Long overdue (therefore long) update. March-June 2012.
Hmmm. I had noted that LJ was less busy/populated than it used to be, but since it's almost four months (as opposed to the 4-6 week schedule I tried to keep) since I last posted I have to conclude it's at least in part my own fault... Still, I supposedly keep this journal for myself more than anyone else, so I'll endeavour to keep it up rather than abandoning it entirely for the ADHD goldfish eyeblink of facebook. Mind you, since this is actually the third attempt to make an update, which I've subsequently saved to draft and then forgotten about for weeks that have stretched into months, it doesn't bode well...
Where was I? Right. iPad. I love it. It's a gorgeous piece of kit to use, it's incredibly useful and it makes me more attractive to women. Okay, one of those might not actually be true, but it's still the case that I like the thing well enough that's it's usually in my pocket (though please note that I might _also_ be glad to see you).
Some of my Past Pleasures work colleagues play/run a game called Wraith which is essentially a 1940's Cthulhu LRP (though their cost/provision prices are _very_ different from the Sword-&-Sorcery prices I am used to). When the Dover Castle/Tower of London Team Leader gave notice before taking up a job in China, they ran him a surprise game. As I understand it, he was at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxfoird, having a nice day out with his family when suddenly a chap in 1940's clothing gripped him by the arm, addressed him by his character name and says "Agent Olney! We haven't much time. please come with me..." Alarmed, he looked to his wife who (having secretly arranged the entire thing) simply smiled, said "Have fun, dear!" before
waving goodbye and leading their two daughters back to the car.
For all that I was a part of it, I have still to piece together the entire story. Near as I can tell, however, Darren was taken to dinner in a restaurant with a 1940's dining room where he was given his initial mission brief. The following morning, he had to report to the National Army Museum for a briefing in the cellar where he learned that his mission was grievously underfunded, in no small part because a rival team (being simultaneously briefed at the other end of the same lecture hall) was being prepped for an awesome-sounding/troll-worthy air drop mission to a Black Forest Schloss. It was especially awesome because this was happening at the National Army Museum, thus the weapons being issued to Team Troll were actually real... Alas, that's the only role I got to play for Darren's leaving do. While I camera-stalked him across half of London for another couple of hours, I had to leave for a
gig elsewhere long before he had to bluff his way through a meeting of fascists and subsequently single handedly foil a coven of dark alchemists. Something like 40 work colleagues, friends and complete strangers turned out that day to play monster/NPC roles for a single player game, and everywhere Darren went in London that day there was someone either waiting for him in the set location or quietly shadowing him ready to intervene and make sure he got back on track. It was a privilege to be even small part a game it must have been frankly mind-blowing to play.
Past Pleasures won the contract for another three years of live interpretation for Historic Royal Palaces. Personally, I never doubted they would, meaning I'd made some assumptions and choices months ago which put me ahead of some of my colleagues, but I was nevertheless heavily burdened back in the Spring, at one point in March reading/researching/rehearsing for seven separate new shows. It's nice to be busy, of course, but damn but those weeks were hard work!
With more than half of my shifts in April being as HRVIII, I decided to get my hair dyed. While I have the knowledge, experience and skill to play King at Hampton Court Palace, I've always been very away that I don't have the physique or the colouring. A fat suit covered one of those and I reasoned that a visit to the hairdresser would cover the other. It was a mixed success, frankly. Going a sort of golden blond was very effective, dropping jaws from people who knew me well (and startling me whenever I caught sight of my unfamiliar reflection, though I eventually came to really like it), but dark roots started showing all too soon. When I went back to have my roots attended to a couple of weeks later, I ended up an unpleasant and entirely unconvincing artificial blond. After another couple of weeks as the same dark roots issue recurred, I went somewhere else where they actually listened when I talked about being a dark red/ginger and got a colour that suited well and took much longer to be recognisably artificial (plus, was ideal for playing HRII as well as HRVIII). However, when one of the false starts of Summer led me to severely trim the beard of mighty, my face was back to my natural colour while my hair was very different. Visit number four restored my hair to the shade I wanted, but seemed to have no effect at all on the non-grey bits of my beard. Hmmm. Still, I've done my kinging for June, have no royal shifts in July and am spending most of the rest of the Summer as a non-descript musician, so I'll probably let the remaining dye simply wash/grow out and start over in the Autumn.
Insurrection event 7 happened. I wasn't nearly as far along the road to recovery from illness as I'd thought and frankly shouldn't have gone, regardless of who was relying on me for tent space, equipment or IC advise/interaction/leadership. Everyone was very understanding of my simply going to bed before Time In on Friday night, however, and I was cut a lot of slack (physically, at least!) for the rest of the weekend. I've been convalescent at the last two events now, and I'm bored of going into Insurrection already strung out and exhausted. Here's hoping for better health for October.
May started off with a useful business trip down to Portsmouth for a meeting about Southsea at which it became plain, once again that I know and understand the project better than the man from the City Council who runs it these days. For some reason, he seemed happier to let me do things my way than he has in the last couple of years which puzzled me until I learned a couple of weeks ago that his job is at risk...
The May BH weekend was spent at Alnwick Castle (bracketted by board gaming days at Fort Trouvere), which was astonishingly cold. I mean, I know that Summer has been shy this year, but snow at the beginning of May brinks on taking the piss.
The Historic Royal Palaces seem to have gone all Restoration this year. There's still four HRVIII characters at Hampton Court each day but there's also two characters supporting the 'The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned' exhibition, while the Tower is all Duke of Monmouth/Judge Jeffreys. Late C17th is far from my period of speciality, but I did previously comment that I'd be trying to stretch my historical range in 2012...
Most of June, of course, has been spent in Southsea. I had a real struggle to fill places this year and it was only with a week or so to go that I realised I'd actually fucked up monumentally and not sent an email to half the previous participants I thought I had... As ever, of course, it all worked out and I had a full roster assembled before heading down to the shandy coast, and they've all worked out splendidly. After 17 years, it'd be very easy to describe it as 'same old, same old', but the truth is that Southsea has changed/developed/improved almost every single year. While we might now have to 'live out' rather than in the castle itself, this year's house is better than last year's (despite lack of three legged cat). The new 'sort Queen portraits into order then listen to their stories' version of the Carew scene works much better than last year's 'religious reform' version (important though the religious aspect of the period was, it went _way_ over the heads of the children and, lamentably, many of the teachers). We've been luckier with the weather than might have been expected, have discovered that the previously untested wet weather plan works just fine and have proven that we can manage (just!) if one of the team of seven is ill or unavoidably called somewhere else.
TF17 is a success, then, but heading into week 5 of 6, I'm already thinking about what comes next. I get a couple of days to wash costume and stow kit before a crowded fortnight of Past Pleasures shifts broken by a weekend gig for Trouvere/English Heritage, and then I'm yo-yoing up and down the country for pretty much the rest of the Summer. Tuesday and Wednesday of each week at Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, but the weekends almost as far from that site as can be - Battle Abbey, Richmond Castle, Belsay Castle...
Rest would be nice, but truth is that I'm happiest when busy busy busy. I remember all too well the years when the 'rest' and 'work' proportions of my diary were exactly the other way round. While the sun shines, I'll make all the hay I can.
Where was I? Right. iPad. I love it. It's a gorgeous piece of kit to use, it's incredibly useful and it makes me more attractive to women. Okay, one of those might not actually be true, but it's still the case that I like the thing well enough that's it's usually in my pocket (though please note that I might _also_ be glad to see you).
Some of my Past Pleasures work colleagues play/run a game called Wraith which is essentially a 1940's Cthulhu LRP (though their cost/provision prices are _very_ different from the Sword-&-Sorcery prices I am used to). When the Dover Castle/Tower of London Team Leader gave notice before taking up a job in China, they ran him a surprise game. As I understand it, he was at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxfoird, having a nice day out with his family when suddenly a chap in 1940's clothing gripped him by the arm, addressed him by his character name and says "Agent Olney! We haven't much time. please come with me..." Alarmed, he looked to his wife who (having secretly arranged the entire thing) simply smiled, said "Have fun, dear!" before
waving goodbye and leading their two daughters back to the car.
For all that I was a part of it, I have still to piece together the entire story. Near as I can tell, however, Darren was taken to dinner in a restaurant with a 1940's dining room where he was given his initial mission brief. The following morning, he had to report to the National Army Museum for a briefing in the cellar where he learned that his mission was grievously underfunded, in no small part because a rival team (being simultaneously briefed at the other end of the same lecture hall) was being prepped for an awesome-sounding/troll-worthy air drop mission to a Black Forest Schloss. It was especially awesome because this was happening at the National Army Museum, thus the weapons being issued to Team Troll were actually real... Alas, that's the only role I got to play for Darren's leaving do. While I camera-stalked him across half of London for another couple of hours, I had to leave for a
gig elsewhere long before he had to bluff his way through a meeting of fascists and subsequently single handedly foil a coven of dark alchemists. Something like 40 work colleagues, friends and complete strangers turned out that day to play monster/NPC roles for a single player game, and everywhere Darren went in London that day there was someone either waiting for him in the set location or quietly shadowing him ready to intervene and make sure he got back on track. It was a privilege to be even small part a game it must have been frankly mind-blowing to play.
Past Pleasures won the contract for another three years of live interpretation for Historic Royal Palaces. Personally, I never doubted they would, meaning I'd made some assumptions and choices months ago which put me ahead of some of my colleagues, but I was nevertheless heavily burdened back in the Spring, at one point in March reading/researching/rehearsing for seven separate new shows. It's nice to be busy, of course, but damn but those weeks were hard work!
With more than half of my shifts in April being as HRVIII, I decided to get my hair dyed. While I have the knowledge, experience and skill to play King at Hampton Court Palace, I've always been very away that I don't have the physique or the colouring. A fat suit covered one of those and I reasoned that a visit to the hairdresser would cover the other. It was a mixed success, frankly. Going a sort of golden blond was very effective, dropping jaws from people who knew me well (and startling me whenever I caught sight of my unfamiliar reflection, though I eventually came to really like it), but dark roots started showing all too soon. When I went back to have my roots attended to a couple of weeks later, I ended up an unpleasant and entirely unconvincing artificial blond. After another couple of weeks as the same dark roots issue recurred, I went somewhere else where they actually listened when I talked about being a dark red/ginger and got a colour that suited well and took much longer to be recognisably artificial (plus, was ideal for playing HRII as well as HRVIII). However, when one of the false starts of Summer led me to severely trim the beard of mighty, my face was back to my natural colour while my hair was very different. Visit number four restored my hair to the shade I wanted, but seemed to have no effect at all on the non-grey bits of my beard. Hmmm. Still, I've done my kinging for June, have no royal shifts in July and am spending most of the rest of the Summer as a non-descript musician, so I'll probably let the remaining dye simply wash/grow out and start over in the Autumn.
Insurrection event 7 happened. I wasn't nearly as far along the road to recovery from illness as I'd thought and frankly shouldn't have gone, regardless of who was relying on me for tent space, equipment or IC advise/interaction/leadership. Everyone was very understanding of my simply going to bed before Time In on Friday night, however, and I was cut a lot of slack (physically, at least!) for the rest of the weekend. I've been convalescent at the last two events now, and I'm bored of going into Insurrection already strung out and exhausted. Here's hoping for better health for October.
May started off with a useful business trip down to Portsmouth for a meeting about Southsea at which it became plain, once again that I know and understand the project better than the man from the City Council who runs it these days. For some reason, he seemed happier to let me do things my way than he has in the last couple of years which puzzled me until I learned a couple of weeks ago that his job is at risk...
The May BH weekend was spent at Alnwick Castle (bracketted by board gaming days at Fort Trouvere), which was astonishingly cold. I mean, I know that Summer has been shy this year, but snow at the beginning of May brinks on taking the piss.
The Historic Royal Palaces seem to have gone all Restoration this year. There's still four HRVIII characters at Hampton Court each day but there's also two characters supporting the 'The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned' exhibition, while the Tower is all Duke of Monmouth/Judge Jeffreys. Late C17th is far from my period of speciality, but I did previously comment that I'd be trying to stretch my historical range in 2012...
Most of June, of course, has been spent in Southsea. I had a real struggle to fill places this year and it was only with a week or so to go that I realised I'd actually fucked up monumentally and not sent an email to half the previous participants I thought I had... As ever, of course, it all worked out and I had a full roster assembled before heading down to the shandy coast, and they've all worked out splendidly. After 17 years, it'd be very easy to describe it as 'same old, same old', but the truth is that Southsea has changed/developed/improved almost every single year. While we might now have to 'live out' rather than in the castle itself, this year's house is better than last year's (despite lack of three legged cat). The new 'sort Queen portraits into order then listen to their stories' version of the Carew scene works much better than last year's 'religious reform' version (important though the religious aspect of the period was, it went _way_ over the heads of the children and, lamentably, many of the teachers). We've been luckier with the weather than might have been expected, have discovered that the previously untested wet weather plan works just fine and have proven that we can manage (just!) if one of the team of seven is ill or unavoidably called somewhere else.
TF17 is a success, then, but heading into week 5 of 6, I'm already thinking about what comes next. I get a couple of days to wash costume and stow kit before a crowded fortnight of Past Pleasures shifts broken by a weekend gig for Trouvere/English Heritage, and then I'm yo-yoing up and down the country for pretty much the rest of the Summer. Tuesday and Wednesday of each week at Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, but the weekends almost as far from that site as can be - Battle Abbey, Richmond Castle, Belsay Castle...
Rest would be nice, but truth is that I'm happiest when busy busy busy. I remember all too well the years when the 'rest' and 'work' proportions of my diary were exactly the other way round. While the sun shines, I'll make all the hay I can.