschland to attend EF, but it was great showing him around the north of England, a place he admitted he wanted to see far more than London. I was delighted to welcome him to Manchester in the pissing rain, late on Thursday evening, and he had his first disappointing appearance with a Tesco Value pork pie, which was too dry for his liking. This was on the way back home but we had a great chat in the car before retiring as it was 1am and technically a work night.
As both Wolfie and I had to be in work on the Friday, I left Trapa to his own devices in Leeds. It was a wonderously sunny day and I believe he had a great time exploring, commenting on the small size of the place relative to his native Vancouver. The plan was for Skavi to meet him at around 2:30pm but confusion reigned as Trapa was in McDonald's and Skavi was by WH Smith's. Due to a smartphone mishap, internet was difficult but I eventually managed to organise everything from work and the duo soon met to tour around the Royal Armories, one of the premier exhibitions in my hometown.
I was due out of work about 6pm and we hooked up in North Bar, one of the most well-renouned pubs in the UK. I bought Trapa some traditional English scrumpy, a drink he described as "the worst thing ever", resulting in the croc necessitating in choking it down as he was most adamant he would not let anything to go waste. I bought Trapa some real ale instead, which he found quite palatable, before Wolfie arrived and we headed over to Nash's for some of the best fish and chips in Yorkshire (according to Tripadvisor anyway). Interestingly, the building in which the restaurant was housed, is older than Canada and the server did well regailing the history of the building to us. We all had fish, chips and mushy peas, served with bread and butter, and I believe it went down quite well. I also bought Trapa some dandelion and burdock, a traditional Victorian drink made out of weeds, which he also thought was quite nice. After this, we did an impromptu pub crawl before heading back to the house for some well-earned sleep.
Saturday was the Leeds Minimeet day, always a highlight of the month and we were honoured to have both Trapa and my Singaporean friend Nightdragon in attendence. The latter is currently in the UK on a four-week training course for his job (staying in Loughborough no less) and it was great to catch up with him having met him during my sojourn in Singapore back in June. He arrived on the train around midday and soon everyone was decamping to Baa Bar, our excellent venue, where we all got into the furry groove rather quickly. With rain forecast later in the afternoon, and Leeds United playing at home with an early kick-off, we opted to do the fursuit walk early, which proved to be the right decision as the heavens opened around 3pm. Still, this gave us about two hours to do the walk, but we didn't get much further than Millennium Square around the corner, where there was a special event taking place full of fairground rides and attractions. It had a vague beach theme and it was great suiting around the children who were there, but it was even better when the owner of the dodgems ride said we could go on for free in suit. The only condition was every suiter had to have a handler in the car with them - I had Felixashburn - but the suiters still got to drive and it was excellent fun. Some of the others also got on the narly circular rotating ride, but I have a weak stomach and I feared vomiting in my fursuit head. In the end, I settled with Hook-a-Duck. It was also great suiting with both Trapa and Nightdragon, the dynamic felt right and many fantastic photographs were taken. Once back inside, I also got a fantastic drawing from Ferdy, which summed up my character and my relationship with Wolfie very well. After all, he is so very mean...
After the meet, we had planned to go to the annual BBQ held by Arcais and Draken. We grabbed a quick shower and some supplies before descending there shortly after 7:30pm. The theme was Mexican, so there was a wide range of different foods on offer, from quesadillas to tortillas filled with barbeque chicken and peppers. The salsas and nachos were particularly excellent, but I must admit I was expecting burgers and snausages before I arrived. And puppies like snausages. There were around 25 furs in attendence, which I found a little overwhelming at times, but with plenty of alcohol flowing, inhibitions were soon silenced. Due to the inclement weather, it wasn't as chilled as last year as we were forced to decamp to the house. This meant the drinking games started early, which is something I admit I could have done without, but the conversations afterwards were a definite highlight and the event in general was a good laugh. With Trapa and Nightdragon getting tired though - and the latter needing to have a conference call concerning Rainfurrest 2014 at 1am - we headed off shortly after midnight and left the other attendees to their fursuiting and drinking.
Another reason why we went home early was that Trapa wanted to visit York and having booked a train from Manchester Piccadilly at 5:15pm, we had to get up early on the Sunday to do it justice. Poor Nightdragon had already visited York the previous week, but he seemed happy to come along too and Skavi also wanted to come, so he took a taxi from Arcais's to ours the next morning having been one of the furs who had stayed behind for some communal boozing the night before. He arrived just after Trapa had kindly given us some presents - a bottle of Sirop d'Erable, a Canadian flag, a Trapa Civet pin and a plushie each. I got a lion and Wolfie got a bear.
By 10am, miraculously we were on the road, arriving in York shortly after 11am to find Oracle waiting for us on the corner like a furry prostitute. It was great to see him again and he acted as our tour guide, knowing so much about the history of the city and putting all of the buildings into context. Like with the fish and chip restaurant, Trapa enjoyed the ancient nature of the buildings, saying at many junctures that "This is the oldest building I have ever been in". The number of small churches we saw - York has the greatest number of churches per square metre in the UK - became a running joke, while both Trapa and Nightdragon enjoyed their traditional Cornish pasties from the West Cornwall Pasty Company, which we ate on Parliament Street while watching the world go by. I must admit that York wasn't anywhere near as busy as I expected it to be, which made touring far more fun, but there was still a large number of people down the Shambles, one of the city's oldest streets, dating back to Medieval times. It was a street for butchery - you can still see the meat hooks outside most of the premises - but now it has been given over to tourist shops and tea rooms. Trapa got into a conversation with the owner of a chocolate store, at which Skavi bought a wide range of different confectionary. We also saw Whip-ma-whop-ma Gate (meaning "What a Street!"), the shortest street in York which has an address one-and-a-half Whip-ma-whop-ma Gate and of course the fabulous Minster, one of the most elegant cathedrals in the whole of Europe.
In addition to this, we also walked along the old walls of the city before visiting the National Rail Museum, which, as the name suggests, is dedicated to railways. We saw many famous locomotives, particularly The Flying Scotsman and the Mallard (still the fastest steam engine in the world), as well as the Shinkansen, an exhibit I never tire of seeing. I have been to the NRM quite a few times but it still amazes me how great it is, and for free too, and I was delighted to show our two friends and Skavi (who also had never been) around the attraction. The Rocket was in attendence and in full working order too, with demonstrations of its operation as it was pulling a cart full of kids. We got hit by smoke belch, the thick blackness hitting our faces, but it was great to experience what would have been a daily occurance in Victorian England. I noticed that the Jimmy Savile InterCity rail adverts from the Eighties were conspicuous in their absence, while watching the real time signalling situation outside York was to become slightly ironic as once we had gotten back to Leeds and loaded Trapa and Nightdragon on their respective trains, a huge signalling fault at York had backed up all of the trains, delaying them all. We got lucky, very lucky, and managed to get Trapa off just in time and gave Nightdragon an alternate route, which turned out for the best. Skavi also had to go by this point too, needing to do some work and meet up with Avon for some dinner.
Entei-rah and Rushy were hanging around the Wetherspoons in the station at this point, waiting for Panthras who was headed over to Harrogate from Ellesmere Port to start his new job today. As luck and good planning would have it, Panthras arrived shortly after we had dropped our international friends off, so we decided to go to a new bar which has just opened and sample their wonderful beer. Brewfist's Czech lager and Nogne O's Holiday Ale - 6.7% and 8.5% respectively - were both truly gorgeous brews and aside from the ginger bearded prick in the beret, the ambience in this bar was fantastic. A definite winner! And of course, the furry company was most excellent as we talked about a wide range of different topics, largely furry issues of the day though.
After this, we opted to go to it Bar, a new burger restaurant that Entei-rah, Wolfie and I had tried some three weeks previously when the bunny had been over this way for an interview. It was excellent then - I had the Filthy Pig burger which is 50% beef and 50% pork - and it didn't disappoint again, with me opting for the Mac 'N Cheese Burger, which was the first time I had ever had cheesy pasta in a burger. I like this bar as even though it is done out like a diner, the selection of beer is pretty good, meaning it is quite easy to avoid the dull mass-marketed shite you get in many bars. Once we had had our meal though, we realised time was pushing on and we all headed our separate ways after an excellent weekend.
