BallyK - The Convention

Now, you know how it is. You're off work for a change, it's been so long since you had time off that you've forgotten what to do with it? Well, that was me on May 16th of this year. So, what did I do with my day I hear you ask. Well, I'll tell you. I spent the day lounging in one of the Royal parks, lapping up the sunshine and chatting with friends. Nothing unusual in that? Oh yes there is! The aforementioned friends were as follows;

Myself, Becky (she of the rival BallyK pages!), a Scottish solicitor called Janet, and Sweden's only living Steve obsessive, Susanna. Oh, and four baby polar bears called Peter, Peter, Peter . . . and Peter! So there we are. It was a global convention - London, Cornwall, Arbroath, Stockholm and the Antarctic! Long way to come to discuss eyebrows! It must be bad!

We were, officially, the first ever Ballykissangel convention. Susanna had come from Sweden the week before and Janet - never one for being left out - was on the next train from Edinburgh (vodka and all!). As conventions go, it was in it's infancy, but a terrific time was had by all. We sat around and looked at pictures and articles and discussed all aspects of Steve/Dervla/BallyK etc (I'll bet their ears were burning that day!) and bemoaned the fact that we'd all been together in London for two whole days and still hadn't managed to get ourselves invited round to Steve and Dervla's for tea and buns!

So, to cut a long story medium length, we spent an interesting four hours in Green Park, drinking our body weights in Coke, slowly turning a sprightly shade of red and getting some very strange looks from other lay-abouts in the park (especially when we took photos of the polar bears!) before we piled round to Becky's for BallyK and Drop The Dead Donkey. Perfect (except that I was still on the platform at Wimbledon station at 12.30am trying to get home, but that's a different story).

Here, I should explain the significance of the polar bears, and a few other things. The polar bears are symbolic of Peter and Assumpta's relationship. The reason being that the baby polar bear was the analogy that Peter used to describe his feelings towards being a priest. As the polar bear was unsure of himself because he was freezing, so Peter was unsure of his abilities as a priest because he was in love with a woman.

However, the mascots don't end there. The day before, myself, Susanna and Janet (thanks to Janet's severely overheated handbag in a pub in Covent Garden!) had discovered 'velvety' chocolate - the Cadbury's Wispa (bit of free advertising there!). Now, no one is more 'velvety' than Steve, so we just had to adopt it as the club's official chocolate bar and sales have rocketed!

And so endeth our tale. There are certain plans afoot to organise the next convention, probably on a bigger scale, but don't hold your breath! Tickets willl be available as and when . . . ! However, thanks to a certain somebody, Steve now knows of our little get together so we're keeping our heads down for a bit!!!

Click on the images for a rather . . . erm, larger version!
Photographs taken by Susanna Bäckström Many thanks Susanna for letting me use them.

To Susanna and Janet, thanks for the
polar bear. He sends his love!