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/ index.htmlThis was the first gathering of lifestyle furries in the United Kingdom. Having heard what a wonderful time the US furs were having at Albany Anthrocon, we decided to arrange something for ourselves on a much smaller scale - there were just seven of us: Locandez, Matt Squirrel, Sandroo, Swampy, Utlah, Zebedie, and myself.
Oxford was chosen as being more or
less the geographic centre of the various furs who wanted to
attend, it had good road and rail links, and empty university
accommodation - in this case the Isis. I did most of the
organising, although I was only there for two of the four
days that it ran. Things seemed to go well enough in my
absence.
I arrived around midday on Saturday, a bad set of roadworks and a village fete extending my journey time. I heard that the previous evenings curry had been a bit disappointing. We wondered off into the centre of Oxford in search of lunch. In the pub we chose, they were setting up a large fan in order to try and cool things down - the weather was proving very hot.
The afternoon excursion was to a wood, but it proved too well ordered to be of huge interest to furs [Group photo]. Given the heat, a drink at a nearby pub was in order. Then back to the Isis to debate what to do for dinner. Eventually hunger got the better of us at 9pm or so and we took to the streets to find food.
The
Moonlight Indian restaurant proved an excellent find, besides
being aptly named for a bunch of were and furry types, the
food was excellent, and reasonably priced, and best of all it
had air conditioning - still a rarity in Britain as we draw
to the end of the 20th century.
Traditional English
breakfast was provided by the Isis, then we set out for
another walk in a wood near the Thames. This quickly became
known as Utlah's wood, as he had originally spotted it on the
map. It proved much more suitable than the first wood -
having several promising paths that dwindled to nothing along
the bank of the river. Sandroo took us back to more well
trodden areas, hacking through nettle patches with a broken
umbrella.
I
guess its only natural that I would find the boney remains of
some long dead creature, but I don't think any of us were
expecting the strange structures we found as we left the
wood. Pyramids and other geometric shapes fashioned from
sticks and binder twine were grouped around a chicken wire
effigy of two deer, almost suggesting a magical ritual.
Attempts to get served food in a pub on one of the hottest Sundays of the year proved fruitless, so we settled for a trip to the supermarket, and lunch in one of the rooms at the Isis. Utlah was the first of us to have to leave, and seeing him of at the train station marked the beginning of the wind down. After another trip to the Moonlight, I was the next to have to leave. I think the lump in my throat rather stopped me from enjoying the meal as much as I'd otherwise have done.
On the whole it went well, and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Two years later, with events like the Therians Easter meet drawing around 50, getting seven furs together in one place doesn't seem like much of an achievement. But, it still seems significant, perhaps because those hot late-summer days marked the point at which the alf community in the UK had reached the critical mass needed to sustain a meet.