Saturday 21 November 2015

Another angry post about comping.

I've posted before about how I get disillusioned about comping.  How it always seems to be the same people that win time and time again, and if your name is not on the approved list you will not win.  Now we have 'unboxing prizes' videos on YouTube alongside 'what I got through my letterbox' videos.  I could make a 'through my letterbox' video, but takeaway leaflets and bills are not that exciting.

The trigger for today's rant has been a twitter comp run by The National Lottery.

The lottery has now been running for 21 years - Happy Birthday!  And to celebrate this, as well as making 10 millionaires in the draw tonight, they are running a twitter competition to give away £1000 per hour for 10 hours.  There is a new tweet every hour which must be retweeted.  A winner is randomly selected from all retweets.  Or so they say.

A follower tweeted that they had entered every draw, as had I, and they had been made redundant a week ago and were worried about Christmas.  Really?  With five weeks to go to Christmas I would have assumed at least some provision would have been made by now, redundancy or no redundancy.  It's not like this is the first year we have had Christmas and it just kind of snuck up on you.



Well, lo and behold, they won that hour's draw and with a pretty much brand new twitter account too!

And yes, I know I have a separate comping twitter account but that was set up some time ago to avoid annoying my non-comping blog followers, and believe me, it has not been lucky!

And so I think it is time for another break, probably until the New Year.  I will still enter comps if I happen across them, but I will not be actively seeking them out.

So, to my fellow compers, good luck all and don't let the cheats get you down!


Monday 9 November 2015

OIQFC 30th Convention - Southport.

I have just returned from a very soggy Southport where the 30th Official International Queen Fan Club Convention was being held.

The 30th anniversary convention saw a return to Pontins at Southport - after a gap of 19 years - and also saw the return of the goody bag.


Included in the goody bag is a pen, keyfob, car sticker and stick of rock.  There was also a raffle ticket to win a free trip to Montruex!  I didn't win.

As always there was a convention t-shirt available to buy, this year it listed all 30 convention locations on the back, much as a tour t-shirt does.


(Apologies for the weird photo colour, not sure what happened!)

We had three fab bands on over the weekend - The Deputies, Robby Valentine & the Queen Kings - as well as various special guests taking part in Q&A sessions.

This years also saw the long awaited return of Tug Of War, an event that has not been held for many years due to that awful pairing - Health & Safety.  Unfortunately, whilst many of us Queenies are able to stay up well into the early hours enjoying a convention water or two, a lot of us are getting a bit too fragile for something as physical as Tug Of War so there were only 4 teams taking part.


The only criticism from me was that the floor cameras were not used enough.  We couldn't see the children's fancy dress, nor the fantastic floor routine from a talented young lady called Cerys.  These could have been projected onto the screens so we could all enjoy them, instead of just the people lucky enough to get seats at the front (I started queueing well before 7pm but still ended up at the back each night) but the bands, who were up on the stage and therefore visible to all, were projected onto the side screens.

There was a charity auction - raising over £4000 for the Mercury Phoenix Trust (MPT), there were raffles for the fan club and the MPT, and collections for McMillan and the Poppy Appeal.  A two minute silence was held at 11am.

This year you could also purchase the hard to get hold of, beer, vodka and wine.



Much as I am ashamed to admit it, what ruined it for me was the people I was with, if they weren't moaning about each other, they were complaining about the lack of facilities in the chalet.  If they weren't complaining about that, then they were moaning about not being able to see what was going on on the floor, or that they couldn't hear what was being said.

I feel obliged to them as they have looked after me over the course of the last 15 years or so whilst I have been travelling up alone, but now I feel like I want to spend more time not being moaned at!  Hopefully they didn't enjoy this year's event enough to go again next year.  Selfish I know, but I need a break!

Plans are already being made for next year, who knows where we will be.....