Drive, cake, booze, tarts, dancing, booze, stew, tent, cheese, tarts, cake, drive, cake

[bunn]

If you can't be bothered to read about my weekend, I have handily summarised it for you in the subject.  The rest is detail.  Oh, and a painting.  Well, two paintings, one by Bruegel, one by me.  


I went to Southampton for king_pellinor's 40th birthday.  I already did this once, but you can't do these things too thoroughly.   And my goodness, thorough was the word.  It snowed food and rained drink, as hobbits would say, most of it either brightly coloured or gilded in a remarkable and expert manner.  

There was much dancing to a very energetic folk band (with a spectacular bright green electric violin!).  I would say that I'm no good at dancing, but as I have never put any effort into being good at dancing, it's not really surprising that I constantly fall over my feet and turn the wrong way. Still, when in Rome, at least make an effort to try to do as the Romans do, right?  

The four kids present flung themselves very impressively into the cavorting, sometimes with hilarious freestyle results involving much skidding on knees across the slidy floor.   Also, excellent medieval(ish) costumes from most present, very impressive.  I particularly admired the bloke who came as a black and white jester, for keeping the ridiculous hat on for ages while solemnly twirling, he must have been baking... 

Tent.  Having driven through blattering hail and driving rain for 4 hours, I was  thinking that my decision to camp overnight was a mistake and almost wimped out and slept in the hall.  But then in the evening, the clouds rolled away and the weather turned perfect.  So I got to walk up to my tent at 2am under a sky full of stars, and wake up in a sunny field under birch trees, surrounded by bluebells and cherryblossom.   (There was admittedly a distant rumble of motorway.  Where are so many people going on a motorway at 2am that there are enough of them to  make a constant rumble?  They should be in bed!) 

Note to self : for camping in April, ideally I need an extra blanket as well as the sleeping bag, particularly when I don't have a lurcher to tuck into the sleeping bag with me. 

I didn't take my camera (drat!  I kind of wish I had, as I could do with some reference photos of dancing people!  Also, skordh made a superb vaguely-Flemish-looking peasant, and I had a vague idea to try to paint something like this:


with him in it. Though possibly imitating Bruegel is a tad overambitious!  ),


I did paint this as a birthday card beforehand.  I think these dancers are more organised and coordinated and also more consistent in size than the real ones!  But then they are in a medieval idyll, not a scout hut on the outskirts of Southampton :

There was an enormous amount of food over at the end.  Fortunately, I had failed to bring my cake tin home after a previous trip, and ladyofastolat being much more organised than me had thought to bring it with the other 9999 things required for the party.  So I had something to fill with cake and tarts to take home.  (I think the little spiced fruit tarts were my favoritest of all the many many foods). 

There was also a mountain of sausages not entirely eaten for breakfast.  I didn't take any of the sausages away with me, got home, and cursed when I realised that Brythen has a training class tomorrow and some cold sausages would have been the ideal lurcher-bribe.  I had to cook more sausages!   philmophlegm looked after the hounds while I was away.  The hounds seemed unbothered by this, and fortunately, so did Pp.

Comments

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

You're brave camping in this weather! Love the card.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Given what it's like this morning I think I was very lucky to get away without a soaked tent!

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

The card is lovely, thank you so much :-)

Do you do commissions? I could do with some illuminated pages for writing F&H stuff in, and those little figures and your prawncyclists would be perfect :-)

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Oh, and there were five kids - there were two identical princesses, Robin Hood, Malfoy and the plaque victim. Though at times I got the impression there must be at least a dozen getting under dancers' feet :-)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Oh! I forgot Robin Hood! He had an excellent hat too.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

No, no, thank *you* *bows in circular politeness*

I can do, you mean you want things that can be printed off A4 with little people, trees etc round the edges & space for a message in the middle? Colour or B&W?

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Well I've been writing some books in character, and the pages look a bit plain without doodles all round the edge. So what I'd ideally like is to be able to give someone artistic some pages (either ready-written, or still blank) and leave them for a bit while the arty person occasionally throws some mediaeval doodles round the edges and maybe in the blank pages, and then retrieve them for binding.

I kind of assume that this sort of art is a thing that happens best when you're not looking, so it's best to sort of dig the bed, scatter the seeds, and then come back later to see what's sprung up :-)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

The plaque victim? Did it fall off the wall and hit him on the head?

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Maybe the government has secret bunkers alongside every motorway, broadcasting a constant hum of "motorway noise." Should aliens invade Westminster/the ants rise up to rule us/mega piranhas eat the government/a meteor lands on the Queen, mass panic and rioting will be avoided, because people will hear the constant distant roar of the motorway and know that civilisation is carrying on as normal.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I remember.

I'd feel a bit worried about decorating a painstakingly -written page unless I got something horribly wrong (I know medieval monks had to do it, but I believe you can scrape off parchment if it all goes pearshaped, which you can't do with paper!)

But I can certainly decorate some blank pages if you want? Do you want relevant illustration or just vaguely medieval looking ones?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

not unless. In case. blech. See what I mean? Low quality standards! :-D

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of dental plaque. Brush every day without fail... or else!!!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Goodness, depressing theory! People being reassured and comforted by motorway noise!

I prefer to think it was National Drive at 2AM Day, and they were all planning to meet up for a huge jolly picnic, perhaps on the cliffs around Dover.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

That'd be great :-) I've been using thick creamy paper so the books will end up reasonably robust (with any luck), with the end cut off so it's not clearly derived from A4. I have a stack of it somewhere - can I pass you a supply sometime? Hopefully it's be OK for drawing on, being sized and so on.

Vaguely mediaevally ones would be fine - I can always pick an appropriate page for the bit I'm writing at any given time :-) Or I could pencil on a brief summary of what might be on that page, and if inspiration strikes then great and if not then who cares when there are pretty pictures? :-)

The book I'm nearly finished is on chivalry; one future book is on courtly love, and the other on the law. There may be others if I ever get round to doing these ones before my character dies :-)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

OK, can do that. Am I required to draw with a period dip pen, or is a felt tip good enough? :-D

(your card was acrylics, but that's not very authentic :-D)

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Whatever you think is artistically appropriate, and you can be bothered to do :-)

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of tigerfort's utterly brilliant quip that made it into The Times' letters page, regarding a debate as to which of two candidates was the actual house that Shakespeare's mother had lived in: his suggestion of course was "a plaque on both their houses" :-D