The First Conventions

All this time we had been trying to sort out the various problems of getting the first UK filk convention organised. By the time I was packing to leave for Albacon the next day I had almost given up, when I got a phone call from Gytha telling me that the convention was going ahead. The call went roughly: "But I thought we weren't going to do it unless we could hand out flyers at Albacon." "Yes, that's right." "So who is doing the flyers?" "You are." "Um - so what's the convention called?" "We don't know yet."

So I drafted out the text for a flyer and was just reading through it when Mike phoned. "It's called Contabile, and you're on the committee."

I finished the flyer, printed out a couple of copies on my primitive printer, and took them up to Glasgow with me. There I found a photocopy shop and got lots of copies made.

One of the items on the programme was "Plug your future conventions". Valerie went with her guitar and sang the details of our filk con.

So we had some members, and we ran the first filk fund to bring our overseas guest Leslie Fish across the Atlantic. This fund inevitably getting nicknamed the Trans-Atlantic Fish Fund after the existing Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund. And we did have our overseas guest, once we had persuaded Leslie that the offer was in fact genuine and not a hoax.

The first committee meeting for the con was held at Wincon 1 on 19th-21st August. At one meeting, held at Valerie's house, we had mentioned the remote possibility that this wouldn't be a one-off, and there might actually be a second convention the next year. I made some comment about "Well, if we do run, err, Con2bile then ...". This name was promptly seized upon. So it's all my fault that the UK filk conventions have a different name every year, based on some dreadful pun involving the convention number.

We'd booked a fairly small hotel as we didn't expect very many people. We then got a lot more than expected, and the hotel had to squeeze them in somehow. I left my single room to go to a committee meeting and came back to a twin room with another bed crammed in.

Anyway, that convention was a great success, and we've been running them every year ever since, at least in the Before Times.

The next year at Con2bile was another great success. After some initial trouble getting the overseas guest, we ended up with the glorious Meg Davis.

My other particular memory of that con was this tiny, quiet, shy young woman who turned up pretty well unknown to everyone except Mike. Then she got up in the open concert and sang. And got off that stage a star. Talis Kimberley is now probably the best known UK filker and has guested at pretty well every filk convention in North America, as well as here and Germany.

It was at FourPlay in 1992 that we discovered there were filkers in Germany, when four of them came to our convention. We've been visiting back and forth ever since.