Big Geekend returns for its eighth year

This time those showing off their enthusiasms ranged from radio lovers GNet, who offered people the chance to have a go at being a presenter, to fans of Japan, Dungeons & Dragons and metal detecting.

For one participant the afternoon was one of the first things she had done as The Guernsey Scientist.

Liz Sweet’s day job is managing the Biological Records Centre: ‘Fossils don’t fall under that because we don’t have any in Guernsey,’ she said.

Her love of fossils in particular and science in general led to her creating the persona of The Guernsey Scientist in order to promote science in the island.

‘Science should be for everyone and it should be interesting,’ she said. ‘I find so many things cool and want to share them, but there’s only so many things you can tell your family about before they’re like “go away”.’

Among the items she had to show was a life-size model of a sabre tooth cat skull, a claw from a creature that many might think was a velociraptor, thanks to Jurassic Park, but was in fact from a fish-eating dinosaur called a barionix walkeris, and a genuine preserved fossil of a tiny plesiosaur which she said was probably a million years old.

Old hands at the Geekend were also present again in the form of the Guernsey Wargaming Club whose members on this occasion were showing off a Second World War table top campaign that was inspired by a modern wargame that club member Ben Chapple described as a ‘post apocalyptic Mad Max’.

The campaign would usually last about 90 minutes but was proving to take somewhat longer since so many visitors had stopped to chat.

More modern gaming was represented in the Sir Charles Frossard Lecture Theatre where fundraising group Guernsey Gamers For Good had set up a Nintendo Switch connected to the main screen and was giving people the chance to get their name to the top of the leaderboard in Super Mario Kart.

On a smaller screen nearby was a less known title, Ultimate Chicken Horse, which GG4G chairman Darren Ringland said was a game in which every time a player completed a course they were able to add another obstacle to it and then the challenge would be to complete it again.

Tying in with Guernsey Museum’s own on-going Vikings-themed displays was a craft section where cardboard Viking masks could be decorated or people could try their hand at weaving a bracelet or a bookmark.

Museums’ access and learning manager Jo Dowding was also demonstrating a rather more elaborate loom, a weighted warp loom.

Twins Lillyanna and Sophie Brown, 10, had a go at weaving a bit of their own: ‘I made a bookmark,’ said Sophie.

Both had enjoyed seeing the different stands: ‘I liked the Japan room,’ said Lilyana.

‘I liked the drawings the D&D lady did,’ said Sophie.

‘The D&D lady’ was 21-year-old Hayley Corbet, who was showing off some her fantasy artwork as well as talking about her enthusiasm for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, which she said she played several times a week with friends via the internet.