My cyclic muffin, part eleven...

GIMME AN F...

I knew, of course, that fans did music things. There was Chivers, for one thing. Also, Soren and I had been captivated, in a dimly-lit room party at a media con, by a lady named Sue Lewis singing "Rejoice In The Sun" as sung by Joan Baez for the film Silent Running (I told you it would come up again). There was Lesley McCartney, who was Scottish and impish and sang a song about a ten-inch tribble with a toothless grun (I think that was what she said) with her group Eridani. And every so often while going up and down stairs at cons one would encounter small groups with guitars, who would eye one with a peculiar mixture of suspicion and defiance till one had passed on. This was my first experience of filkers.

But cons, for me, were becoming more sporadic. I had met the Countess and fallen fathoms deep in love, moved with her into a proper council flat that cost proper rent, and changed my job (by a monstrous stroke of pure luck) to one I was mostly enjoying, but whose pay was still not good. I had evolved quite a bit in these few years, and now spent more time in the real world and less in my head, which made both places a lot more interesting. We had a computer now, and a cat, and there weren't enough hours in the day any more. I went to Seacon 84 as part of my job, and couldn't enjoy myself properly because I felt guilty about not doing enough work.

But things gradually became better; we got married, and we splashed out and went to Follycon in 1988, at the Adelphi in Liverpool. Ah, the Adelphi, in all its grungy magnificence, looking like the Titanic only more water-damaged. Follycon was a general sf con, an Eastercon like Seacon 84, and there was lots to do. And it was there that we watched as a selection of bespectacled hoodlums were pushed on to the stage by a slender feminine hand and made to perform...songs. The hand belonged to the late Gytha North, who had decided that the days of stairwell-squatting were numbered; the pool of talent available in British filk had grown to sufficient proportions to make a bid for the limelight. The following year, it was announced, would see the first ever British con completely devoted to filk, with an American guest of honour and everything, and in the meantime there would be regular monthly meetings, at the One Tun (which, at some point around this time, had been abandoned by fandom in general for complicated reasons; the first-Thursday meets now took place at a pub in Waterloo which was too noisy and, um, atmospheric, for our delicate ears and lungs).

So, encouraged by the Countess, I gathered up a few songs I'd come out with over the years since that first one, and went along...