stellar_muddle | It was a toss up between the geteld or cannon...

Busy weekend.

Weapons of Medieval Destruction camping event out in Gladstone (don't worry if you don't know where that is, we had a few false starts too)

Fri: Not exactly a crack of dawn start - we did manage to leave the house round 1pm and the shopping only took half an hour. Got out to site round 4 pm (with a bit of to-ing and fro-ing) and discovered ourselves to be the first ones there. Luckily someone else turned up and confirmed we were in the right place and they were just setting up on the Fri and stuff started Sat. So we got an extra day of camping. Set up, and there was dinner and chatting around campfires til late.

Sat: Minor niggle: If you advertise your event to medievalists as a camping event with seige weapons and black powder stuff, they may be rather suprised when the event turns out to be a public punter one where they need to be in public demo mode and may need to do gate duty and that is why they are being given a free feed. Not that they wont do it, but it is kinda nice to ask first (or at least advertise accurately). Just puts a slightly different spin on things. That being said, firing a large trebuchet with petanc (?sp) balls for ammo is very fun and Oskar's arbalast is very very cool and he is very good with it. There was much food in the evening and sitting around chatting (zombies featured highly). Then once a bunch of people headed off (it was only 8:30pm but they did have a way to travel) and the campfires started.

There sort of ended up being 3 main campfires, with people drifting between. Then one lot went to sleep and we gained the others (65th regiment) cause they ran out of firewood. But prior to that there was dueling singing between the two awake campfires.

alpha_angel and I would sing something (mainly folk, some medieval) and they would reply with something Naploeonic or other 19th C. I think we lost ground for one song given we started but they knew more verses - but J is getting K the lyrics (of that one* and others) in return for the lyrics for Culloden's Harvest and appropriate references. That was fun and a good incentive to do 19th C reinactment (or at least go to events where you can do that around campfires). Bed little after midnight.

Sun: Z had a great deal of fun playing with his newly acquired handgonne on a stick. Lots of big loud BOOMS down the firing range. More fun watching things fire at the corrigated iron and cardboard castle. Great loud noises.

Decided that don't want the event to end but do want the packing up to have ended about an hour or two ago. Reasonable amounts of food and drink definitely leads to less low blood sugar crankiness.

Fun event, though could possible be a bit better organised and advertised. I think the plan for next year is apparently to just have it for reinactors so more time can be focussed on the appropriate amounts of destruction. This definitely sounds fun :)

Home now and have washed hair, surfed a bit and once I finish this entry, will definitely sleeeeeep....

* Refrain:

Poor old soldier, poor old soldier
If ever I list for a soldier again,
Devil shall be me sargent.

Edit: Which may be this, which means the lyrics on the Sharpe soundtrack album are twisted a bit...

Ok, and here is the 65th Regiment website and songbook. In case K's business card is lost...