B t B t

Ok ok ok I know, terribly slack of me, but I'm here now and ready to bore you senseless with more beatbox-related shenanigans!

Last Friday (the 8th), I went up to London to witness the 2007 UK Beatboxing Championships. I got collected in Portsmouth by the incredibly sweet Fat Tony, who came and looked after me even though trains are evil, and whom I've been wanting to meet for ... oooh, weeks. Months. Once in London, we picked up Philippic (who is an absolute sweetie) and wandered around Angel Islington trying to find Grace (Bellatrix's friend). Bear with me, the names might get confusing, especially since everyone has two. We found Grace in the end, and went back to loitering outside the venue.

Y'see, everyone was going to arrive at 5, so we got there early. Quite early. Well, very. And we waited outside as people pointed and whispered (Tony was dressed as Russell Brand, it's a look that certainly gets a lot of attention!) After a while, BeatMuppet, YasSon, etc. all turned up from booking a room at the Generator (the hostel we were to spend the night in). Then everyone turned up.
Everyone.
All the people I had been so nervous of meeting, and a few it hadn't even occurred to me I might meet! Shlomo, the Petebox, TyTe, Bellatrix, Hobbit, some incredibly talented people. I don't think I was too star-struck, maybe I went a bit quiet at first but it soon passed, simply because they're all such awesome people.

The London finals started two hours later than expected, which was cool as I got bonus time to talk to people and get hugs ;) and they rocked. I could honestly not believe the skill in that room. I was hanging around with Phil and Tony feeling way less awkward than I expected to, and loving every minute of it!

Then came the UK finals, held in a packed club. Shlomo's set was every bit as good as Tony had promised it would be. Scratch's was awful, there was some pretty heavy distortion, but after that came the finals...

Fozzie shouldn't have gone out that early if he's as good as BM swears he is. He paced himself wrong, held a lot back for the next rounds which sadly never came. BM was not a happy bunny. Or indeed a happy mammal of any description.

The semifinals between Bella and Beardyman were absolutely genius, very entertaining dynamics going on there! (Bella's 18, win the for?! Truly amazing skill.)

Now, don't get me wrong, the championships were legendary (Beardyman won, naturally), but that wasn't the best part. The best part started afterwards. BM was trying to round up everyone so that we could get back to the Generator, but leaving is never that easy, especially when a few members of the party have been drinking. He had to physically carry Brown out of the club twice while YasSon looked for his bag and fished some Tea Tree oil out of his pint.

The journey back was entertaining to say the least, I alternated between shepherding along the slightly unsteadier people and talking to BM and TyTe.

Ok, all of you know how much I've been going on about TyTe. Well don't expect to hear the end of it any time soon because he's LOVELY, a truly stellar man and a legend in the flesh. Good hugger too. And friendly. He TALKED to me. (And I talked back, don't get the impression I was just stood there going "Heehee... you're TyTe, you are", no, I was just fine thankyou.) Then he left, because he had to be alive for the next day...
And as for BeatMuppet... well. He's a Christian, the most physical beatboxer I've seen, he likes Discworld, and recommended Velvet Elvis to me, and threatened to improve my vocabulary (can you believe it!) AS WELL as being a computer geek. So, you know, it was good to talk to him.
UPDATE! Enough time has now passed that I can clarify: "it was good to talk to him" means "he is My Type in every way that matters, and I developed a fun crush on him more or less instantly."

We got to the Generator at about 4am, it was getting light already and we were all knackered... especially poor Hobbit. He'd been performing on stage, and had to be up at 7, so he was quite keen to get to sleep. Nobody else was. It just wasn't happening. The constant stream of innuendo regarding bottles, cucumbers, and even Zippy (who never sounded that perverted before) were enough to keep me laughing till I cried. A truly awesome night.

I'm missing out so much here but I'll try to keep it short. The next day we got kicked out at 10 and all went our separate ways by tube and train; Yas, Yas's friend whose name I feel bad for not remembering, Tony and I caught the same train back and talked all the way. Yas is a sweetheart. In the end, I hugged Tony goodbye, and went home... knackered, but happy.

And, just because I haven't mentioned them yet, I'd like to say how great it was to meet Bevis, Typerite, Vig, Skitz, Magda, and argh I've forgotten her name, the one with the gorgeous hair.

They were all lovely, I will most definitely be meeting them again, and I've been staying in touch with BM because he's way awesome.

So that is it! That is what I did with my weekend! That is what I've been hyped about ever since! And five gold reader stars if you actually got this far, well done you.