Something for the weekend
Jul. 15th, 2003 02:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenAs my mate Ian (WINOLJ) recently said, weekends at this time of year are either empty or quadruple-booked. In an ideal world, I’d probably have gone to B Movie, then ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tamaranth’s picnic in Greenwich, and not done a lot. But this is not an ideal world. Sometimes, though, it’s a good one.
I couldn’t go to B Movie because of “you know, Stuff” (™kjersti). Instead, I’d formed a plan to go to a rave with my mates Ben ‘n’ Heather (WANOLJ), who have been trying for months now to free my inner hippy from the shrouds of gothness and get me to go raving again. I used to, actually, once upon a time, years ago, and liked it.
But then came a competing offer. Stef (WINOLJ) and some friends were going to Full Tilt at the Electric Ballroom, then off to the Tewkesbury Mediæval Fayre.
(I mentioned this incorsetboy’s poll, earning me an instant stern mail from Herself. Had I forgotten that her brother and sister-in-law were going to Tewkesbury? It wasn’t a rhetorical question, either, though it should have been. Of course I had. Kjersti was once into LARPing and re-enactment, Roman-era stuff mainly, though that’s much too uncool for the modern young goth-chixx0r-about-town that she is today. Sigurd and Hilde still do it, though, and are regulars at this bash.)
Well, if I went raving, I’d definitely not be up in time for that – and probably not for the picnic. And Full Tilt is more my thing. So off I went. I arranged to meet Stef, Elvis, Jebbo and Dom in the Dev at closing time. So, naturally, I got to Camden at just after midnight, with a bl00dy great backpack containing sleeping bag, bedroll & 2 days’ worth of clothes.
It was good. It was loud and bouncy. I bopped happily to Covenant’s “Monochrome” (AKA the Boring Shorts song – go listen to the bridge…) They bopped happily to Electric Six’ “Gay Bar” - and indeed continued to recite it all sodding weekend.
We left. Late. A quick stop off at Tesco Hoover in Perivale – once my local supermarket – for a modest half a dozen carrier bags of breakfast – and sleep on Stef’s kitchen floor. (Would you choose to share a room with Elvis and Jebbo?) At 5am. I really, really hoped they wouldn’t make their planned 8am depature.
I was woken at 11 or so. I retreated to the shower while the boys fried things. Sadly Elvis fried all the eggs I’d bought with the same implements as the bacon, so bang went my eggy breakfast. I contented myself with double mushroom burgers.
We actually left at 3pm. Now that’s a civilised time.
On arrival, we had to camp in the overflow ground – but this was directly behind the only pub in the area, so all was not lost. Stef immediately stripped to the waist, declaring that he wanted some colour on his body other than dead-fish-belly-white. Presumably, bright red is therefore what he wanted. Strange boy.
We walked to the showground and on the way in I immediately bumped into the in-laws-that-were-to-be. (I had no idea how big this event was – there were thousands there. The odds against this were huge, so naturally, it happened almost immediately.) We arranged to meet later.
I wandered around the market. This was odd. There’s a vast range of stuff on sale – clothing, weapons, armour, jewellery, artefacts real and ersatz, materials, furniture. Focussed on Mediæval, yes, but ranging from Viking to Elizabethan. I’m used to wandering around computer show markets, or bike show markets, and suchlike, wanting to buy loads of everything. This time, I didn’t want any of it. I don’t do this stuff and am not hugely interested. Very weird.
I bought a copy of Quake II for the Playstation. £3. Probably not what the organizers had in mind, that.
Then we went off to watch the battle. The Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 was on of the decisive encounters of the War of the Roses, where the upstart Yorkshire forces of Edward IV got the upper hand over Mary of Anjou’s Lancaster troops. Apparently.
Lots of men in sort-of uniform and armour and shiny helmets stood around in the baking sunlight, doing nothing. To a running commentary about Royals abusing one another. Then they charged, and…
Well, it was a melée. I have no idea what was going on where. Lots of people milling about very slowly and poking each other with long sharp sticks and things. Utterly incomprehensible and frankly rather dull if you don’t know what you’re watching, which I don’t. However, they were trying jolly hard and seemed to be enjoying themselves, which is the main thing, I suppose. It slightly robs the gravitas from a frantic battle to the death between two heavily-armed soldiers when both are grinning from ear to ear, but hey.
I have many photos. I may even upload them somewhere if you, dear reader, ask loud enough. I doubt they show anything very comprehensible, though.
It was very very hot indeed. I, too, stripped to the waist. I’ve worn latex, I’m used to spending several solid hours sucking my gut in. No problem.
We returned to the Fayre to browse some more. I rediscovered Mr & Mrs Thunem and we exchange mobile numbers, then later, retired to the beer tent for a natter. We’ve always got on really well and it was good to see them again. We talked about Stuff a bit, as you might expect, but then onto matters such as folk music, the authenticity of traditional Viking dress in what was meant to be C15 England, the problems of incorporating Sami characters in ASCII domain names, the joy of the SonyEricsson P800 and many more matters arising. It is, though, slightly embarrassing to be lectured on your own national history by a visiting Norwegian, even if said Norwegian does admit to an unhealthy obsession with history. Anyone’s history.
When the beer tent failed to reopen, we retired to the pub. The boys, meanwhile, put up tents, burned animals, then hit each other with pieces thereof. When they sent for me to join them, inexplicably, Sigurd and Hilde felt disinclined to participate, and since it was 10pm they retired to their hotel.
I went and surveyed the carnage.
I then immediately left again and went back to the pub for some good, healthy chips instead. They informed me there was a bar extension ’til 1am, so the boys joined me. Then they decided there weren’t enough of us and closed the bar anyway. We went back to the showground and the beer tent.
That was shut, too.
Organizational efforts such as this take real planning, you know. They don’t just happen.
We went back to the tents again and shared our meagre supplies of lager, cider, gin&tonic and Slivovitz. This is an unpleasant Eastern European beverage which tastes like Ribena made with meths instead of water. We decided it was much more fun to pour it on the lantern and set fire to it, rather than drink it.
Day 2.
We went to the pub for breakfast, having earlier ascertained it served until 10am. At 9:45, the bar phone rang. “You’re kidding!” exclaimed the barman into it, and ran off. “I bet they’ve run out of food,” I joked to Elvis.
The barman reappeared. He told the 2 chaps in front of us (in Dark Age peasants’ garb, natch) “I’m really sorry, we’ve run out of food.”
We were unhappy.
We returned to the campsite. Elvis informed us that the site wouldn’t reopen until 11:30, so we might as well go into Tewkesbury itself. We did. It was shut. Except for one pub which had no food.
So we had beer for breakfast, instead.
Then we trudged back to the Fayre. And lo! The food stands had actually opened for breakfast at 8am! And since then, sold out!
We gave Elvis unfriendly looks.
I ran to the veggie food stall and bought one of everything and a mint tea, and fell upon it like… a fat bugger who’s not eaten in 14 hours.
More shopping. More topless blokes, now increasingly resembling bipedal lobsters. We met Emma King and boyfriend John. The boys bought… things. Best not to ask. I bought Art. Kinda.
Then beer and girl watching. There are, mainly, two types of girl at these events, apparently. Larpers’ girlfriends and girls who want to be larpers’ girlfriends. The former are often quite striking. The latter tend to the very low surface-area-to-volume ratios. In this weather, those not in homespun were mainly in bikinis and seethrough scraps. It was rather pleasant, although I detected in my companions an alarming tendency to favour appalling bottle-blonde Essex-style slappers in crappy sportswear. This is, to my mind, criminal when there are etiolated Goths around, but there you go.
And home. Two hours on searing motorways. We slept, mainly. This is quite bad when you are actually driving the car at the time. Elvis subbed for Stef and displayed an alarming lack of vehicle control skills in a convenient pub carpark, but he seemed all right on the road itself.
Finally, a last-minute dash across London from Uxbridge to Addiscombe for Clarets. I made it in just under 2 hours, but I had to take a taxi from East Croydon to do so.
There. Evidence I don’t spend all my time in the pub and dingy nightclubs. If you don’t believe me, come look. The few bits that aren’t still pasty white are dark brown or bright red.
tamaranth’s picnic in Greenwich, and not done a lot. But this is not an ideal world. Sometimes, though, it’s a good one.I couldn’t go to B Movie because of “you know, Stuff” (™
kjersti). Instead, I’d formed a plan to go to a rave with my mates Ben ‘n’ Heather (WANOLJ), who have been trying for months now to free my inner hippy from the shrouds of gothness and get me to go raving again. I used to, actually, once upon a time, years ago, and liked it.But then came a competing offer. Stef (WINOLJ) and some friends were going to Full Tilt at the Electric Ballroom, then off to the Tewkesbury Mediæval Fayre.
(I mentioned this in
corsetboy’s poll, earning me an instant stern mail from Herself. Had I forgotten that her brother and sister-in-law were going to Tewkesbury? It wasn’t a rhetorical question, either, though it should have been. Of course I had. Kjersti was once into LARPing and re-enactment, Roman-era stuff mainly, though that’s much too uncool for the modern young goth-chixx0r-about-town that she is today. Sigurd and Hilde still do it, though, and are regulars at this bash.)Well, if I went raving, I’d definitely not be up in time for that – and probably not for the picnic. And Full Tilt is more my thing. So off I went. I arranged to meet Stef, Elvis, Jebbo and Dom in the Dev at closing time. So, naturally, I got to Camden at just after midnight, with a bl00dy great backpack containing sleeping bag, bedroll & 2 days’ worth of clothes.
It was good. It was loud and bouncy. I bopped happily to Covenant’s “Monochrome” (AKA the Boring Shorts song – go listen to the bridge…) They bopped happily to Electric Six’ “Gay Bar” - and indeed continued to recite it all sodding weekend.
We left. Late. A quick stop off at Tesco Hoover in Perivale – once my local supermarket – for a modest half a dozen carrier bags of breakfast – and sleep on Stef’s kitchen floor. (Would you choose to share a room with Elvis and Jebbo?) At 5am. I really, really hoped they wouldn’t make their planned 8am depature.
I was woken at 11 or so. I retreated to the shower while the boys fried things. Sadly Elvis fried all the eggs I’d bought with the same implements as the bacon, so bang went my eggy breakfast. I contented myself with double mushroom burgers.
We actually left at 3pm. Now that’s a civilised time.
On arrival, we had to camp in the overflow ground – but this was directly behind the only pub in the area, so all was not lost. Stef immediately stripped to the waist, declaring that he wanted some colour on his body other than dead-fish-belly-white. Presumably, bright red is therefore what he wanted. Strange boy.
We walked to the showground and on the way in I immediately bumped into the in-laws-that-were-to-be. (I had no idea how big this event was – there were thousands there. The odds against this were huge, so naturally, it happened almost immediately.) We arranged to meet later.
I wandered around the market. This was odd. There’s a vast range of stuff on sale – clothing, weapons, armour, jewellery, artefacts real and ersatz, materials, furniture. Focussed on Mediæval, yes, but ranging from Viking to Elizabethan. I’m used to wandering around computer show markets, or bike show markets, and suchlike, wanting to buy loads of everything. This time, I didn’t want any of it. I don’t do this stuff and am not hugely interested. Very weird.
I bought a copy of Quake II for the Playstation. £3. Probably not what the organizers had in mind, that.
Then we went off to watch the battle. The Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 was on of the decisive encounters of the War of the Roses, where the upstart Yorkshire forces of Edward IV got the upper hand over Mary of Anjou’s Lancaster troops. Apparently.
Lots of men in sort-of uniform and armour and shiny helmets stood around in the baking sunlight, doing nothing. To a running commentary about Royals abusing one another. Then they charged, and…
Well, it was a melée. I have no idea what was going on where. Lots of people milling about very slowly and poking each other with long sharp sticks and things. Utterly incomprehensible and frankly rather dull if you don’t know what you’re watching, which I don’t. However, they were trying jolly hard and seemed to be enjoying themselves, which is the main thing, I suppose. It slightly robs the gravitas from a frantic battle to the death between two heavily-armed soldiers when both are grinning from ear to ear, but hey.
I have many photos. I may even upload them somewhere if you, dear reader, ask loud enough. I doubt they show anything very comprehensible, though.
It was very very hot indeed. I, too, stripped to the waist. I’ve worn latex, I’m used to spending several solid hours sucking my gut in. No problem.
We returned to the Fayre to browse some more. I rediscovered Mr & Mrs Thunem and we exchange mobile numbers, then later, retired to the beer tent for a natter. We’ve always got on really well and it was good to see them again. We talked about Stuff a bit, as you might expect, but then onto matters such as folk music, the authenticity of traditional Viking dress in what was meant to be C15 England, the problems of incorporating Sami characters in ASCII domain names, the joy of the SonyEricsson P800 and many more matters arising. It is, though, slightly embarrassing to be lectured on your own national history by a visiting Norwegian, even if said Norwegian does admit to an unhealthy obsession with history. Anyone’s history.
When the beer tent failed to reopen, we retired to the pub. The boys, meanwhile, put up tents, burned animals, then hit each other with pieces thereof. When they sent for me to join them, inexplicably, Sigurd and Hilde felt disinclined to participate, and since it was 10pm they retired to their hotel.
I went and surveyed the carnage.
I then immediately left again and went back to the pub for some good, healthy chips instead. They informed me there was a bar extension ’til 1am, so the boys joined me. Then they decided there weren’t enough of us and closed the bar anyway. We went back to the showground and the beer tent.
That was shut, too.
Organizational efforts such as this take real planning, you know. They don’t just happen.
We went back to the tents again and shared our meagre supplies of lager, cider, gin&tonic and Slivovitz. This is an unpleasant Eastern European beverage which tastes like Ribena made with meths instead of water. We decided it was much more fun to pour it on the lantern and set fire to it, rather than drink it.
Day 2.
We went to the pub for breakfast, having earlier ascertained it served until 10am. At 9:45, the bar phone rang. “You’re kidding!” exclaimed the barman into it, and ran off. “I bet they’ve run out of food,” I joked to Elvis.
The barman reappeared. He told the 2 chaps in front of us (in Dark Age peasants’ garb, natch) “I’m really sorry, we’ve run out of food.”
We were unhappy.
We returned to the campsite. Elvis informed us that the site wouldn’t reopen until 11:30, so we might as well go into Tewkesbury itself. We did. It was shut. Except for one pub which had no food.
So we had beer for breakfast, instead.
Then we trudged back to the Fayre. And lo! The food stands had actually opened for breakfast at 8am! And since then, sold out!
We gave Elvis unfriendly looks.
I ran to the veggie food stall and bought one of everything and a mint tea, and fell upon it like… a fat bugger who’s not eaten in 14 hours.
More shopping. More topless blokes, now increasingly resembling bipedal lobsters. We met Emma King and boyfriend John. The boys bought… things. Best not to ask. I bought Art. Kinda.
Then beer and girl watching. There are, mainly, two types of girl at these events, apparently. Larpers’ girlfriends and girls who want to be larpers’ girlfriends. The former are often quite striking. The latter tend to the very low surface-area-to-volume ratios. In this weather, those not in homespun were mainly in bikinis and seethrough scraps. It was rather pleasant, although I detected in my companions an alarming tendency to favour appalling bottle-blonde Essex-style slappers in crappy sportswear. This is, to my mind, criminal when there are etiolated Goths around, but there you go.
And home. Two hours on searing motorways. We slept, mainly. This is quite bad when you are actually driving the car at the time. Elvis subbed for Stef and displayed an alarming lack of vehicle control skills in a convenient pub carpark, but he seemed all right on the road itself.
Finally, a last-minute dash across London from Uxbridge to Addiscombe for Clarets. I made it in just under 2 hours, but I had to take a taxi from East Croydon to do so.
There. Evidence I don’t spend all my time in the pub and dingy nightclubs. If you don’t believe me, come look. The few bits that aren’t still pasty white are dark brown or bright red.
