RavenMuse
Posts: 4030
Joined: 1/23/2006
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OK, firstly a small disclaimer. The event was quite possibly a lot better than *I* experienced as I had one of those typical "Life taking a dump on you out of the blue at an inapropriate moment" things hit the morning before I went off to the event that I'd been looking forward to for months. A splitting stress headache isn't the best filter for seeing life enjoyably through.
The Venue: SeOne is nice and easy to find and to get too. Get off the train at London Bridge, a two minute walk and there you are, almost literaly right around the corner and in the que to get in. Most of the downsides to the entire event however lay at the feet of the venue, not at the Kinkfest organisers. (But at least they accept such events, unlike many others).
Firstly, if you say you have Air-con I expect it to be nice and cool in there. FFS get in touch with companys over the other side of the pond, One thing Americans DO know about and do well is AC equipment. There wasn't one moment the whole weekend where I was a reasonable temprature. It was too damn hot!
Sure you are there to make a profit. The bar prices will be higher than outside. That is a given. But £2.50 for a small glass of fucking COKE is taking the PISS!!!! LAM gives you the same... 'with lemon' for 50 pence... even a pound would have been within tolerance, £2:50 was a joke and a bad one. Especialy in that heat and not being allowed to take drink in with you.
If you are normaly a no smoking venue. Either stick to that and provide people with maybe one smoking point OR Provide ashtrays. Some of us smokers are not uncivilised arseholes who are comfortable just dumping our ash and butts on the floor. (I ended up using the last dregs of my coke in plastic glasses as an ashtray and to put out my butt! Very unsightly but better than using the floor)
Management tip. Many of the punters you bring in at such an event, IF you make a good impression just might choose to frequent your place if they go out looking for a club, or even give you good 'word of mouth' recomendations. It also works in REVERSE.
Please not those elements are PURELY down to the venue and no reflection of the organisers. The organisers of Kinkfest did a damn stirling job under quite hard restrictions (Local goverment where busy meddling right upto the eleventh hour) and still managed to put on an enjoyable and EDUCATIONAL event (For any Local government meddlers reading along, I stress again just how EDUCATIONAL it all was!)
So now my major gripes are out of the way, what was actualy happening?....
OK first on the way there, actualy on the train... Next time I need to remember to check that if I have my girl work out how to get to her place after some event, I need to double check that she has brought the piece of paper she wrote it all down on with her.... before we get on the train and it is too late to actualy look it up myself. *Chuckle* Shes a sweetie but has as big memory problems as her Master!
So we get there, very hot, wind our way through the clubs 'welcoming' security and searches. Throw insults at Edge (StrictHedgemonic here on CM) who was on the door to the event proper, just past the clubs 'welcoming committee'...any delays getting in was obviously his fault, probably got his jockstrap twisted and needed a team of experts to lower his voice again from 'choirboy' so he could welcome people properly
First port of call the bar for coke... after recovering from shock at the price of said coke settled down for a chat with Thunder and the lovely Wildancer (Who I'm sure must have changed her hair since last we met as I almost didn't recognise her.... either that or its just my aged memory playing tricks again)
Then the stage started up with a play, causing a minor problem as half the club was closed off for the friday night (Only half the stalls where there and no workshops) and the only entry to the stalls that where there was by the side of the stage and the preformers wanted the door kept closed for the duration.... which wasn't appreciated by the stall holder and a portion of the punters who wanted to go spend money.
I watched a little of the play but it failed to grab me (The play I saw a coupld of months back "Heelz on wheels" at Croydon clocktower was far superior)
Eventualy the play finished and the doors to the stalls opened. It was a little cooler in there so helen and I requisitioned one of the couches for a while before wandering back inot the main area.
The caberet was OK, even if the compair (Rosie Legossi) was more suited to childrens TV presenting than being a Domme or a compair.... I know a number of Dommes who would have been spitting feathers at such a parody of Dommeness, but I am sure SOME people found her entertaining.
We headed off just before 1am to try and find our way back to helen's. Dispite my girlie not being able to remember where the bus she'd looked up was ment to leave from, her Master didn't take long to work out a route and we headed for the relivant bus stop. London has one of the best transport infrastructures in the world... upto about midnight, when like cinderella's coach, it turns into a pumpkin!
The first two N35's that turned up you couldn't have got on using a shoehorn and a gallon of goosegrease. The biggest downside of the wait was a girl hopping up and down dying for a wee, the upside was bumping into Foxyspank and her posse of subbies.They hopped on a bus to Brixton where they hopped to make their way more easily back to the outer reaches of London whilst we waited for yet another N35.
Fortunatly the next such bus was less busy and we managed to get on and within a couple of stops even get a seat. Reaching Brixton... Foxyspank and co. got on our bus having failed to find a better route home. We had a bit of a chat till getting to Clapham junction from where they still had about an hours journey to where they where staying. helen and I fortunatly only had a ten minuit ride up the road and where soon having an inexpensive LARGE drink of juice before catching some rest.
I woke her again at 8:30 so we had time for breakfast.... and to eat something before jumping on the train back to London bridge. Another hot day and again, dispite the price coke was first thing needed. Then meeting the bunch of wayward reprobates from my local Munch (Lovely bunch of people). Girlie got all shy for some reason and virtualy hid under my armpit (Did I mention she is quite short).
Spotted foxyspank a little later whilst she was manning (Womanning?) the kinky tombola booth. Just felt lucky so sent helen over for six tickets and she came back with a big beaming smile having got 3 prizes from just 6 tickets. Including a nice little pinwheel.
A quick wander round the stalls (both sections where open by now) and it was time for the first workshop I had wanted to attend. "Domination and submission" by Lawrence (My event guide is still at helens so maybe she will follow up with better details about who Lawrence is). Clinical psychologist working with 'interesting' people... and very much one of us so, as one would, has looked deeply into the hows and motivations of WIITWD.
Didn't really 'learn' much as I worked with similar people in the hospital and have followed much the same thought process and annalysis myself... albeit without much of the correct terminology. The only surprize was when he asked the room "Anyone here NOT a pagan" and not one single hand was raised. Shouldn't have been such a surprize and the pagan mindset tends to have brought one to break a lot of social conditioning anyhow.... and so does WIITWD. But hadn't connected the dots on that one myself till he mentioned it and then found myself thinking "Duh! That was obvious!"
Met the lovely xaria in the workshop but didn't really get much chance to chat.
Another wander and another mini-munch before catching the end of the 'punch play' demo by the leather family before chopper did his canning demo that I wanted helen to see. Chopper is about the only person I have mentioned to her than I would quite happily be out of arms reach of her with him using a cane on my girl.... so she now knows the level of compitance I am talking about before I am confident of someone playing with my girl outside of my direct supervision. She seemed quite impressed with the way he approached the subject too.
She particularly liked the patterns he left on one of the girls. But I'm going to have to get a somewhat lighter cane before doing that, my current one is a lot too thuddy to play with patterns.
Not long after that, the level of headache I had finaly started to take too much of a toll on me. About 6:30 I headed off. helen did end up returning for most of the rest of the evening so I may see if she can cover the rest of it as well as maybe adding to what I have written.
There maybe have been downsides with the venue, but there certainly wasn't with the people.A great event and hopefully next year I won't have a stress headache getting in the way of me enjoying it.
_____________________________
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
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