Revision 2014
The Party we've been waiting for
Written by CiH (former editor of Alive and Maggie diskmags)
All Photos by KeyJ and Ted
Screenshots by Salinga or taken from Pouet
Revision logo by H20
Prologue
So having finally been to a big all-format Easter demo party last year, without having the experience turn sour in some way or other, we actually went back for some more?
Yep, we did!
Okay, as I'm lazy and derivative, I'm going to use part of my introduction from the previous Revision report to sum me up.
"Although he is not a stranger to the bigger demo party, CiH is generally a shy woodland creature who prefers more intimate and smaller scale events. He can generally be found in a quiet corner of nearly all the Outline parties typing furiously into something or other. He goes insanely happy if anything interesting runs on a box with a fuji logo on it."
And yes, this is going to be a rather personalised perspective, a bit on the rambling side, and picking up on a lot of the travel and out of party aspects of my time in Germany, but that's what I do. Best get on with it then, before I completely run out of ideas. Yea, we are going to go a little bit realtime from this point on.
18.24 - Friday the 18th April 2014
We're safely ensconced at the party and have been so for a little while, now what do we normally do at this sort of time?
I know, write some stuff!
Setting the scene, I am in my seat in the main hall, a temporary home away from the domicile for the next three days. Nosfe and Topy are exchanging brotherly greetings immediately above my head. Topy is querying the availability of batteries for something or other. This is for an off the shelf toy helicopter that he purchased. He says it is surprisingly good and can carry a small payload? Is there something or someone at the party that needs bombing? No, but there might be things that are in desperate need of photographing from above.
It is early evening in the period where people are still arriving and anticipation is in the air for something to happen. It's not quite booze o'clock as yet. On that subject, I hope that Felice's anticipatory slavering doesn't get onto this keyboard.
A bit earlier, Friday the 18th April 2014..
At the entrance to the E-Werk, there is an intermittently sunny day with a breeze. We've managed to get our shit together for once and off to the party place early, so we are near the front of a good natured queue. Various people who have official stuff to do with the party are hurrying back and forth. Some of them, coloured in shades of Okkie, stop to talk to us with the help of a camera.
About twenty minutes later than they were supposed to, the doors open. We non-express ticket holders, Nicky and I, manage to get ourselves registered and accessorised with wristbands quicker than most of the express ticket holders. After waiting for express ticket holders Felice and Paula to catch up, we find a spot midway down the hall, more favourable in viewing the big screen than what was left to us last year. The quickest ever unloading and setting up of 'stuff' from the car then follows.
Going back further still, Thursday the 17th April
We're having a whole extra day to spend all over sunny Saarbrucken before the party starts. Castles are visited and much shopping is done by the female party members. The existence of a defunct in the UK clothing retail brand is too good to pass up for them. Many hours pass. This is ended with an amazingly keen meal at a potato themed restaurant in the evening. We're doing this by way of an early Happy Birthday to Felice too.
In contrast to last years shivery sojourn, Spring is performing its proper duties and the sunshine smiles on us. It looks like the rest of the weekend should be like that too, hopefully.
The start of it all, Wednesday the 16th April 2014..
And it had all been going so well..
We arrive at Saarbrucken in the early evening after a trouble free journey and a (very) early start, only to find that the crucial last mile is the most difficult we've experienced yet. A single missed turning, in a forest of barriers, road works and one way signs has consequences that reverberate for long tens of minutes afterwards. Everyone in Germany with a car is trying to get back home through the same city centre streets, the only movement coming from desperate impulsive drivers who switch lanes in vain to meet yet another dead end.
Eventually we break free of this epic pile of fail, and after a brief but hilarious parking misunderstanding with the hotel, manage to get into our hotel based HQ. The Ibis is filling in yet again for our needs. A perfect sensory storm of food, booze, prolonged journey longeur and general having to get up at 3am that morning shitfacedness all combine beautifully to drive us all to bed and sleep in a brutally non-negotiable manner.
The small gold coloured car that brought us here last year has been replaced with a metallic grey and larger model. Size is no barrier to it being massively overloaded in the usual tradition, with even more stuff purchased on the way over at Le Hypermarche Francaise! Of course we were talking about substantial amounts of Le alcohol. Much of this ended up inside Felice at the party. For the unlucky back seat passengers, 'people' were definitely an afterthought.
With the improved weather conditions and earlier time of day, the journey over was much pleasanter than before. One enjoyable feature was being able to enjoy the landscape leading up to Saarbrucken, which had been hidden in darkness last time.
Time slip
We're starting to go forward again, 6am-ish, Thursday the 17th April 2014..
Wake up, throat and mouth resemble a desert nightmare, head is gripped in a painful vice. Drink streaming cupfuls of water and this thankfully goes away again. Back to sleep mercifully quickly. I am good to go by the time official waking up takes place.
Back to right now... (Funk soul brother..)
Well we've managed to make ourselves known to a random selection of scene people. This Atari STE is occupying an aisle seat so has attracted some glances and a couple of visitors.
All our shite (*) is set up. My STE with UltraSatan SD Card hard disk replacement combo, which gave some nervous moments and bomb glitches on screen, generally when Felice was fumbling around setting up his stuff, whilst doing his best to test the 'surge proof' abilities of our power strips. I've also had a fiddle around with the RAM chips as these sometimes work loose over a journey. (Belgian road surface quality is dire!) That seems to have done the trick. Apart from this report text, the STE is hosting a random author's fancy of games and demos, with quite a lot of high colour (pseudo 15-bit) picture displaying going on too.
(*) - The spell checker flagged this word up, but gave me no rude replacement options?
Felice's somewhat amended Atari FrankenFalcon 030 is doing its thing next to me with a selection of classic demos. Further up we have laptops for him and Paula. There is a speaker system which was sending major sonic vibrations along this table earlier.
Our visiting party is the same tired (typo intentional!) and trusted team from last year, myself, Felice and his super spouse Paula, aka RainbowChazer, with one extra person. Namely Nicky, reluctant visitor to the Sundown party and gently persuaded to come here. She has been at the party but prefers the experience in small doses and she headed back to the hotel with Felice a little while ago. So right now there are just three of us. But it seems that she enjoyed today and will be back for moar!
Revision 2014 does not seem to be imposing a theme as strongly as the good vs evil bots did last year. The mood seems to be very relaxed in general, a subconscious decision on the part of everyone? Still there's one good rumour at this stage, courtesy of Gasman. There could be a return of The Black Lotus to the Amiga demo compo!
We'll see what else happens tonight, back later.
21.07
Britelite, who's definitely getting into the first night party spirit, has spotted my STE and made himself known. He's also made it known to me that he has some very interesting plans for a party I'm going to later this year. I won't say anything else in case it gets jinxed, but *should it come off* it is going to be something completely new and original, not just a port of an existing Amiga demo.
Earlier on, we've had an opening ceremony (This years slightly underplayed theme is 'Revision Rebel Alliance versus bloated mega-galactic ultra-party of the future') and indulged in outdoor chats with Nosfe and mOd/Silverlance. Amongst other things, we learn is that there is no full sized Alternative Party planned for this year. Never mind, how about 2015 then?
23.43
The live coding is strangely compelling to watch. I would not like to have to choose between the entries.
Felice may have indulged himself on fermented grape juice a bit too hard? He's on shaky ground. For the rest of us, (me and Paula) the going is still firm to good.
We've got Gasman on the main stage, who has been promoted to a major act from a prior cancellation. He's due to strut his keytar and ZX Spectrum stuffs shortly. He's a little bit nervous of playing such a prestigious gig. We're pretty sure that he'll be fine.
Then there's two more days of this to go. So what have we learned from day one?
It's been very sociable, with more people taking an interest in what this Atari STE can do, even compared with last year. One of whom was a fairly lubricated Britelite. We learned something of his plans for a future party. I am greatly looking forward to these.
Havoc has reached 'peak beard'. Truck still wins the 'Demoscene Santa Claus' award though. I think that's it for the lessons for today.
Felice has not yet returned... Ah, he has now!
Gasman is definitely getting ready, so I'll log off for tonight and get my ears ready. See ya tomorrow, text fans!
Saturday - The time is now!
Okay, what time is "now"?! That would be 13.45.
The last bit of last night, in brief.
After a stunning performance from Gasman, including the obligatory Okkie assisted 'Thriller', thoughts turn to home. Or for one of us, thoughts turn to wondering why gravity is such a bitch, as a wine boosted Felice misses the floor in a spectacular fashion. The first time around anyway. He found it again very shortly thereafter. A hard impact and some spillage ensues.
Somehow, he regains an upright position for long enough to cope with the shuttle bus, after trying to ask an innocent unconnected taxi driver, "Where he was going to?" When dragged away whilst being grilled by Paula as to what the hell he thought he was doing, Felice stated that he was "just curious."
We wearily arrive back at our hotel, with the 'special cargo' being carefully manipulated up the stairs and get to bed finally at around 02.30hrs.
We've taken our time since in getting up, enjoying breakfast (one person conspicuously less so than the rest) and taking a leisurely stroll along the river bank to the party. Nicky has opted to stay away and enjoy the peaceful ambience today, but she will be back with us for the whole of tomorrow.
Upon arrival at the party, a looming surprise shadow reveals itself to be gwEm, who is down to play a set on the second stage a lot later on. We catch up in the middle of the Protracker compo. He reveals there is an Atari ST invitetro for Sillyventure 2014, which is intended for release at Outline 2014 and he's doing the music for it. Which takes us up to now.
Felice's Macbook seems to be stranded somewhere in Felice's post-alcohol haze of non-recollection, as this is not here, but he's not sure if it went back to the hotel last night with him. Still, nothing else here has been touched, even down to the unopened can of sprite that was left next to my work station, so I guess it didn't go completely missing?
15.38
News latterly in, the Felician laptop did not go missing after all. He went back to check and found it had come back with him to the hotel, faithfully stuck to him in amongst all the drunken confusion. Pizza's have been eaten. The party catering seems to have had some team changes from last time, all of them good.
The head to head live coding competition is still strangely compelling. We've had semi finals and now the final. Some of the live stuff, created on the fly, was almost good enough to enter, or else if coated with currywurst sauce, good enough to eat. This is definitely one to rinse and repeat for next year.
"Green is the ultimate coder colour."
18.31
Surprise Nicky is back at Revision! She's only decided to bloody well walk in from the city centre and join back in with the party.
The aroma of pizza from the Revision party place is very strong and widespread, so it lured Nicky across town in a near starvation pizza dash. Or at least a slow stroll with a little bit of self misdirection on the way.
In other news, not a lot else is new. A sneaky mango ice cream was obtained from a corporate sponsor who were lavish with the freebies, but mainly towards people they might have got to join their mothership crew. CiH, lacking any IT skills, manages to finally use his inconspicuousness cloak to best advantage and purloin some anyway.
The first 'real' competition, oldschool music, is underway in a brassy cheerful fashion.
21.07
Twice the walk, with twice the fun!
I've been away for a while to repatriate Nicky back to the Ibis. This took place by the river and up bridges and with a short cut to the hotel that actually helped. I got back to the E-Werk as the last scraps of daylight were being swallowed by the unforgiving night. There was nothing amusing to report, apart from the joggers who set off some dogs going after them further back along the river. Also there were no werewolves, or their river bound cousins, werewolves with aqualungs.
Right now, it looks like there is a gaming compo running. With the very long gaps between entries, this has the dank aroma of live entries, extended delays and temperamental hardware with fumbled cable changes, in the dark.
Tonight will be oldschool night, so I will try to find some words to describe these entries in due course.
22.24
Log entry following a food van queue chat.
The always helpful Gasman has come up with some information about the impending oldschool demo compo. There are seven entries in total, with a strong Atari 8-bit bias! These will include two Atari VCS demos and two Atari XL entries. So a bit like part of a typical Sillyventure running order then!
There will also be two C64 demos, it would be surprising if nothing made it from that popular platform. Also we are to see one Amstrad CPC demo. Where that is coming from remains to be seen as there are several Amstrad CPC's scattered around the hall.
Still no further word on the status of any likely Amiga demos from reappearing scene royalty, as that one is being taken care of by another organiser who is keeping things very tight right now.
Sunday, 12.30 (hundred hours, not 00.00hrs!)
Catching up from last night...
There was far less alcoholic mayhem but even more lateness from the party. After the games compo imposed a time dragging vortex effect and delayed everything else, we were staring at both barrels of 02.00 even before gwEm was able to start his act.
After watching his set as far as possible, until the 3am shuttle bus was looming, it was at some point after 03.00 when we got back, quick marching through an abandoned city centre from the drop off point to our hotel. There is a night manager in reception. Our lairy appearance does not put him off opening the door for us, luckily.
The competitions were varied and of a generally high standard. Massively over-generalising, there were some easily observed differences between the PC and the Amiga/Oldschool categories. The 64k and especially the 4k PC stuff was showing off the sheer power with brazen displays of procedural willy waving and alien landscapes. The latter less powerful machines using a greater level of oldschool effects and tight design, with feelgood platform nostalgia to close the gap.
The 'blower away' for this series of compos came with the PC 64k entry, 'the timeless' by Mercury. This turned up the dial for enhanced realism generated from a tiny space to twelve! Eleven deemed no longer being an adequate measurement for overachievement.
The oldschool compo played out as expected. The running order for entries being on a 'best until last' basis, and it was the second VCS demo from a previously unseen crew, XayaX, that was that something a little bit special. 'Bang!' revolutionised the Atari VCS demo state of the art, in a similar fashion to 'Overdrive' doing so on the Sega Megadrive last year.
Our sometime BBC Master bothering friends from the UK scene, crtc, along with 3LN were responsible for the Amstrad CPC 464 entry. This was a slideshow, loaded bit by bit from tape. Not even the balm of a floppy disk to ease the coder's efforts. This was well received, during the oldschool compo (and in the voting, where it earned a well deserved second place. - After party note)
Anyhow, we're back right now, including Nicky, who is here for the whole of Sunday, and my new laptop, which is having its first demo party. Have fun, little Asus fella! (Mind you, Nicky is borrowing that, and I'm still typing on this STE. The seating
arrangements are designed for three people per table and are comfortable, even with one oldschool computer for each of the three people. With four at our table, three laptops, two Atari's, assorted bottles, hardback books, discarded bits of STE internal RF shielding and Felice's speaker system, desk space bandwith is rather choked!
So on the final full day, we have the big competitions to look forward to. Will TBL make their long awaited return to the Amiga with another smasher?
15.45
I'm on 62% battery life, which is about as good as things get.
We all spent some considerable time away from the hall, joining the party outside. The clouds outside threatened to rain on us, but apart from one or two incontinent spots, sensibly held off from doing so.
Nothing major has happened in the hall. A few of the earlier compos breezing by. Pleasant background music is being provided by the powerful big screen sound system.
Meanwhile, closer to home, the lack of time I've spent getting to properly sort out the new laptop comes back to bite as Nicky passes it to me with an expression of concern. Everything is fine until the preloaded trial version of Macafee Antivirus starts to run a scan, then the poor little notebook locks up as the hard drive is completely maxed out.
Snip! ** Following rant deleted after party - Let's keep the mood happy eh.**
(After party note:- I managed to tell the offending application to butt out, restoring function to the lappy.) I am, of course, writing this (live segment of the) report on my Atari STE!
19.18
A further set of competitions ran through. We're in the waiting period before the final parts of this final day. Firstly another bout of live music and general deejaying, then the final wave of big demo compos to finish up nicely.
We're also at the stage of the evening where some grown ups are possibly drunken, noisily excited and clumsy teenagers again for a few precious hours. Truck rocked up and he left me a bottle of some Belgian Duchesses beer. Which is quite strong but nice, in a lager/cider hybrid sort of way.
Elsewhere, the wine has run out, to loud complaints from Paula. who was expecting to replicate Felice's epic feats of drunkenness from the first night. She managed to find solace as someone in the hall was dishing out free gin and tonic. For my part, there is still a healthy dollop of amber spirit in the big bottle of Grants that came out with us, so I'm happy too.
20.20 (vision)
But it's not all about getting pissed up (Really? - Ed) as the first part of the final evenings formal programme is underway. We have Lugoober vs Hoffman on the main stage. At this point, it is hard to tell who is winning. There's blood, dismembered limbs and spilt beer all over the place. It's like the First World War all over again, with a rave soundtrack.
Noisy excited people are also outside. All too soon, it'll be time to darken screens.
So how did Revision 2014 go down?
Comparisons with the 2013 event are unavoidable. There were a lot of familiar elements from last year, but a few differences too.
Differences include the fact that we allowed ourselves an extra day, to give shattered minds and knackered bodies enough time to recover from the journey over. There was also a plan to enjoy Saarbrucken for a whole day on its own terms, before the party started. This can be judged mostly successful, although retail therapy on the part of the female party members sort of killed off the time for anything resembling museum visits. Never mind, maybe next time? There is at least one restaurant that would be worth a return visit. (Die Kartoffel, at St. Johanner Markt 32, 66111 Saarbrucken.)
The journey over was set fair, apart from the foul rush hour experienced at Saarbrucken. Will they ever get their road works finished?
The Hotel Ibis was as we remembered it, a comfortable base away from the party, with an amazingly keen and filling breakfast buffet. This place ticked all the reasonable comfort level satisfaction boxes for the female party members too.
We were better at managing the distance between the hotel and party place on foot. The optimal route being the path by the river Saar itself. Some of us spent quite a bit of time there. Who needs a fun run when all the exercise from walking you could possibly want is to hand! Fortunately, the games compo got itself extra delayed so nothing major was missed.
Felice managed to hit a full '8.5' on the drunkenness Richter scale for the first night. Falling over himself, forgetting all about what he had done the next day. The rest of the time he has been noticeably more careful at the party.
We managed our space and time at the party pretty well too. A relatively early arrival gave us a pick of the seating. This has been cozy, when all four of us were in residence. But we have managed to cram in two oldschool Atari machines, along with the laptops. My STE, after a first few minutes of concern, has behaved impeccably at the party, working for several hours at a stretch without complaining. Likewise Felice's FrankenFalcon 030 did as well. Did I mention no power outages and decent wi-fi provision, not as yet? I guess as this was a non-issue, I forgot until now.
As for the party venue, the E-Werk holds no surprises for us. The same level of competent organisation enjoyed last year is on display, with just a single forgivable competition delay. The theme, sort of 'futuristic demo party versus rebel back to basics approach' was a bit less strongly registered than last year's good vs evil bot theme for me.
The general feel of party, was like last year, with all the little things managed well. The atmosphere was very comfortable and relaxed. Picture several hundred diverse demo sceners, wrapped in a warm reassuring blanket of professionalism. There was lots of hard work by the organisers to make it all *look* easy. I'm sure it wasn't. Perhaps a report from the orga's point of view one of these days, would make interesting reading?
Entries, still awaiting the crucial Amiga and PeeCee big demos have been interesting, if not quite having the wow factor of a lot of last years stuff. The wild compos were noticeably more restrained this year. The oldschool compo was of high quality if at a slightly lower level of activity from last time. We did not have a fresh Atari STE demo from desperate French demo crews to enter this time. At least I didn't have to lose any sleep encoding a movie from a last minute emailed binary at 4am to get the compo entry to meet that particular deadline.
The live acts have been at the top of their game, including a couple of the more familiar faces from Outline, such as gwEm and Gasman. We have also enjoyed the unique sounds of TDK, the outdoor afternoon delight of Savanna, not to mention the big battle between Lugoober and Hoffman. We regrettably missed Knoeki's offering, and went home too early for Gasman's spontaneous last night outdoor session. (Has he watched too many episodes of the 'Kids from Fame'?!)
The food was even better than last year if that was possible. I believe we had the same crepes team, but there were revamps for the pizza and the grilled stuff with fries. I even got to try out Lyoner Pfanne for that essential hangover cure! (Which I also encountered in a more refined form on Thursday evening at Die Kartoffel.)
The party people outlook has been fairly sociable, with more people dropping in to see what my STE could do. Also a lot of semi familiar people such as Britelite and Lugoober made themselves better known to me (including someone who swung by to read this last sentence!) This bodes well for the near future event known as Outline. I also spotted Bittin at the gwEm gig as well. We need hardly mention familiar faces encountered all over the party such as Matt, rc55, Dotwaffle, Haomaru, Nosfe, Topy, Knoeki, Maali and the rest. But I will, otherwise they will get all sulky and resentful that I forgot to mention them!
A finished report will need to wait on the last part of this evening and the return, but at least this gives a good idea of the state of affairs until now. Generally, the wider demo scene appears to be in a very good state of health for 2014.
End of the realtime text. Now follows the undead textual part….
The tawdry and poorly recalled tale of the rest of the party and journey home..
Firstly, a word or two about some of the final wave of competition entries, as witnessed by us.
Taking the Oldschool intro category first, the winning entry came from Dekadence with an endearing prod called 'Cubescape'. This pushed the state of 4k very satisfactorily on a base Amiga. There was a positive reaction in the hall to a new entry from a very old group. Razor 1911 with 'Back in the Saddle' raised the game for the small intro on C64. This was a welcome return of a very old name on the C64 scene. One which started back in 1985.
A new category for the PC, the 8k intro allowed people to break slightly out of the 4k restriction, or else provide a safe haven for those unlucky 4k entries that were unable to slim down sufficiently. This gave us an industrial architect's fever dream given shape onscreen from Loonies, called 'The Bridge'.
With the switching around to accommodate extra Black Lotus anticipatory drooling, the PC demo compo took its turn as the penultimate thrill ride for Revision 2014. These are some of the highlights from my perspective.
'Insurance' by Cybercat was not massive, technically, but did reasonable justice to browser demos. It had a winning storyline, familiar to old time Elite space trading and combat fanatics like me.
'Oldschool Never Die' was also up for showing off the maturity of of the browser demo concept. We were treated to this prod by old time Frenchies lately returned to demo scene activities, none other than the Hemoroids! The demo itself was in a pumped up old school style.
'Scarecrow' by PlayPsyCo. Never has a pixellated cat been so well realised in a demo. There were shades of a Tim Burton movie with the scarecrow character. This was definitely a demo with a soul. If I was asked to name a personal favourite for the PC compo, this could be it.
The functionally titled 'VIP Invitation' by X-Men was seemingly just another party invite. However it managed to extend itself all the way to a proper demo. There were lots of witty touches and a little bit of dancing within.
The 'Wizard of Cos' by Panda Cube. A slowly unfolding thing of beauty, blurring the line between demo and film quality fantasy animation. The 'greets bookshelf' being very grin-worthy.
'Blitzgewitter' by Titan, neatly completed the dominance of the reinvigorated party invite at Revision 2014. Lots of neon glow, golden rain and particle flow to make a great show.
'Observatory' by Cocoon was undoubtedly the most 'traditional' high-end PC demo in styling and presentation. It was the winning entry for the PC demo compo as a whole, but didn't quite resonate with me personally.
The PC demos had gone on for a fair old while. There were nineteen entries in total, a few of which were blatant filler material and would have been better off in a different competition. The length of this competition had the unfortunate side effect of forcing the writer to choose between taking the 1am shuttle bus back to the city centre, or hanging on in an uncertain fashion for the Amiga demos, which still had no clear start time in sight.
As we had a prolonged journey home the next morning, we reluctantly tore ourselves away from the party and on to the bus. It turned out that the Amiga demo compo was not that far behind. Indeed, if the PC demos had finished even a little bit earlier, I may have made a different choice to stay, getting to see the fabled return of The Black Lotus live on the big screen, and not via Youtube a couple of days later.
Still, this was an issue only affecting a few of us, and not the party as a whole.
The end follows quickly, the Ibis beds are utilised one last time, much breakfast is eaten in the morning, many bills are paid, much screaming comes from the vicinity of me.
Our time back at the E-Werk is sufficient to repack our Atarian gear into its travelling bags and reload the car, more sensibly this time, so the rear seat passengers have somewhere to sit. After a few farewells, we quietly slip away from the party.
The journey back, the first part at least, flows as smoothly as a well buttered thing. Huge downpours as experienced in Belgium do not dampen our spirits. We get back to Calais in very good time, and even have a decent contingency plan to avoid the grimly overcrowded Eurotunnel terminal until we absolutely need to be there.
This involves a leisurely couple of hours back at the Cite Europe complex. A relaxing meal at the same restaurant that we breakfasted on the way out ensued. We even managed to get the same attractive waitress serving, who looked ever so thrilled to be made to wear a cowgirl outfit by her management. Following that, a further visit to the hypermarche francaise to restock the booze supplies that Felice had personally drank his way through at the party.
Only the restocking turned into a massive trolley based wine lake extravaganza and some extreme optimising of the remaining internal car space ensued. This is *just about* done, but Felice is cautioned not to carry out any emergency stops, otherwise death will come in wine boxed impact shapes. We shuffle back to the Eurotunnel complex. Dusk is falling, the queue for the customs posts is a very slow centipede shuffle of glowing tail lights. There is no hurry and we don't really mind.
The terminal itself is as overloaded with people as we predicted, with massive queues for all of the facilities. We stop only to utilise the most basic relief and head back to the car. Unfortunately, the evil imp demon of shitty journeys home on bank holidays reveals its presence, as the big blue departure board dumps all of its journey times back to blankness, due to a train breakdown in the tunnel.
Long minutes pass. However, it seems that Eurotunnel are frantically working out a plan, as new departure times appear, and we are eventually squeezed onto a relief train. (One of the HGV freight carriages, which was a bit different.) It is a little over an hour from our previously expected arrival time, when we burst out of the tunnel in darkest rainiest Kent. I would consider this a good result from such a major systems glitch. I really felt Eurotunnel were doing everything they could to unravel the problem as quickly as possible.
Once back in the UK, the rest of the journey is straightforward. Kent is covered by one big raincloud and is doing a really poor job of selling the UK as an attractive destination. However, once through the Dartford Tunnel, the extreme road drenching precipitation eases off and we get back around midnight to Felice's place.
Another hour of damp travelling back to Northampton follows for Nicky and I. So some time later, I finally get back home and to bed. Of course, the day after is not available as vacation leave. It has been pre-booked by other people for months beforehand, so I have to get up for work at 07.30hrs, just a few short hours later. I am feeling properly 'dead inside' that morning.
However, it slowly becomes apparent that we have made it unscathed through another Revision, with the happy memory bank substantially topped up!
Thanks Revision Party, you rocked (again)!
A final final thought?
There's an unopened small bottle of Calvados that went to the party and got forgotten. It travelled back with me. I guess that's coming to Outline next. It's not coming back! (And all for me, as Felice doesn't 'do' spirits!)
CiH - For Hugi, various times within the party and outside, April/May 2014.
Links related to this article
German Revision 2014 report at 4sceners
All Revision 2014 releases at Pouet.net
Revision 2014 photo’s at Slengpung
Revision 2014 report at Push n Pop
Official Revision 2014 website
Revision 2014 compos at youtube
Revision 2014 seminars at youtube
Revision 2014 extras at youtube
CiH
