A weekend away (yay!)
On Friday morning the_marquis and I spectacularly failed to missed out train to the South by about 30 seconds. Even though it wasn’t his fault, I shouted at him a bit, because my legs hurt very badly from the fast walking and I felt icky sweaty. Then it turned out that the next train wasn’t for another two hours. At least out tickets weren’t the kind you can only use on the correct train. Sensibly. The Marquis decide that we should go back home and try again with the next train. On the whole, going back home turned out to be a good thing, and I had a chance to wash my hair and semi-curlify it for the weekend. We also found a couple of things that we’d failed to pack first time round. Suffice it to say, we caught the next train without hitch, it got to our destination almost without delay, and for some reason known only unto those who plan the journeys of trains, it took an hour less to get from home to destination on this train, than it would have done on the ‘correct’ train.
parrot_knight picked us up at the station and while the Marquis dashed off to the building society, the Knight and I parked the car. We met up again a little later and had a cup of tea in a café that has opened in the place in which I bought my favourite pair of shoes (to date; now sadly deceased). Odd experience, that!
After the café, the three of us went to Alitophilus’ shop and nattered and spent some money on comic books, and arranged to meet up with Josh, and had a delightful dinner at the Thai place with the Dessert Trolley. The starter and main courses were very nice - it’s been such a long time since the Marquis and I last had Thai food! - but the desserts… Oh, the desserts! The thing about this particular restaurant is that they have this trolley on top of which are displayed such wonderfully attractive and enticing puddings as crunchy-bar cream sponge, banoffee-pie, blue-berry cheesecake, mango-whatever-it-was covered in a pile of golden sugar strands… All of these looked mouth-watering indeed, and our table were the first to get the staff to chop into these wonderful creations… Yum!
Once dinner was finished, the Knight, the Marquis and I headed to the Banquet Preparation evening, where once again we taught the dances handed down through generation of Society T, to a keen and large group of new (keen!) members of Society T. It was a good evening, and we had a chance to catch up with some people such as foradan and Cellis and Poet and Revenant and Writer… We got back to the Knight’s flat late that night and put the sofa-bed together and chatted until it was even later.
Saturday started fairly slowly, and once we’d made it into town, the Marquis had to rush off to the committee meeting of Society T’s big cousin. The Knight and I were charged with a quest for some latex for hobbit feet. We found some in the end…
Soon after the latex had been acquired the Knight and I also parted ways: he took foradan to his flat to help him sort out his computer, while I headed off to meet Viala and eudesia for a long afternoon of chatting. I also saw my godson, his little sister and his big brother in the process of the visit, which was rather nice!
… was quite good fun as usual. For the most part we nattered about the B5 game (what else?!) and I told them a bit about the thousands of words of emither that pellegrina (and Eudesia and the Marquis) and I have been writing over the course of the last 18 months. I don’t think Eudesia quite cottoned onto the fact that I wasn’t kidding when I said ‘thousands of words’ until I showed her the in-game timeline I tried to put together to help place the emithers. :-)
Then, in the evening, took place the event for which we had travelled more than half-way down the country: See also the entries by:
jane_somebody
pennypaperbrain
parrot_knight
The hall was fantastic: beautifully decorated by one extremely active member of Society T (who also cooked the Banquet, made and embroidered her own costume, and seemed to be having a good time, too!) and the perfect shape for dancing. Haven’t had that many participate in the dancing for ages! I particularly enjoyed watching pellegrina’s no-nonsense-shove towards the centre of the circle (for ‘fire’) on the back of whichever unfortunate male was next to her at the end of the circular hay (‘air’) when we did ‘King of the Faeries’. What fun!
The quality of the costumes was great, including many well improvised costumes and some extraordinarily beautifully hand made ones. My two favourites were a Lady Arwen dress by the amazing talent who did the Banquet (see above) and Delia’s beautiful hand-dyed and embroidered hobbit-dress cut along the lines of a 17th century dress - not entirely unlike my own dress that night, but much, much prettier!
After Skordh and I had sung ‘Tinuviel’ and Skordh had sung his ‘Elf-Fair Lady’, the hall fell completely silent, which I thought was wonderful: people actually wanted to hear more songs! We handed out some song-sheet and continued the musical aspects of the evening with audience participation… See jane_somebody’s comments on the ‘Wild Ranger’.
All in all, I’ll conclude by saying that it was a wonderful experience to have come to on a weekend away. An excellent Banquetwhich was not only a great event in its own right, but also provided a chance for many of the old members of Society T to meet each other and for us all to meet our very worthy successors! Eglerio!
Sunday’s journey home was remarkably straightforward, despite the replacement bus service which the Marquis and I had been dreading as two people who were a little over-tired and delicate after the previous evening’s excesses ;-). Once at home, I quickly prepared the lecture-notes for tomorrow’s sessions in Lancaster. And then I spent ages writing up this report of the weekend. Time for posting and bed, methinks…
parrot_knight picked us up at the station and while the Marquis dashed off to the building society, the Knight and I parked the car. We met up again a little later and had a cup of tea in a café that has opened in the place in which I bought my favourite pair of shoes (to date; now sadly deceased). Odd experience, that!
After the café, the three of us went to Alitophilus’ shop and nattered and spent some money on comic books, and arranged to meet up with Josh, and had a delightful dinner at the Thai place with the Dessert Trolley. The starter and main courses were very nice - it’s been such a long time since the Marquis and I last had Thai food! - but the desserts… Oh, the desserts! The thing about this particular restaurant is that they have this trolley on top of which are displayed such wonderfully attractive and enticing puddings as crunchy-bar cream sponge, banoffee-pie, blue-berry cheesecake, mango-whatever-it-was covered in a pile of golden sugar strands… All of these looked mouth-watering indeed, and our table were the first to get the staff to chop into these wonderful creations… Yum!
Once dinner was finished, the Knight, the Marquis and I headed to the Banquet Preparation evening, where once again we taught the dances handed down through generation of Society T, to a keen and large group of new (keen!) members of Society T. It was a good evening, and we had a chance to catch up with some people such as foradan and Cellis and Poet and Revenant and Writer… We got back to the Knight’s flat late that night and put the sofa-bed together and chatted until it was even later.
Saturday started fairly slowly, and once we’d made it into town, the Marquis had to rush off to the committee meeting of Society T’s big cousin. The Knight and I were charged with a quest for some latex for hobbit feet. We found some in the end…
Soon after the latex had been acquired the Knight and I also parted ways: he took foradan to his flat to help him sort out his computer, while I headed off to meet Viala and eudesia for a long afternoon of chatting. I also saw my godson, his little sister and his big brother in the process of the visit, which was rather nice!
… was quite good fun as usual. For the most part we nattered about the B5 game (what else?!) and I told them a bit about the thousands of words of emither that pellegrina (and Eudesia and the Marquis) and I have been writing over the course of the last 18 months. I don’t think Eudesia quite cottoned onto the fact that I wasn’t kidding when I said ‘thousands of words’ until I showed her the in-game timeline I tried to put together to help place the emithers. :-)
Then, in the evening, took place the event for which we had travelled more than half-way down the country: See also the entries by:
jane_somebody
pennypaperbrain
parrot_knight
The hall was fantastic: beautifully decorated by one extremely active member of Society T (who also cooked the Banquet, made and embroidered her own costume, and seemed to be having a good time, too!) and the perfect shape for dancing. Haven’t had that many participate in the dancing for ages! I particularly enjoyed watching pellegrina’s no-nonsense-shove towards the centre of the circle (for ‘fire’) on the back of whichever unfortunate male was next to her at the end of the circular hay (‘air’) when we did ‘King of the Faeries’. What fun!
The quality of the costumes was great, including many well improvised costumes and some extraordinarily beautifully hand made ones. My two favourites were a Lady Arwen dress by the amazing talent who did the Banquet (see above) and Delia’s beautiful hand-dyed and embroidered hobbit-dress cut along the lines of a 17th century dress - not entirely unlike my own dress that night, but much, much prettier!
After Skordh and I had sung ‘Tinuviel’ and Skordh had sung his ‘Elf-Fair Lady’, the hall fell completely silent, which I thought was wonderful: people actually wanted to hear more songs! We handed out some song-sheet and continued the musical aspects of the evening with audience participation… See jane_somebody’s comments on the ‘Wild Ranger’.
All in all, I’ll conclude by saying that it was a wonderful experience to have come to on a weekend away. An excellent Banquetwhich was not only a great event in its own right, but also provided a chance for many of the old members of Society T to meet each other and for us all to meet our very worthy successors! Eglerio!
Sunday’s journey home was remarkably straightforward, despite the replacement bus service which the Marquis and I had been dreading as two people who were a little over-tired and delicate after the previous evening’s excesses ;-). Once at home, I quickly prepared the lecture-notes for tomorrow’s sessions in Lancaster. And then I spent ages writing up this report of the weekend. Time for posting and bed, methinks…