igfest

It's not knitting, it's not pop but igfest was FANTASTIC!!!

I spent the whole weekend playing games round, through and in Bristol city centre - I am totally shattered, sunburnt, have lost my voice and may have broken two of my toes but oh my god, it was worth it... I had to crawl up the stairs to bed on Friday and Saturday night because I just could not walk any further.

It kicked off Firday night with Journey to the Middle of the Night - a chase across the city centre with people trying to catch us and stop us. I was so, so, so excited about this and have been for weeks now & suddenly for it to be here, I was scared that it couldn't possibly live up to my expectations. How wrong could I be? It was outstanding! We were emailed a secret location to start from and that was it - so nearly 200 of us set off from near Temple Meads towards Castle Park, where we found a nun telling us to find coins in the sand there and the evening just got better from there. I did get caught almost straight away but made up for it by catching 17 people - 7% of the runners on my own before joining up with the lovely Rhys for Team Turncoat!! We finished near the Ostrich pub about midnight & it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other as I had spent the night sprinting around Bristol, across roads, up hills...

After dragging myself out of bed on Saturday, I managed a full day of games - The Comfort of Strangers, Bad Taste Party, Rainbow Rain (that's me wiping a strange man's face!), Sneaks & Blaggers & the igparty. I could spend hours talking about all of these & pages of this - it was so much fun!! So briefly, Comfort of Strangers was a game using an bluetooth device to pick up other players - your team gave you life & the other team removed it - eerie in a crowd! Bad Taste Party - fashion police gave chase across Broadmead (!) to players wearing bad taste clothes - pretty risky in the centre as there were so many people with bad taste anyway!! Rainbow Rain - coloured water fight that descended into chaos when we were given powder paint to throw at each other :) Sneaks & Blaggers - snakes & ladders in a multi storey car park, sort of. Again I staggered home & into bed.

Not to be beaten, I went back Sunday morning for more playing - The Lost Sport of Olympia, Congestion Zone & Korean Lazer Ball. I had a lovely morning in Castle Park playing the first two games which were relatively laid and easy to enjoy. Then in the afternoon I met the lovely Rhys again who invited me to join Team Hat for the Lazer Ball contest - that's right we all had hats on - I looked very fetching in a NYPD hat!! The aim of this game is to score points by directing a laser into a circle on the wall - sounds simple, eh?? We were nearly beaten in the first round but made a massive comeback to win our first game & we were very popular with the crowd!! Alas in the semi finals we couldn't find our mojo & were beaten by the eventual winners!!

What a weekend - fantastic! Play, go & play more! If you see street games, go & take part, you'll love it...

Oh & if you want to see quite how mad we all looked - check out flickr!!