A quick note on good and not-so-good events

Things have been a little hectic lately, but Manfred will kill me if I don't post something this weekend, and since he has the stomach lurgy, he possibly could.

I've been very busy at a certain newsmag that begins with B, and, prior to that, a chick mag that begins with NI. I like working with both teams, because they are, as is usual for the subs desk, filled with bright, funny, personable people. But I must say that the B doesn't do my head in, unlike NI. I understand reading chick mags, because sometimes you need to turn your brain off, but after you've subbed three astrology pages in a row, you lose a little faith in humanity – though not in Karen Moregold's ability to stretch a sentence to its utmost length through repetition and merciless abuse of adjectives.

Anyway, work dull for sick Manfred, SCA interesting, so let's talk SCA.

I've been to three events in the last few weeks, two of them were quite good, one was surprisingly flawed.

The first good one was Mistress Gabrielle's feast. For the grand total of $15 (the hall was free due to a previous stuff-up on the part of the hall owners), we were treated to great whopping piles of food including pomegranate chicken, cream meringues and delicious antipasti. It was not all period, in fact only about half and half, but it was the best $15 meal I've ever had.

And it was a fun event. We all sat around and gasbagged. Because the bookings were limited to 50 people, we counted everyone in, then locked the doors. No-one had to sit on the gate, and there weren't stragglers going in and out all night. The Lemmings grabbed the big centre table, so it was like being in Rowany in my early days when the big table was grabbed by either Lemmings or Attica, but never attempts at grabbing by both, since you never saw both at the one feast. And so it was here, only graduated Atticans Gui and AElflaed were holding the flag up. I felt almost young again.

We talked utter rubbish, it must be said, and after the last few months I quite enjoyed myself. There was some discussion on the archery issue (on which more later), but for the most part it was an entertaining and relaxed evening that reminded me of how things can be once you take all the egos out of the evening. It was especially good to see Kate, Cos's sister, who was looking brilliant in a Spyder frock with Mouse accessories. I had to get Topsy to tell me her name, though, because I had three possibilities of who she could be based on the fact that my memory is crap. But I did know that I had liked her when I met her before!

The other good event was this weekend, even though I didn't appreciate it as much as I would have if I had not spent last week going mad from large amounts of work. Katje ran Bunch of Classes and she did an excellent job of it. It was disgustingly hot today, and little better yesterday, but she made sure that all the teachers and students were well apportioned with food and drink, even buying special pig-free sausages for me, which the delightful Mayela, who we will miss more than words when she moves to Bendigo, cooked separately before embarking on the journey of a thousand sangers.

As usual I did not make it to most of the classes that I wanted to, one because it was scheduled against mine and two because I slept in, but I really enjoyed Marie de Lyon's class on period table manners and now want to make a very long napkin that I can wear thrown rakishly over my shoulder. My handsewing class was a bit shambolic with one beginner, two near beginners, a few reasonably experienced and two very good sewers. So next year I will just do advanced and I have ordered all the beginners to practise religiously. I'll try to make up some notes and put them up here, but that will require computer time, which I really only get when J is watching motor racing. This is why I taped six-hours of car today – at least two blogging sessions there ...

Along with BoC, the weekend had the Ursie feast last night, which was a good college feast with simple but tasty food and reasonable amounts thereof, but mostly a good happy spirit about it, with things happening as there was a need. So the singing group bounced up and performed a few pieces to make everyone feel as though it was a proper celebration. Then, because there were quite a lot of young kids, Maeve and the muscians taught the Bear Dance. I was very happy to see the kids who were mostly part of Festival's Midget Army, from the Dragonfly Household, which has a real name that Rhiannon reminded me of when I saw her today, but I have forgotten it, of course. Nice adults and delightful kids, all of whom seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves, which is what I am determined to do, too, even if some people are driving me to distraction.

We ended up going home early because both Marie and J had headaches and Marie had to get home to her house of the Pox-ridden. It was a shame, because there were many people I wanted to talk to more, including Andre who came over to continue his Knight Clubbing Tour of Lochac.

And then this afternoon saw the first round of the Rowany Tournament of Champions, which may or may not be the official name. There were 26 fighters, there would have been 28, but Cornelius and Philipe are soft. So says our Glorious Baron and his Mighty Knights. While they may not have wanted to drive down from the mountains after getting up late, we were up till 3.45am with our neighbours' party and we still made it. Of course, our neighbours now think I am a crazy woman who regularly stomps about with a veil of hair and grotty T-shirt over tatty skirt and tells people they can only dance in thongs or trainers on the wooden floor and turn that music right down, but I don't really care about that. I was going to just nick their fuses, but it seemed mean.

Anyway, the lads who actually showed up included many Mordenvalers, espceially Angus, who it was good to see even if I once again failed to get a copy of his arms so that the torse and mantle I started making for him many years ago will remain unfinished. there was a good batch from Colles Adorum, including Blayney and Blethyn, our favourite pair of field engineers, and Art and Eadie, who simply rock. It was especially good to see both Gudrun and AEflaed there, even if I didn't have enough time to talk to them sensibly.

The lads all acquitted themselves well. Between the 33 degree celcius temps and the gale-force winds (not an exaggeration) it was all a bit dramatic out on the field where they originally planned to fight, so Gui and Alfar intelligently decided they should do it down at the school. This was a great idea as it got everyone out of the worst of the weather, gave some shade, saved the Baronial Pavilion from doom, and allowed everyone at the festival of the frock inside to come and watch at various times.

I took lots of photos, but most of them are of people standing around looking mighty but not doing anything. I hate digital lag.

Here's a nice action shot of Berengar attempting to krull Yves (I think he succeeded), they look cheerfully monochromatic together. Gui was about to kill someone, but alas they were out of shot and I have no idea who they were, because about now the ice-cream truck arrived and we all ran away for choc-dipped Flake cones (several of the marshalls and fighters indulged too, so it was a field of choc-coated SCAdians by the end.) The actual tournament was a Valhalla format, which means that when anyone is killed, all the people who they have killed can re-take the field until they are either too buggered to come back, or else the guy who's still out there has killed everyone else. It's a cruel and unusual style that really tests the fitness as well as the skill of the fighters.

Sadly I have no photos of the finals, so have a look at the nice shot of Baron Hrothgar and Sir Gui while I talk about it briefly. Waltheof and Blayney were the two finalists. Waltheof is an Attican, and Blayney is from Colles Adorum. I really like Waltheof because he is a lovely guy and very courteous, but I admire Blayney a bit more because he does so much stuff other than just fight, from training the masses down south to running large parts of Crossroads for Festival. Waltheof does stuff with his household, but his SCA involvement is mostly just fighting for himself. I think that's okay, and would love to do the same myself. But I am always happy that Blayney is a slightly better fighter than Waltheof, because he spends so much time doing stuff for others, usually for little reward, and so it seems karmically just that the small amount of time he has to put into himself reaps good rewards. And today it won the tournament.

Now that's a good thing in itself, especially against quite good competition (and very gracious competition, I must say. I was genuinely impressed at the supportiveness and good sportsmanship that everyone showed), but there is an even bigger prize at stake. This was the first in a series of tournaments. At the end, everyone who fought in every tournament or who won one round will go into a final round to fight for an ounce of gold donated by the Baron and several of his Knights.

This is extremely cool, and I think that the boys have not only been very generous with their cash, but used their imaginations wittily and wisely. Yay lads!

So now to the event that didn't quite work, Polit Invest. I couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong until later that night when Rowan talked me through how the event was meant to go. It had lots of good details, like individual servers for the messes, lovely napery, some brilliant desserts and subtleties, but it actually forgot about a lot of the big-picture stuff. So, from a feast logistics side, there wasn't quite enough food and a lot of it was really peculiar, such as what appeared to be steamed chicken, and was just chicken. No sauce, no skin, no vegetable or rice bit to accompany it, just chicken.

I'm told that the kitchen had a numbers increase sprung on them in the last 24 hours, and I must confess that we booked only in the last 7 or so days, which is bad. This probably accounts for it not being traditionally Polit in the stuff yourself senseless stakes. I didn't really mind because there was a pleasant sufficiency of food, and even the plain chicken was well-cooked if unusual (it's the SCA, something has always been done to the chicken, often something the chicken would have been quite startled to think about. No, not like that, Manfred, you sick, sick man.)

The bigger problem was the overall lack of focus of the timetable. The last Baronial Court did go longer than had been expected, but not by so long that it should have bumped all the entertainments. There was actually a long period of time between courts, and a reasonable period after the last court, but apparently several of the musical and theatrical interludes that had been planned did not go ahead because they were not able to be fitted in. I think the problem there was that they just needed someone with a watch saying: "OK, food's gone out, you've got 20 minutes until we yank you off, go!"

One of the things that we have learned is that someone will always grab you food if you have something that you need to do, and that after service is the best time to do something because people are stuffing their faces and won't talk over you.

On the upside, they were very good courts, the K&Q were delightful as always and both the incoming and outgoing B&B were ace. We like all of them a lot. If it hadn't been Polit, it would have been less noticable, because we expect them to do so well at everything. Although a tip if you plan on having specified servers; give them lists of the dishes and their ingredients because ours had no clue of what was in anything, which I think upset him more than any of us, poor lamb.

This is what happens to Baronesses when they are forced to sit on too many High Tables. They steal hats from nice Canadians and then take them on mad adventures around the world. Our lovely Helene toughed it out up the front much longer than Arnfinr and Aine who were sneaky and hid up the back with us as soon as they could. Which I can't fault them for. Arnfinr was the object of much amusement for Sophie and Catherine, Joan and Crispin's gorgeous daughters. Catherine learns quickly and pronounced him silly.

I was able to catch up with Bethany, Fruitbat's oldest, and Eleanor, another of the champion Mouse Guard, too. They are good fun and much less kooky than most of the adults who were at the event. I will have to remember to take some board games next time I go down so that we can have some quiet amusements during court.

Hunnydd was looking lovely, and Fitzy was not looking half as gorgeous as Miss Krin, but she wasn't about, so he'll have to do in this photo. They are pulling the facial expressions that are the appropriate responses to the previous photo.

All in all, I had a good time, especially because we were able to spend a little time with Rowan and Nico, who we like a great deal, but it was a strangely unfocussed event that left me wanting it to have fewer good details and more overall direction. That said, the good details were excellent and I can see why the stewarding team spent so much time and effort on them. It's a hard one, and given that I have run only a handful of events I really shouldn't complain but should instead say thank you very much for your efforts. I really did enjoy myself! Oh! I forgot to mention, Gabrielle and her wonderful girlfreind whose name I can never remember were there, which was very cool because I like spending time with them, and they had painted the most amazing map banner that had little archers and mad bands of kids lurching about in the scenery. Really spiffing, I hope they trot it out regularly.

Must dash off and send out invoices now in vain hopes of being paid. Normal service will resume shortly.