15.04.10
Cleckhuddersfax
I were up in Yorkshire on Friday past. OK I’ll stop that now.
The BJC this year was in lovely Huddersfield. Not been there before and somehow I doubt I’d have picked it as a place to visit were it not for the BJC plonking itself down there and inviting us in. Surprised how nice the place was. Probably another of those “shush don’t tell the southerners how nice here is, we don’t want an influx” things.
Sadly I only managed to get there for about 12 hours from midday Friday. I’d picked the Friday as I wanted to see the BYJotY show. Word had it that the normal org Luke B had cried off, some pitiful excuse like “not being in Europe” no doubt. So it seemed young Tom D had valiantly stepped into his shoes instead. Not a bad play considering he only had 3 weeks to pull the thing into shape.
Not long before the BJC I’d heard more, that there weren’t many takers for the show. Could it really be so?
On getting to the site I slowly made my way to the main juggly hall, being constantly waylaid by lovely folk going “Ooh Alby, Hellooo!” and offering hugs and chats, from Dr H at the reg desk to the P-Bs once I finally fought my way into the hall.
Some juggling was done in the afternoon with some measure of success. Later I parked myself in the tent where Tom was stressing about the BYJotY show.
He’d managed to get himself a load of entrants the day before so the show was on. Mind you it seemed that many people who should have been around weren’t. And a workshop was due to take place in the tent at the same time the tech run was due to be held, and on and on…
Then, at the right time, a bunch of folk wandered in and dutifully played their own role in the show’s prep and things looked good.
In come the audience and then we begin.
Nina compered again and immediately apologised for her shocking use of the word “Lie-sester” last year but then ruined it by blaming Luke’s handwriting. But in the main she got on with it and things ran pretty smoothly.
The usual things happened, the drop count, the best trick comp (still using the old rules tho – still think 1 min per participant would be better, where the whole minute is the person trying to get their trick sorted rather than 10 secs per go). Perhaps she could have pushed the drop count game more during the interludes, maybe would have got more money if it’d been pushed more, perhaps even someone could have walked the queues before the show to garner money and participants, ah well maybe next time. (NB this is hindsight of course, I wish I’d thought of it at the time)
Notable in the show was our pal ^Tom doing his first go (and what would be his last due to being too old next year) at BYJotY. Droppy but funny and a worthy first go at jungling on stage.
There was a girl too! Emma-Jane I think she was called and she was pretty good. Not much joining in and connecting with her audience but the technical skills were clearly there.
Other notables were Jonny who won with a lovely routine of skillful juggling and having a lot of fun which he communicated well to the crowd; Josh and Lewis larking about and showing off some different skills such as head bouncing and sharing patterns – also the first ever double act (I think it was previously against the rules); and David Haslam with some excellent club juggling.
After all this was successfully concluded with Jonny winning just about everything and a couple of other silver awards (still no golds) Tom looked mightily relieved so I suggested food out with him and a few others. We ended up in an excellent steak place in town, good choice.
After about 2 hours of further wandering and goodbyes I headed home via a 2 hour night time drive. Lovely quiet roads at that time.
I’m left with a strange feeling of having missed an excellent convention but I did enjoy what I managed to see.
I do hope there’s a strong offer for next year, I’ve heard nothing beyond “someone has a plan”. Fingers crossed.
Cheers to the orgs, well done.
Pics from the day here.