Cold War
Unfortunately there will be no pix for this post, because I dropped my camera during the packing for Cold War and it broke. The worst thing about there being no pix is the lack of shots of Finn and Persi; they were so cute!!! I don't know why my friends have all the sweetest and best-behaved babies in the world, but they do. This is also a very lame recollection because I spent most of the event dozy and near the heater. I'm a tired old woman, so sue me.
Back to the War. We missed the Friday night, so people already had hangovers by the time we arrived on Saturday. I could not raise J from the dead on Saturday morning, so we were much later than we meant to be. I rang Hrothers and Gui on our way there and warned them that we were running to J time. Gui asked if we would like them to delay the fighthing till we got there, which was very sweet but would have been outrageous. We said biff hard, biff strong, see you when we get there.
As it turned out the road out was a breeze and it took less than 90 minutes, plus a stop for snacks. When we arrived we were greeted by a bunch of kids at the gate, one of them said "Who's that?" and the littlest one said "It's the Queen!" J burst out laughing and decided that they must have been at the Children's Fort Battle. And yes, they did prove to have been a part of the midget army.
Berengar had been a complete star and given up a room to ourselves. We offered Blayney the spare bed because he was up without Art and with a case of bronchitis and we thought that staying a tent was just bloody stupid. Apparently I have never quite lost the instincts that I honed in my War Zone years because when he came into sleep later that night, I immediately sat up in a threatening manner, then, without waking, realised that it was him and he was meant to be there, rolled over and went back to sleep. If he hadn't told me, I'd never have known. Although that may shed a little light on why sundry people have made a point of waking me up to let me know they're going to the loo in years past.
I have to confess that I saw exactly NONE of the war. It was damn cold. We did walk down at one point, but it was during a hold. Instead I spent the whole time in the Craft Room or else playing boffer with the kids. Most of the kids were from the Dragonfly Household; I can't recall its proper name, but they had a great cooking tent and lovely dragonfly banners and shields, especially for the kids. BJ was there, too, and MoG's son. They are both very good with the younger kids and BJ has some excellent plans on boffer warfare that I will need him to put into action for next Festival.
The littlest kid was named Daniel and he was a tiger. I see now why Grace and Dickon were complaining that it's hard to hit the little ones, because you just don't want to. Being a big mean adult laying waste to a six year old is just too mean for words. Of course, being a six year old, it's FUN to lay waste to adults, so he slapped me a beauty across the hip. The older children were keen to learn some techniques, so I shared the one or two useful bits of info that I knew, then wrangled BJ into sharing more.
BJ is secretly a Boffer God. His brain is a seething mass of cunning plans for war and victory. Vandel has given this young man a disturbing canvas on which to paint his genius large, and I think that we should all support that. He was fun to fight with, too, although he started off saying "I can't hit you, you're the Queen." Then "You're only little." I suspect the latter was a goad so that I would open up my guard to a sneaky blow. It did not work, for I have spent nearly 40 years being tricksy and he has much to learn. I left the young folks playing steady biff and went back to the craft room, because I am old and lazy.
The craft room had some scheduled classes but they all sort of blurred into one while we faffed around and did things that we were interested in. Helene was teaching people how to make hose, which is a very good thing as we all need more hose. Katje was teaching pewter casting and I did some string. Finn chatted with people about musicky stuff and there was general usefulness all round.
I have a theory about SCA A&S. There are the people who do things, the people who want to learn how to do things, and the people who don't actually do most things but tell everyone what they would do if they were doing it. The last category are a bit annoying, and I think that I was probably a bit less than gracious with a few who stopped and stood right behind some of the people who were making a good effort to learn new skills and peered over their shoulders.
I could argue that "I might just get you to step back a bit there, she's just learning this one and it can be a bit oppressive having people looking over your shoulder while you're learning." is actually a compassionate way of phrasing things. But I was assured by several bystanders that the unspoken "You idiot." was fairly clear. There's a reason I will never receive a Lochac Order of Grace.
Oh well. We ended the day with a stack more people knowing how to lucet and finger-loop. We all failed Tyg's felting plans, because it was just too cold and we were too wussy. Sorry Tyg. Felting is a summer sport!
Tyg did, however, go from never having done one type of finger looping to doing a perfect three feet of it, so she won the I am a Craft Goddess stakes. Which is quite normal for Tyg.
Mathilde was up for the day and that was a cunning plan because we had BJ's AoA to confer. Or Lord Robert Stoner as he insisted on being called. AEdward and Corin went a little too far with the stoner jokes, so I made a point of shouting them down so that I could talk briefly about the huge amount of work that he did that justified his AoA. It wasn't one that came about through recommendations from his parents, either, but from the demands of many midgets, plus Vandel, Konga & Co and quite a number of Polit adults who stopped us at Festival and said "You know what's really getting to be overdue ...?"
Anyway, he's another great kid and I am very happy knowing that his parents are as proud of him as they should be, and he of them.
The feast on Saturday was huge. Torg and Wulfsige do their More Meat Feast every year. No prizes for guessing what the centrepiece of the food is. They also had scads and scads of brilliantly prepared vegies, so everyone was well catered for except the people who were on strict diets. They were stymied by the olive oil and butter, but it's good for you! Kept out the cold a treat at any rate. It's one of the least glam but best eating feasts on the annual Rowany calender and I do think it's worth going to Cold War just for it.
A quick aside at this point. When you reign, you get into events for free. Which is good because you spend a bloody fortune on flights. This means that two free cold wars out of three makes up for the $50-odd I spent on entry fees for us last year when J arrived, had an argument with a fighter, and decided to go all within the space of an hour. Could he not have had the argument before I gave Berengar cash?
Now that I think about it, J had his knickers in a knot the Cold War before that, too, and Berengar helped me look for him for about an hour. All this goes to show that Berengar is a good chap who I am glad to count among my friends and that J has some hormonal flux every year at the beginning of June.
This year, J decided to have an argument with someone who was not me nor one of our friends, so that was a distinct improvement! He was also completely in the right, so that was good too.
J came up to the craft room and said, "Um, I shouted at someone. But they were in the wrong and they were an utter twonk." I checked that he hadn't just done a global nana loss and then told him that it was all right. Because while, in a perfect world, J would never lose his temper, if he's going to it should at least be at nasty little men who have no sense of manners.
The young people stayed up late that night and partied. We are not young, so we went to bed early. Alfar was there with his terrible virus that he gave to everybody (and they were all so happy about this). He was wearing his wolfskin cloak; I swear that it loooks like malamute. Or the Abominable Snowman. If he had been feeling better he could have had fun scaring the children.
Two of the children, Rachel and Sarah, showed me some of their acrobatic tricks, which were very impressive. The best part involved a shoulder stand and a leap, and they and cousin Dali told me very earnestly not to freak out, they'd practiced it a lot. Too cute.
The Sunday continued much the same. Miss Krin was working on her Gaudete frock, having finished her Sunday frock on Saturday. It is possible that the Gaudete frock will one day be finished, but that will involve her having more than 10 minutes in which she is not doing things to help others. Too bloody selfless by half.
Most of the lads looked a bit the worse for wear, except for Sean who manages to look better when he has a mild hangover than he does completely sober (of course, he looks appalling with a serious hangover, so that's OK). Judy looked brilliant, as she always does, and I was annoyed with myself for not snaffling some time to catch up with her. I think I get stuck in Queen Mother mode and run around waving, opening hospitals and looking for the gin. Actually, if I had found the gin, that would have been a perfect excuse to catch up with Judy ...
Sunday Court was fun. We had given Willem de Grey a Rowan on Saturday and that night we gave Berengar a Golden Tear which he actually seemed surprised by. Can't imagine why, he's a legend at usefulness. We also sent some awards up to Radburne and asked B to convey our words. In the end he wussed out and had Hrothgar do the eloquency. That was a shame because we were in Aneala that weekend and got a great laugh telling people that in Radburne, even as we dined, the role of the Queen was being played by Sir B.
We were also able to give out a great swag of our cyphers. It was good to be able to put them into people's hands and let them know how much they had meant to us through the course of the reign. everyone had contributed something different, from Lilith's sweet helpfulness to Marie and Joan's Bloody Indispensibleness. Hunydd declared she had done nothing, but she was forgetting that she said all the evil things that Mrs Queen couldn't say, thus saving me from having Ulf do his frowny thing.
Sunday's feast was also excellent, with loads of yummy food courtesy of Mouse and Tops, all out on the table nice and early, which is just what you want when it is cold and near the solstice. We left just after dinner that night, before the bardic comp got underway. I have forgotten who won, although I remember it being someone surprising, perhaps Fitzy? But we did get back in time for the Grand Prix and Ferrari did well, so all was right with the world. And the grumpy cat was very glad to see us, because that cold was still going strong.
Back to the War. We missed the Friday night, so people already had hangovers by the time we arrived on Saturday. I could not raise J from the dead on Saturday morning, so we were much later than we meant to be. I rang Hrothers and Gui on our way there and warned them that we were running to J time. Gui asked if we would like them to delay the fighthing till we got there, which was very sweet but would have been outrageous. We said biff hard, biff strong, see you when we get there.
As it turned out the road out was a breeze and it took less than 90 minutes, plus a stop for snacks. When we arrived we were greeted by a bunch of kids at the gate, one of them said "Who's that?" and the littlest one said "It's the Queen!" J burst out laughing and decided that they must have been at the Children's Fort Battle. And yes, they did prove to have been a part of the midget army.
Berengar had been a complete star and given up a room to ourselves. We offered Blayney the spare bed because he was up without Art and with a case of bronchitis and we thought that staying a tent was just bloody stupid. Apparently I have never quite lost the instincts that I honed in my War Zone years because when he came into sleep later that night, I immediately sat up in a threatening manner, then, without waking, realised that it was him and he was meant to be there, rolled over and went back to sleep. If he hadn't told me, I'd never have known. Although that may shed a little light on why sundry people have made a point of waking me up to let me know they're going to the loo in years past.
I have to confess that I saw exactly NONE of the war. It was damn cold. We did walk down at one point, but it was during a hold. Instead I spent the whole time in the Craft Room or else playing boffer with the kids. Most of the kids were from the Dragonfly Household; I can't recall its proper name, but they had a great cooking tent and lovely dragonfly banners and shields, especially for the kids. BJ was there, too, and MoG's son. They are both very good with the younger kids and BJ has some excellent plans on boffer warfare that I will need him to put into action for next Festival.
The littlest kid was named Daniel and he was a tiger. I see now why Grace and Dickon were complaining that it's hard to hit the little ones, because you just don't want to. Being a big mean adult laying waste to a six year old is just too mean for words. Of course, being a six year old, it's FUN to lay waste to adults, so he slapped me a beauty across the hip. The older children were keen to learn some techniques, so I shared the one or two useful bits of info that I knew, then wrangled BJ into sharing more.
BJ is secretly a Boffer God. His brain is a seething mass of cunning plans for war and victory. Vandel has given this young man a disturbing canvas on which to paint his genius large, and I think that we should all support that. He was fun to fight with, too, although he started off saying "I can't hit you, you're the Queen." Then "You're only little." I suspect the latter was a goad so that I would open up my guard to a sneaky blow. It did not work, for I have spent nearly 40 years being tricksy and he has much to learn. I left the young folks playing steady biff and went back to the craft room, because I am old and lazy.
The craft room had some scheduled classes but they all sort of blurred into one while we faffed around and did things that we were interested in. Helene was teaching people how to make hose, which is a very good thing as we all need more hose. Katje was teaching pewter casting and I did some string. Finn chatted with people about musicky stuff and there was general usefulness all round.
I have a theory about SCA A&S. There are the people who do things, the people who want to learn how to do things, and the people who don't actually do most things but tell everyone what they would do if they were doing it. The last category are a bit annoying, and I think that I was probably a bit less than gracious with a few who stopped and stood right behind some of the people who were making a good effort to learn new skills and peered over their shoulders.
I could argue that "I might just get you to step back a bit there, she's just learning this one and it can be a bit oppressive having people looking over your shoulder while you're learning." is actually a compassionate way of phrasing things. But I was assured by several bystanders that the unspoken "You idiot." was fairly clear. There's a reason I will never receive a Lochac Order of Grace.
Oh well. We ended the day with a stack more people knowing how to lucet and finger-loop. We all failed Tyg's felting plans, because it was just too cold and we were too wussy. Sorry Tyg. Felting is a summer sport!
Tyg did, however, go from never having done one type of finger looping to doing a perfect three feet of it, so she won the I am a Craft Goddess stakes. Which is quite normal for Tyg.
Mathilde was up for the day and that was a cunning plan because we had BJ's AoA to confer. Or Lord Robert Stoner as he insisted on being called. AEdward and Corin went a little too far with the stoner jokes, so I made a point of shouting them down so that I could talk briefly about the huge amount of work that he did that justified his AoA. It wasn't one that came about through recommendations from his parents, either, but from the demands of many midgets, plus Vandel, Konga & Co and quite a number of Polit adults who stopped us at Festival and said "You know what's really getting to be overdue ...?"
Anyway, he's another great kid and I am very happy knowing that his parents are as proud of him as they should be, and he of them.
The feast on Saturday was huge. Torg and Wulfsige do their More Meat Feast every year. No prizes for guessing what the centrepiece of the food is. They also had scads and scads of brilliantly prepared vegies, so everyone was well catered for except the people who were on strict diets. They were stymied by the olive oil and butter, but it's good for you! Kept out the cold a treat at any rate. It's one of the least glam but best eating feasts on the annual Rowany calender and I do think it's worth going to Cold War just for it.
A quick aside at this point. When you reign, you get into events for free. Which is good because you spend a bloody fortune on flights. This means that two free cold wars out of three makes up for the $50-odd I spent on entry fees for us last year when J arrived, had an argument with a fighter, and decided to go all within the space of an hour. Could he not have had the argument before I gave Berengar cash?
Now that I think about it, J had his knickers in a knot the Cold War before that, too, and Berengar helped me look for him for about an hour. All this goes to show that Berengar is a good chap who I am glad to count among my friends and that J has some hormonal flux every year at the beginning of June.
This year, J decided to have an argument with someone who was not me nor one of our friends, so that was a distinct improvement! He was also completely in the right, so that was good too.
J came up to the craft room and said, "Um, I shouted at someone. But they were in the wrong and they were an utter twonk." I checked that he hadn't just done a global nana loss and then told him that it was all right. Because while, in a perfect world, J would never lose his temper, if he's going to it should at least be at nasty little men who have no sense of manners.
The young people stayed up late that night and partied. We are not young, so we went to bed early. Alfar was there with his terrible virus that he gave to everybody (and they were all so happy about this). He was wearing his wolfskin cloak; I swear that it loooks like malamute. Or the Abominable Snowman. If he had been feeling better he could have had fun scaring the children.
Two of the children, Rachel and Sarah, showed me some of their acrobatic tricks, which were very impressive. The best part involved a shoulder stand and a leap, and they and cousin Dali told me very earnestly not to freak out, they'd practiced it a lot. Too cute.
The Sunday continued much the same. Miss Krin was working on her Gaudete frock, having finished her Sunday frock on Saturday. It is possible that the Gaudete frock will one day be finished, but that will involve her having more than 10 minutes in which she is not doing things to help others. Too bloody selfless by half.
Most of the lads looked a bit the worse for wear, except for Sean who manages to look better when he has a mild hangover than he does completely sober (of course, he looks appalling with a serious hangover, so that's OK). Judy looked brilliant, as she always does, and I was annoyed with myself for not snaffling some time to catch up with her. I think I get stuck in Queen Mother mode and run around waving, opening hospitals and looking for the gin. Actually, if I had found the gin, that would have been a perfect excuse to catch up with Judy ...
Sunday Court was fun. We had given Willem de Grey a Rowan on Saturday and that night we gave Berengar a Golden Tear which he actually seemed surprised by. Can't imagine why, he's a legend at usefulness. We also sent some awards up to Radburne and asked B to convey our words. In the end he wussed out and had Hrothgar do the eloquency. That was a shame because we were in Aneala that weekend and got a great laugh telling people that in Radburne, even as we dined, the role of the Queen was being played by Sir B.
We were also able to give out a great swag of our cyphers. It was good to be able to put them into people's hands and let them know how much they had meant to us through the course of the reign. everyone had contributed something different, from Lilith's sweet helpfulness to Marie and Joan's Bloody Indispensibleness. Hunydd declared she had done nothing, but she was forgetting that she said all the evil things that Mrs Queen couldn't say, thus saving me from having Ulf do his frowny thing.
Sunday's feast was also excellent, with loads of yummy food courtesy of Mouse and Tops, all out on the table nice and early, which is just what you want when it is cold and near the solstice. We left just after dinner that night, before the bardic comp got underway. I have forgotten who won, although I remember it being someone surprising, perhaps Fitzy? But we did get back in time for the Grand Prix and Ferrari did well, so all was right with the world. And the grumpy cat was very glad to see us, because that cold was still going strong.
posted by Miss D at 6:25 pm
2 Comments:
Some day I'll actually do work at work. There's a reason I bring my computer home
could argue that "I might just get you to step back a bit there, she's just learning this one and it can be a bit oppressive having people looking over your shoulder while you're learning." is actually a compassionate way of phrasing things. But I was assured by several bystanders that the unspoken "You idiot." was fairly clear.
As one of the people who was doing the learning, I think it was a good thing, honestly. The one person in question can be a bit thick. When I was teaching the second half of the pewter casting class on Sunday she drove me insane, and likely only the mitigiating influence of B stopped me from losing it on her. See, Pels, useful in so many ways!
I also will never receive the Lochac order of grace.
That's Mr B. Pel of usefulness and member of the LOG. He has "strength and grace", I have "beauty and arms". Not the traditional mix, but it works for us.
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