Mud. All of it!
Maelstrom was... Interesting, as ever!
As some of you may have gathered, after a couple of very dry winters and not a lot of rain last summer (by our standards), England, and particularly the southern half of England, was suffering from a drought. Drought is relative (it was still largely a Green and Pleasant Land), but we had hosepipe bans and were being encouraged to save water all over the place. Water tables were significantly depleted and rivers running low. Reservoirs were at a low not seen since 1976.
Then we had 'summer'.
It was chilly. It was wet. Boy was it wet! Places were getting a whole month's worth of rain in less than 24 hours - repeatedly! We went from drought to floods, and sadly several folk were lost to the waters.
Easter's Maelstrom was cold. Freezing! Then damp.
May's maelstrom was a bit soggy round the edges. There were muddy hems and plodging was the preferred method of visiting the po!
This last weekend followed six weeks of solid rain. Sometimes VERY solid rain. Two days before we set off, the raven and I had to retreat from the noise as hail fell on the conservatory roof!
I consoled myself by baking cake!
Well, Lady Serenity Dance was getting married, and it behooved her sister, the Valiant Lady Prudence, to make sure she was married in style! So, cake. This is, after all, a Flembic wedding, and Flambard runs on cake.
This time we went Shop Light: far less 'stock', and no paste table. Oh, and no mirror!
We took extra tarps. They were needed.
We were promised good weather for the weekend. Well... Ok, it was good. We traveled up on Thursday, leaving later than we originally planned as work was going bonkers, and arrived on site while it was still daylight, after stopping on the way for a pasty and coffee (Pasty Presto! Nom!). Thank all the gods for the long gloaming of the British Standard Summer! We got the two OOC tents up and nipped off to the bar for a quick pint before bed.
The fire was lit!
Smell of beer, woodsmoke, damp wool,and horse... What could be better!
Thursday wasn't the warmest summer day on record by a very long chalk, but at least it didn't rain, and it only rained lightly overnight. But because it had rained significantly in the previous weeks (Silverstone is a couple of miles away, and they'd closed car parks because of the mud problem the previous weekend), on Friday morning, when we wanted to set up the 5m bell tent and the gazebo, the gate to the IC field was blocked. Bill The Galactic Hero (chief site wrangler) opened it for about half an hour at about eight in the morning, so we quickly got both cars down there, found our spot, and set up. Most folk had to get their kit trucked down in relays by Bill and the other Red Caps (the set-up crew who wrangle all the PD tents) in the trailer with one of the 4WD's or the tractor. The hurry was because it was supposed to be dry in the morning, with rain later, and we did not want to be putting tents up in what promised to be another monsoon!
This is the top of a hill. We were camping in a swamp!
To make our camp work, we had to put the bell up over a puddle. Thank the moon and stars for a hefty groundsheet! I LOVE THE GROUNDSHEET!
We got the tents up, and then unpacked the kit out of the cars between showers and thunderstorms. At one point there was a small stream running over the gazebo groundsheet. Oh look, says one wag: you have running water!
Yeah. Thanks, we'd noticed! Decision made that we were not going to deploy Tristan and Isolde, the flat-pack dress stands, nor set up shop in the gazebo as usual. The rail went up IN the tent, and all we did in the gazebo was shelter from the worst of the weather and cook. Set-up song was Flanders and Swann:
Our Friday morning shopping list expanded from lemonade and fizzy water to include a yard broom, some doormats, and a mop!
Due to a couple of mix-ups, we were a long oval rather than the circle I envisioned when I sent out the ground plan! Someone had made a rough copy of the plan on a small oblong bit of paper rather than printing it out, and the marine's tent and the Hartnel's tent were a good ten yards closer together than they should have been, making a long narrow passageway... Then the Assilio tent was found to have most of the long poles missing. This is a round party tent style tent, with lots of white poles. It's stored with the PD tents... Sadly, at the back end of last year, most of their party tents fell to bits, so were skipped. After the last event, we can only surmise that someone saw the bag of Assilio poles separated from the tend bag, assumed they were old PD party tent poles for which there was no longer a tent, and skipped them... We had to wait for a replacement tent to go up, to plug the gap in the defenses, as it were, and in the meantime, our camp was being used as a thoroughfare. At this point I had time to take some pix...
Thank goodness we didn't have to cook on Friday evening! A group of us (the Ladies Serenity, Prudence, and Blythe Dance, Lady Jeannette, Lady Eva and another) went to the Jade Lotus for dinner, which was utterly delishshshsuusss! I had hot and sour soup, followed by pork in a rich sauce, with noodles. Nom! Lady Serenity's hen Night! :D And they had set up tables because of the mud. Their usual cushions on the floor and low tables were not possible. ' Cushions have become sponges, so we have tables. Is making serving difficult as we are not used to serving so high up!'
Saturday morning dawned fair and bright. There were some clouds scudding about high up, so the heat wasn't too oppressive, but the ground was sodden and churned up by the passage of many feet and wheels. We'd tried barring the 'gate' to our camp during set-up to stop people using it as a main thoroughfare to the rest of the camp, but there were large areas that were really only passable in waders or wearing splatchers!
The Mastodon from Secret Water.
The bit outside the bar and up by the traders tents got so bad that Bill hired a mud slurping lorry and sucked some of it up. Then they put down some boards where they could. For a a hilltop, it made a very good marsh! For a while, with having swept the worst of the wet out and put down a couple of doormats between the gazebo and the bell, we had, I swear it, the only mud-free zone in the entire IC camp!
Saturday morning there was a certain ampount of Diplomacy going on, with Negotiatiomns and STUFF HAPPENING. I missed most of it as I was being an Invisible Household Fairy (not in costume and wearing a yellow armband) while I set up the first part of the wedding tea. Once frocked up and suddenly visible, Pru and Serenity finished making sandwitches, made lunch, and then got ready for the wedding.
Lord Cyrill had fun!
It was at about this time that I complained to one set of traders that their boot-washing swamp was a bit mucky, and perhaps they should think about changing the water! At least we coul;d laugh about it.
The mud was drying by now, but not really fast enough. There was a hell of a lot of it, after all! But what we did was put the new tarp down in the Hartnel tent, plus the carpet, and then Serenity paddled over in her undies and a wrap, and dressed in the Hartnel tent. She then stayed on the carpet!
There was the most elegant frock in the known world! Over 100 roses... Regular readers may realize tha this one has been seen before... Mostly in a very civilized hotel in Retford! Wearing it in a muddy field was just perfect. The wedding was conducted by the governer, and then had all the blessings from as many appropriate priests and magistrates as we could round up!
The wedding was followed by the most elegant Champagne Tea! Bottles of frivolous pink bubbly (Aldi's finest pink cava that tasted faintly of roses! Definately flavoured with PINK!) and a positively Lucullan feast!
The menu included smoked salmon sandwiches, stuffed vine leaves, quiche, cheese scones, scones with jam and cream, banana cake, fairy cakes (chocolate ones and vanilla ones!), a wedding cake (chocolate madiera cake with cherries in, covered with marzipan and white chocolate!), chocolate hazelnut bonbons, and, inevitably, three different types of tiffin!
During tea some of the magistrates needed to go and conduct a trial.
But the bard kept on singing...
Serenity did manage to escape from the tent, finding about the only bit of dry grass in Flambard to stand on, before she and Lord Sancroft had to go and cut the wedding cake!
There was real cake cutting with a knife...
Ah! Less mud!
Finally drying out!
Later there was a masked soiree, with bard. He's a good bard, and hard working. Certainly earned his share of the pink bubbly and cake!
Later in the eveing a certain masked "Jenny'" got a tad bored with the soiree and wandered off to the bar with the butler and the gate guard. While there, the Lady Eva, priestess of the Huntress, was murdered! Serenity came storming back into camp, swearing vengance. Another of our key characters gone! (Chalky, whio plays the bard, used to play the boss of our marines until that character was murdered at the Easter festival.)
During the night there was an attack on Novak's, and various other bits of camp, and lots of folk were wounded. Lord Sancroft was amongst the wounded, and Serenity had a few anxious moments! But he was dealt with efficiently, and soon made a good recovery. Prudence managed to practice her Useful Skill, and staunched another wound for a few seconds until the sugeon took over. Between now and the next festival, she has arranged to complete her own surgical studies. Then there came a garbled and panicked message that the Malathians had been attacked and were dying for lack or sugeons. Lady P galloped off behind Stefano and the Mob, only to find it was all for nothing. The Malathian wounded were all dealt with.
Lord Sancroft was pleased to accept the gift of Partial Light Armour from his new sister as a wedding gift, as his own armour had been damaged in the fighting.
The night ended in rhumour and muddle, but at least it was dry! By now the mud was mostly of the constistency of warm plastecine, and attracted to boots like planets to a black hole! We didn't so much want a doormat as a boot scraper. There was a Sacrificial Spoon for scraping the clarts off at the tent entrance, but even so, the carpet got a bit mucky. (The raven says it has washed up a treat, though.) Lady Prudence withdrew to allow Lady Serenity Dance Hartnel to enjoy her wedding night... ;)
By morning, the place had dried up so much that the main gate was more dustbowl than swamp!
The ladies of Flambard set off across the field, under escort, to visit The Bitter Moon Teahouse for their usual Ladies Meeting. Talk was mostly about how we were to cope without the Lady Eva, what to do about vengance (moderation seemed to be the key: Lord Cyril came to join us, along with one of the snake people. But the Huntress herself? Who knows... ) as well as plans for the next festival.
The End Is Nigh! Even the rocks get up to speak!
Back in Flambard, everything looks a lot pleasanter. It was getting a bit hot by now!
The butler, Bakerly, was looking rather the worse for wear... I believe this was after an encounter with a potion, but I shall need to ask hime. He's nothing like as prim as he pretends!
Then, sadly, it was 3:00pm, and Time Out. Some folk have to be back at wiork on Monday, so Take Down starts pretty much straight away/.
We did discover that there was Cake Emergency! Too Much Cake! again: we didn't want to bother taking it home, so we yelled to the camp, and crew and players decended. There was nothing but crumbs shortly after that! I later discivered a whole Banana Bread loaf in the chilly bin, so that was addd to lunch for the crew on Monday.
As the penguin was crewing, we were staying over for Monday anyway, so the raven and I earned our dinner at the crew party by sorting lammies on Sunday evening and again Monday morning after getting the OC camp packed. After lunch we went home in a fairly leaisuly way, stopping a couple of times for iced coffee.
Altogether, a highly satisfactory time was had by all. But there's an awful lot of washing to do! So far:
Pru's frocks
The giant chemise and the Elizabethan shirt etc.
A dark load with the blasck petticoat
The judo jacket, lump of cloth (these need to be dyed for a sewing project) and the towels I had to buy because I forgot to pack any...
The duvet cover and the quilt
...and more!
And while we were away, Himself and the GMNT went and got my sewing tables for me... But that's for another time!
As some of you may have gathered, after a couple of very dry winters and not a lot of rain last summer (by our standards), England, and particularly the southern half of England, was suffering from a drought. Drought is relative (it was still largely a Green and Pleasant Land), but we had hosepipe bans and were being encouraged to save water all over the place. Water tables were significantly depleted and rivers running low. Reservoirs were at a low not seen since 1976.
Then we had 'summer'.
It was chilly. It was wet. Boy was it wet! Places were getting a whole month's worth of rain in less than 24 hours - repeatedly! We went from drought to floods, and sadly several folk were lost to the waters.
Easter's Maelstrom was cold. Freezing! Then damp.
May's maelstrom was a bit soggy round the edges. There were muddy hems and plodging was the preferred method of visiting the po!
This last weekend followed six weeks of solid rain. Sometimes VERY solid rain. Two days before we set off, the raven and I had to retreat from the noise as hail fell on the conservatory roof!
I consoled myself by baking cake!
Well, Lady Serenity Dance was getting married, and it behooved her sister, the Valiant Lady Prudence, to make sure she was married in style! So, cake. This is, after all, a Flembic wedding, and Flambard runs on cake.
This time we went Shop Light: far less 'stock', and no paste table. Oh, and no mirror!
We took extra tarps. They were needed.
We were promised good weather for the weekend. Well... Ok, it was good. We traveled up on Thursday, leaving later than we originally planned as work was going bonkers, and arrived on site while it was still daylight, after stopping on the way for a pasty and coffee (Pasty Presto! Nom!). Thank all the gods for the long gloaming of the British Standard Summer! We got the two OOC tents up and nipped off to the bar for a quick pint before bed.
The fire was lit!
Smell of beer, woodsmoke, damp wool,and horse... What could be better!
Thursday wasn't the warmest summer day on record by a very long chalk, but at least it didn't rain, and it only rained lightly overnight. But because it had rained significantly in the previous weeks (Silverstone is a couple of miles away, and they'd closed car parks because of the mud problem the previous weekend), on Friday morning, when we wanted to set up the 5m bell tent and the gazebo, the gate to the IC field was blocked. Bill The Galactic Hero (chief site wrangler) opened it for about half an hour at about eight in the morning, so we quickly got both cars down there, found our spot, and set up. Most folk had to get their kit trucked down in relays by Bill and the other Red Caps (the set-up crew who wrangle all the PD tents) in the trailer with one of the 4WD's or the tractor. The hurry was because it was supposed to be dry in the morning, with rain later, and we did not want to be putting tents up in what promised to be another monsoon!
This is the top of a hill. We were camping in a swamp!
To make our camp work, we had to put the bell up over a puddle. Thank the moon and stars for a hefty groundsheet! I LOVE THE GROUNDSHEET!
We got the tents up, and then unpacked the kit out of the cars between showers and thunderstorms. At one point there was a small stream running over the gazebo groundsheet. Oh look, says one wag: you have running water!
Yeah. Thanks, we'd noticed! Decision made that we were not going to deploy Tristan and Isolde, the flat-pack dress stands, nor set up shop in the gazebo as usual. The rail went up IN the tent, and all we did in the gazebo was shelter from the worst of the weather and cook. Set-up song was Flanders and Swann:
Click to viewOur Friday morning shopping list expanded from lemonade and fizzy water to include a yard broom, some doormats, and a mop!
Due to a couple of mix-ups, we were a long oval rather than the circle I envisioned when I sent out the ground plan! Someone had made a rough copy of the plan on a small oblong bit of paper rather than printing it out, and the marine's tent and the Hartnel's tent were a good ten yards closer together than they should have been, making a long narrow passageway... Then the Assilio tent was found to have most of the long poles missing. This is a round party tent style tent, with lots of white poles. It's stored with the PD tents... Sadly, at the back end of last year, most of their party tents fell to bits, so were skipped. After the last event, we can only surmise that someone saw the bag of Assilio poles separated from the tend bag, assumed they were old PD party tent poles for which there was no longer a tent, and skipped them... We had to wait for a replacement tent to go up, to plug the gap in the defenses, as it were, and in the meantime, our camp was being used as a thoroughfare. At this point I had time to take some pix...
Thank goodness we didn't have to cook on Friday evening! A group of us (the Ladies Serenity, Prudence, and Blythe Dance, Lady Jeannette, Lady Eva and another) went to the Jade Lotus for dinner, which was utterly delishshshsuusss! I had hot and sour soup, followed by pork in a rich sauce, with noodles. Nom! Lady Serenity's hen Night! :D And they had set up tables because of the mud. Their usual cushions on the floor and low tables were not possible. ' Cushions have become sponges, so we have tables. Is making serving difficult as we are not used to serving so high up!'
Saturday morning dawned fair and bright. There were some clouds scudding about high up, so the heat wasn't too oppressive, but the ground was sodden and churned up by the passage of many feet and wheels. We'd tried barring the 'gate' to our camp during set-up to stop people using it as a main thoroughfare to the rest of the camp, but there were large areas that were really only passable in waders or wearing splatchers!
The Mastodon from Secret Water.
The bit outside the bar and up by the traders tents got so bad that Bill hired a mud slurping lorry and sucked some of it up. Then they put down some boards where they could. For a a hilltop, it made a very good marsh! For a while, with having swept the worst of the wet out and put down a couple of doormats between the gazebo and the bell, we had, I swear it, the only mud-free zone in the entire IC camp!
Saturday morning there was a certain ampount of Diplomacy going on, with Negotiatiomns and STUFF HAPPENING. I missed most of it as I was being an Invisible Household Fairy (not in costume and wearing a yellow armband) while I set up the first part of the wedding tea. Once frocked up and suddenly visible, Pru and Serenity finished making sandwitches, made lunch, and then got ready for the wedding.
Lord Cyrill had fun!
It was at about this time that I complained to one set of traders that their boot-washing swamp was a bit mucky, and perhaps they should think about changing the water! At least we coul;d laugh about it.
The mud was drying by now, but not really fast enough. There was a hell of a lot of it, after all! But what we did was put the new tarp down in the Hartnel tent, plus the carpet, and then Serenity paddled over in her undies and a wrap, and dressed in the Hartnel tent. She then stayed on the carpet!
There was the most elegant frock in the known world! Over 100 roses... Regular readers may realize tha this one has been seen before... Mostly in a very civilized hotel in Retford! Wearing it in a muddy field was just perfect. The wedding was conducted by the governer, and then had all the blessings from as many appropriate priests and magistrates as we could round up!
The wedding was followed by the most elegant Champagne Tea! Bottles of frivolous pink bubbly (Aldi's finest pink cava that tasted faintly of roses! Definately flavoured with PINK!) and a positively Lucullan feast!
The menu included smoked salmon sandwiches, stuffed vine leaves, quiche, cheese scones, scones with jam and cream, banana cake, fairy cakes (chocolate ones and vanilla ones!), a wedding cake (chocolate madiera cake with cherries in, covered with marzipan and white chocolate!), chocolate hazelnut bonbons, and, inevitably, three different types of tiffin!
During tea some of the magistrates needed to go and conduct a trial.
But the bard kept on singing...
Serenity did manage to escape from the tent, finding about the only bit of dry grass in Flambard to stand on, before she and Lord Sancroft had to go and cut the wedding cake!
There was real cake cutting with a knife...
Ah! Less mud!
Finally drying out!
Later there was a masked soiree, with bard. He's a good bard, and hard working. Certainly earned his share of the pink bubbly and cake!
Later in the eveing a certain masked "Jenny'" got a tad bored with the soiree and wandered off to the bar with the butler and the gate guard. While there, the Lady Eva, priestess of the Huntress, was murdered! Serenity came storming back into camp, swearing vengance. Another of our key characters gone! (Chalky, whio plays the bard, used to play the boss of our marines until that character was murdered at the Easter festival.)
During the night there was an attack on Novak's, and various other bits of camp, and lots of folk were wounded. Lord Sancroft was amongst the wounded, and Serenity had a few anxious moments! But he was dealt with efficiently, and soon made a good recovery. Prudence managed to practice her Useful Skill, and staunched another wound for a few seconds until the sugeon took over. Between now and the next festival, she has arranged to complete her own surgical studies. Then there came a garbled and panicked message that the Malathians had been attacked and were dying for lack or sugeons. Lady P galloped off behind Stefano and the Mob, only to find it was all for nothing. The Malathian wounded were all dealt with.
Lord Sancroft was pleased to accept the gift of Partial Light Armour from his new sister as a wedding gift, as his own armour had been damaged in the fighting.
The night ended in rhumour and muddle, but at least it was dry! By now the mud was mostly of the constistency of warm plastecine, and attracted to boots like planets to a black hole! We didn't so much want a doormat as a boot scraper. There was a Sacrificial Spoon for scraping the clarts off at the tent entrance, but even so, the carpet got a bit mucky. (The raven says it has washed up a treat, though.) Lady Prudence withdrew to allow Lady Serenity Dance Hartnel to enjoy her wedding night... ;)
By morning, the place had dried up so much that the main gate was more dustbowl than swamp!
The ladies of Flambard set off across the field, under escort, to visit The Bitter Moon Teahouse for their usual Ladies Meeting. Talk was mostly about how we were to cope without the Lady Eva, what to do about vengance (moderation seemed to be the key: Lord Cyril came to join us, along with one of the snake people. But the Huntress herself? Who knows... ) as well as plans for the next festival.
The End Is Nigh! Even the rocks get up to speak!
Back in Flambard, everything looks a lot pleasanter. It was getting a bit hot by now!
The butler, Bakerly, was looking rather the worse for wear... I believe this was after an encounter with a potion, but I shall need to ask hime. He's nothing like as prim as he pretends!
Then, sadly, it was 3:00pm, and Time Out. Some folk have to be back at wiork on Monday, so Take Down starts pretty much straight away/.
We did discover that there was Cake Emergency! Too Much Cake! again: we didn't want to bother taking it home, so we yelled to the camp, and crew and players decended. There was nothing but crumbs shortly after that! I later discivered a whole Banana Bread loaf in the chilly bin, so that was addd to lunch for the crew on Monday.
As the penguin was crewing, we were staying over for Monday anyway, so the raven and I earned our dinner at the crew party by sorting lammies on Sunday evening and again Monday morning after getting the OC camp packed. After lunch we went home in a fairly leaisuly way, stopping a couple of times for iced coffee.
Altogether, a highly satisfactory time was had by all. But there's an awful lot of washing to do! So far:
Pru's frocks
The giant chemise and the Elizabethan shirt etc.
A dark load with the blasck petticoat
The judo jacket, lump of cloth (these need to be dyed for a sewing project) and the towels I had to buy because I forgot to pack any...
The duvet cover and the quilt
...and more!
And while we were away, Himself and the GMNT went and got my sewing tables for me... But that's for another time!