Working at the Festival 7

21st, 22nd & 23rd August

Well, I did say it would be a bit erratic! I'm very tired, so it's going to be brief, I'm afraid.

On Friday we had another list of fiddling about jobs to do, which we'd completed by lunchtime. The main genny, which had been giving problems, cutting out in the middle of the night in a false error state, was replaced late in the day; the substitute has been fine.

We went for a fish and chip supper at a local village hall, which was not quite as well organised as it might have been, sad to say. Leaving it to the last minute to order 88 portions of fish or chicken and chips from the chippy led to predictable delays in supply. In fact the first orders didn't arrive until after nine, a second delivery came at twenty to ten, and the final stuff didn't come until five past ten.

The hall also doubles as the village pub, so we could have a drink, but of course that only made things worse after a bit. I don't often have trouble with my blood sugar levels, but this was one time where I really wasn't sure if I was going to make it.

Yesterday and today has seen the transition from pre camp towards the full on WRG camp. It's great to meet folk we haven't seen all year, and to get back into the swing of the highly organised WRG approach to these matters.

The work has continued much the same, tweaking the fence, tidying verges, and clearing a hay crop off the campsite field. Elanor arrived last night, and has been settling into her role as brew hut fairy, sorting it out and organising the stuff which goes in there from the WRG kit trailers.

Many of the women are going off for a hen night tonight for one of the wrgies who's marrying another; I'm planning to eat dinner with WRG and have an early night.

Working at the Festival 6

20th August

We had a morning off yesterday, as we had a lift to the local IKEA with Jane from Slow Gin, the boat tied just inside us.

We were able to identify the chairs we plan to use on Sanity Again – more about this on the other blog in due course As soon as we get the plan from Peter Mason, I'll do another post over there.).

In the afternoon, Sheila was working with Jane in Admin, whilst the WRG team busied themselves with a lot of bits and pieces round the site, finishing by starting to lay the plastic sheet on the floor of the sleeping marquee. We ran out of sheet half way through, but Bungle was able to get some more later in the day and we finished the job this morning. It will be covered with carpet by the marquee contractor today, so that it's ready for use tonight.

There followed a quiet evening on the boat, the last for which I had to cook a meal. Tonight we're out at a fish and chip supper with many of the other workers, and tomorrow the WRG camp catering starts.

Working at the Festival 5

19th August

We're at the phase now of doing some bits of fencing and any other jobs that arise in the course of the day. Yesterday, we filled a trench by the side of the road that the boat lorries will come down, Alex fetching some fill from the marina yard in the telehandler bucket, and three of us supervising the pour into the hole, then clearing up around it.

Later in the day the two Bibby twins (known as the Tweedles to us) filled a smaller hole near the front entrance of the EA stand. There's going to be a fair bit of this next week, when we have the main WRG camp going and enough bodies to find and mark the holes, followed by a team using the dumper to fill them in.

We turned an informal gate (i.e. a loose panel) on the walking route from the workers' boats to the back of the WRG compound into a proper personnel gate, and locked it with a WRG padlock. Now that there are significant amounts of folk camping there, it makes sense to start maintaining security more thoroughly.

As a result of this, wheeled traffic has started to use the track which will be the entrance to the main campsite, so we marked out the edge of that track with lamp irons and hazard tape.

Final job of the day for me and some of the team was laying a strip of rubber mesh backed black carpet along the line which most of the visitors will use when queuing to enter. It meant opening a couple of fence panels and unrolling the length of stuff. It had, perhaps inevitably, been rolled so that the top surface was on the outside, which made it much harder to lay, of course, but with the aid of some strong muscle and a scaffold pole through the middle of the roll we managed in the end.

The marquees and cabins for the WRG camp are in position, so a start has been made on moving in the cookers and fridges to them. The next couple of days may well be mainly taken up with sorting the compound out so that it's ready for the first influx of wrgies on Saturday.

Working at the Festival 4

18th August

As I expected, yesterday was a day of tinkering with the fence line. We restructured the enclosures around admin village and the main entrance, and later in the day took a tour around the whole perimeter checking that all was still secure. Some of the stays needed repinning, but otherwise all was well.

The major job in the afternoon was back at problem corner. The site team had decided that there was no way we could get a trombo wagon with a 70 foot narrowboat round it as it stood, and it's on the route to where the land based boats will be craned in.

We'd got permission from the farmer to take down some of his permanent fence (which, to be honest, was a bit agricultural in appearance, being partly composed of pallets and old iron gates, held together with blue polyprop and bailer twine).

He came by just as we were taking a sledge hammer to some of this, and we had some further negotiation, shall we say, about just how much we were going to remove. This was settled entirely amicably, and in due course one of the Merlo telehandlers came along and pulled out some of the posts.

It really underlines the sheer power of one of those beasts when you see that it doesn't even cause the engine note to change as the jib rises, pulling a big post out of the ground like a rotten tooth.

The whole area now looks much better, which is good as it lies behind the IWA marquee site, and will be used for the Cressy Garden (no, I'm not sure, either).

In the evening, Bungle and his team turned up and installed the gennies and lines to supply power to the boats. It looks as if there's been an underestimation of the size needed to for one of the gennies, but we shall see. It appears to have coped overnight, but that's the easy bit.

Working at the Festival 3

17th August

Yesterday was a fairly typical day for the fencing team, in so far as we could be said to have one.

We started by taking down some fence we put up on Saturday, and moving it up to the tracking that had since been laid behind the bar area. (Yes, John, I agree, it's a lot like the OwnerShips Show, except it goes on for longer, and you have to walk a lot further!)

Then, as we were preparing to put crowd barrier around the Arena location, a wagon bringing in some Portakabins demonstrated that we hadn't left enough room for him to swing around a tight corner by catching a panel on the corner of the cabin and towing the fence a short distance.

We nipped over there and dismantled the wreckage, and assessed how we could reconstruct the corner to leave more room.

Meanwhile, I managed to gain an advantage in the chronic struggle to get the use of the telehandler to bring the packs of crowd barrier to where we needed them. At the moment, we've only got one dedicated forks driver on site, so he's a very, very popular man,

The rest of the morning was divided between crowd barrier and fixing the fence corner. It may seem early to fence in the Arena, but it's so central to the layout, it's really handy to have it visible in the centre of the showground. It's very big this year, 100 metres by 50, as it will be the target for paratroopers from the Princess Royal's on Monday.

The afternoon was taken up with a few fiddly jobs, adjusting the fence here and there, and that will go on for today, I expect.

We had another relaxed evening. Bungle had managed to sort my chair swivel problem (he hit with a big hammer, skilfully), so we've both got recliners again – many, many thanks, Bungle, you are a star!

Working at the Festival 2

16th August

Highlights from the last couple of days:

We had a party on the pontoon on Saturday evening, with much sharing of drinks, especially a range of whiskies, and later we made an outdoor buffet of the various dinners we'd cooked – three kinds of curry and some chilli from me, plus rice and cous cous.

Sadly, no one had a camera handy to record the invention of pole dancing, narrowboat style, using the tiller swan necks. An excellent evening, but a few sore heads yesterday morning!

We've put a lot of fence up, taken some of it down again and put it up elsewhere as the site team try to make the most of the terrain. It's much easier than last year – just a single skin, and a simple site perimeter.

The weather has been great, sunny some of the time, but not too hot to work, and we're quite optimistic about it for the next few days.

We've now got a socialising big gazebo up near the workers' boats, so we had our evening drink in there. Morale continues high.

Over the next couple of days we should see power start to appear as the gennies arrive and get hooked up. This will save having to run the boat engines every day, which will be good.

Working at the Festival 1

14th & 15th August

Sheila writes:

Bruce is still working on site so I shall have to do the blog today.

We had a very lazy start yesterday as we had promised to wait for Amber Moon so we could share the lock down onto the river. They wanted to get a last pump out before being on a Festival mooring for three weeks. It was a lovely morning with a fair amount of sun and not too much wind. When we eventually set off the locks were very busy but fortunately there was a lock keeper on duty. He was working both locks at once with a narrow boat and a cruiser in one and Amber Moon and ourselves in the other. This of course resulted in a little flotilla of boats all going down the river together.

Once heading up the Soar, this was one of the occasions when the GPS came in handy for boating. We knew that our mooring was in a little backwater on the left above the flood lock but we hadn't spotted the backwater when we came down in June. However Bruce who was steering said not to worry as he had it on the GPS. It's a very good mooring in a backwater that is big enough to have boats moored two abreast on one side and three abreast on the other with just nice room down the middle to get in and out.

We had been told that although the plan showed us moored with the bow into the backwater things had been changed and we should go in stern first. This makes sense because in an emergency it would be much easier to clear the boats out if they have their bows outermost. It just gave Bruce an interesting challenge to turn the boat in the river then back up the middle of the moorings. He was lucky that there were not too many boats in at that stage.

We got in to discover that Fair Fa' the boat on the pontoon inside us was already in place but Slow Gin who was to be between us had not yet arrived. The only problem was that Fair Fa' was moored bows in. Someone had told Pat and Sheila on Fair Fa' that we could only access our boat from the bow and so they had gone in bows first to allow us to come in stern first. Since we can of course access our boat from either end Pat decided to go out and turn. He was only just in time, by the time he got back in Slow Gin arrived and came in beside him. Then we could move into our position and we were in the right place and all facing the right way.

There followed a busy time saying hello to as many people as possible. There is so much catching up to do when we only see people once a year. It's all chaotic for the first few days as you start a conversation with someone then someone new comes along and you stop to greet them then the first person gets called away and you talk to the new arrival then someone new comes along and ... round it all goes again. Then you have to finish all the part conversations and remember what you have told to who and who has told you where they've been this year etc.

We returned briefly to the boat for lunch then reported to Sandy in Admin (well actually in her boat as the Admin office wasn't set up). We read the Health & Safety brief and were issued with our wristbands. Until you've got your wristband you can't go on site. Duly processed we joined the fencing team and in the course of the afternoon half a dozen stalwarts erected a fence round the wrg site and the Tardis compound so that all the equipment that has arrived already would be secure overnight. The grass in the Festival field and the wrg/Tardis compound had been cut the day before. The camping field is still being mown, a big job as the camping field and the car parks are very large this year.

Today has been great weather for our purpose. The wind has been drying the ground well and although there have been nice sunny spells it has not been too hot. An enlarged fencing team has in one day put a fence round the entire perimeter of the festival site and fenced in a special compound for the security team. They like their compound well fenced to make them feel safe!