Getting ready for next year

We've just about recovered from the excitements of Beale Park, and we're starting to think about next year's event at Shobnall Fields, Burton on Trent. As part of that, I've changed the name of this blog, but not much else will happen here until we get nearer the time.

I'll mention relevant stuff over on my main blog, Living in Sanity Again, from time to time.

Third Sunday

Another good day, except it rained quite spectacularly during the afternoon. This post is late and short because I've been writing about half of the spoof edition of the Newsletter that has a limited circulation tomorrow, and I'm a touch weary.

We got the Beale Park Bugle printed, folded and circulated with great despatch in the afternoon, and in the evening we saw the Parade of Illuminated Boats enter the lake at around ten pm.

They were very impressive, as far as the illuminations went, but the boat handling presented some serious challenges in the dark.

I've not got much more to say here; I'm going to take a break from blogging for a few days, then resume the Living in Sanity Again blog in due course. I may well just tweet for a bit, until we are settled back into our boating routine.

Doing the Newsletter hass been an interesting experience for us; we're going to give it another go next year in Burton on Trent.

Third Saturday

Yesterday saw the Show open on time, despite the usual last minute panics. I haven’t got any figures for the first day’s entry, but the ground looked nicely full, given that it’s one of the larger show fields that we use.

In between going to the BW Q&A session and getting the Sunday edition ready for bed, there was time to wander round a bit, and to meet up with John and Nev Campbell at lunch time.

The final touches to Sunday were delayed by the need to get an account of the Opening Ceremony in, so it was ten to three, rather than half two, before the first copied emerged. Kevin used both printers, however, as the one normally kept for short jobs has much less demand on it when the Show is actually open.

We had less help with the folding at first, but later on, a team of experienced wrgies was recruited and things went faster. In addition, we’d agreed to insert a flyer about next year’s events, which slows things down considerably.

However, it was all done in the end, and by half five, all the copies were at their distribution centres. We’d printed and folded 1270 of them in a two and a half hours.

We’re starting to feel more relaxed about things now; just one more serious issue to get out, and that’s pretty well ready for press now.

This boat is for sale

The WRG bit of the IWA display

Eagle Owl on the Raptors stand

"Knights of the Crusade" base in the Arena

Thames Barge manoeuvring

Second Friday

It's getting quite hard to keep going with this blog, as the fatigue builds, and a load of other stuff clamours for attention. The weather has improved, and we managed to get Sanity Again looking good in time for the judge's visit for the Marion Monk Award.

The wrgies worked amazingly hard yesterday, rising to the challenge as they always do. Mitch’s leadership has been very sure footed,but they still had to slog on until very late, eating lunch and dinner in shifts, and not finishing until after dark.

Elanor worked through until 10 last night, booking in late arrivals, and trying to sort out who should get the red WRG T-shirts.

Meanwhile, people continue to be kind about our efforts with the Newsletter, but we are beginning to get complaints from those who left it too late to seek an entry about their meeting or event.

Unfortunately, one of the groups who has had to be turned down will be judging us for the Cressy Award at 11 today, so we just have to hope they won’t let their irritation affect their judgement...

Bungle came round at 9.45 last night, the first time he could get away, and after playing with it a bit here, took the MiFi away to flash a firmware upgrade to it and to reset the password. What a star that man is, a Red Giant in fact.

Food Traders started

The Lavender Boat on its way out

(it provides refuse and Elsan disposal to the moored boats)

Helping to offload clothing at the Regatta stand

Inside Hall A

A weary wrgie

Don't know what it's for, but it looks fun

Second Thursday

A short blog today; we’re being judged for the Marion Monk Trophy for the best private boat at the Show at ten, and Sheila and Elanor are busy putting the finishing touches to our boat cleaning whilst I write this.

Yesterday was wet again, and the site became soft in places. There’s still a heavy restriction on vehicle movement, so as the traders arrived, their vehicles were brought as close as possible to their stand without cutting up the ground. Then WRG teams carried (“handballed”) their stuff to the stand. They did 20 such yesterday; only another 120 to do today.

Fortunately, the forecast is for a slow improvement from here on in, with really good weather on Monday, but it rained quite hard overnight, so everything is still soggy.

The Beale Park Bugle is being well received, which is a huge relief. There seem to be a few glitches in the distribution system, inevitably; we will probably have sorted them by Tuesday.

We'd used KESCRG's marquee as our field kitchen, and now it had to be moved to become their Appealing Food stall in the Show. No need to take it down, if you have enough wrgies!

Entry to the Camp Site, showing the developing problem with access

Second Wednesday

The weather broke yesterday with a vengeance, with torrential rain at times, and just steady rain for the remainder. Vehicle movement on site was severely restricted; since the hope is that the forecast dry period will turn up tomorrow, if only the team can keep the surface from breaking up too much, it will dry out again to be comfortable for the Festival visitors over the weekend.

It didn’t matter too much to us in the morning, as we were tucked up on the boat putting the final touches to the Thursday edition of the Beale Park Bugle, and progressing Friday’s nicely, but in the afternoon, when the downpour was at its worst, I had to sort out the print run.

This entailed going over to Admin village with a memory stick, from which Kevin printed 950 copies of Thursday, and one of Friday for submission to our Director, Gillian. (I must record that as far as that goes, my fears have proved to be totally unfounded; she’s being very reasonable about leaving us to do what we do, with helpful suggestions and the odd comment.)

Once printed, the copies needed to be taken to the WRG compound, a walk of around five minutes, for folding and sorting into bundles. We have one of those heavy duty reusable Sainsbury’s shopping bags, which happily holds up to 1000 sheets of A3, so I used that, making two trips, partly to spare my back, and partly so that the folders had something to be getting on with.

They arrived almost intact, with just a bit of damp on the edges on a few, well within the deliberate overprint numbers.

Earlier in the day, Bungle had arranged for a folding machine to collected from the guy who looks after the post processing of the Navvies newsletter which is WRG’s main organ of communication. The hope was that it would arrive in time for yesterday’s folding, but it was not to be, so we hand folded the lot, with help from Roger and Margaret who are the signs finishing team and weren't busy. We finished just after half four, with almost all copies delivered to their distribution centres like the Waterspace and Campsite Offices by five.

We then retreated to the boat for a quiet hour’s collapse, before attending the Chinese meal which is the Blue Shirts traditional get together on the Wednesday before the Festival.

Wednesday is also the day when the exhibitor's boats are craned into position:

Trombo wagons waiting with their loads

The first one goes in

Others arrived under their own steam

The Historic Wharf is nearly finished

A team of Blue Shirt ladies make the lunchtime sandwiches

Despite the weather, the marquee guuys work steadily on, here erecting the Bandstand

Second Tuesday

Yesterday was another day given over to working on the Newsletters, though we took opportunities to get out and about when we could. The good news was that the latest strategy for printing the thing worked; I took a memory stick with the copy on it as a PDF of two A3 sides, and Kevin the Comms genius printed it on the duplex printer, resulting in a perfect reproduction.

Sighs of relief all round.

More pictures were taken, and information slowly acquired to fill in the articles we’ve already drafted.

The site team were cheered by the weather, which was dry and windy, and the ground has returned to a useable state. By being firm about not allowing wheeled traffic on site, it’s remained grass covered and good looking.

Elanor has been working hard as WRG administrator, though her job will, hopefully, get easier from now, as most folk have arrived Much of her work now consists of generating lists and numbers from her spreadsheets, such as those needed by the cook for food purchasing, and the list of those staying in the compound, which goes over to Admin every afternoon in case of fire overnight.

Yesterday evening was the Cheese and Wine party, when the Blue Shirts from the various Festival teams get together with the Red Shirts of the wrgies. As usual, it went very well, and even the obligatory talk by the ECO (Emergency Control Officer) about emergency procedures didn’t take too long.

The site is now becoming recognisable as a show Ground, with most of the marquees up, and the electrical contractors positioning generators and stringing cable. The WRG teams will be kept busy burying them (the cables, that is) for the next couple of days.

Fastening down the gazebo outside the WRG eating marquee, to stop it blowing away

WRG Admin takes a break from the laptop to help peel onions

Conferences on the go

The Show Field fills up

Second Monday

Apart from anxiety about where my 3 data allowance has gone, yesterday went well, generally. Lots more work was done on the Newsletters; Thursday’s is pretty well all done, and Friday well on the way. The remaining ones have most of the stuff that we can pre-prepare done; other material can’t be written until the relevant events have occurred.

The printing problem is nearly resolved – we were presented with an A3 version of the Thursday edition last night. It still has a couple of problems, as in the image sizes have been reduced, so that there’s a huge margin round the outside of the text, and one side was upside down, but we’re getting there.

Essentially, the guys up at Admin village would really like me to be using MS Publisher, because that’s all they know, and providing the documents in such rare formats as PDF or a Postscript file is giving them trouble. Hey ho, it’s their problem, not ours.

I had a conversation with Bungle last night about the disappearing data allowance. As a systems development engineer with Vodafone, he’s a fount of wisdom on the subject, and immediately agreed that we must have been hacked by someone freeloading on our connection.

Since it shows on the WiFi list as “3Wireless-modem-xxxx” where the x’s stand for digits, whoever it was probably didn’t know it was a fellow boater – perhaps. In any event, they must have used password cracking software to get in, and if you are reading this, you’re going to cost me £15, since when the last of my 3 allowance is gone, I shall have to buy a month’s supply on my O2 PAYG dongle.

I don’t know what anyone else thinks, but in my book, this is theft, just as if someone had reached into my boat and helped themselves to a can of diesel. What really hurts is that the limited range of the MiFi dongle, used inside a boat, means that the culprit must be a fellow BOD boater.

Ever generous, Bungle has offered to come over later on and help me reprogram the 3 dongle to use a more obvious name for the connection, like Bruce’s Hotspot, and a more secure password.

On a more cheerful note, here are some photos of progress building the site.

Inside Hall A

The crane at the Historic Wharf

Touch of Pink Floyd; painting another brick in the wall

The BOD boats moorings

Second Sunday

We had a very productive day on the Newsletter yesterday, spending almost the whole day on the boat working on it. Sheila made a couple of trips to Admin village, including taking the nearly final version of the Thursday edition on a memory stick to test the printing arrangements.

This didn’t go as well as hoped, but we’re having another try today using a different strategy. (For the geeks: saving to PDF caused problems on the laptop driving the printer between Adobe Acrobat and the Xerox printer controller, so we’re trying with the file saved straight to Postscript.)

As a result of all this office work, there’s not a lot else to say. We’ve got a few more pictures of the site coming together:

The three chairman of WRG. From the left, Alan Jervis, who succeeded Graham Palmer, here represented by his bust, and was in turn followed by Mike Palmer (no relation).

Erecting Hall A or the Premier Marquee

Entrance to the path to the BODs moorings, now suitably signed.

Main concern this morning is that the available data on my 3 account has nosedived again, without us being aware of any very heavy usage, raising the alarming prospect that someone has hacked into my WiFi connection.

Second Saturday

Yesterday was the first day we’ve given over to the Newsletter entirely. Gillian Bolt, the Marketing Manager, came round first thing with her copy of the current draft of Thursday’s edition, and we spent a good chunk of the day incorporating her suggestions into it.

It’s always hard taking criticism of one’s creative efforts, but Gillian’s comments were pertinent and largely helpful, so we knuckled down and got on with them. I’ll be interested to see how she takes our interpretation of what she’s asked for. It’s the eternal tension between editor and proprietor, of course, and many a journalistic career has foundered on those reefs.

That first edition is very nearly finished; we’ll spend some time today polishing it, then it will be on to Friday’s effort.

We’d become anxious about the gas supply; the first of our two cylinders ran out a while back, and I’d postponed replacing it until we got here, so that the IWA would get the benefit of any profit. The concern was that the way we are moored, there’s no land access to the bow, and I really didn’t fancy struggling through the boat with a bottle of Calor Gas weighing around 18 kg.

When consulted, John Baylis the Quartermaster was forthright as ever (he’s from the North of England). “They float,” he said “tie a rope to it and chuck it in the lake off the end of the pontoon. Then you can tow it up to the bow, walking on the roof.”

Sure enough, this worked. I went to the Tardis and paid for a bottle, which was delivered to the nearest possible approach to the moorings by Bradshaw (the little four wheel drive golf carts we use for general transportation around site).

Sheila did the business, whilst I took photos:

Towing a full gas bottle

In the afternoon, we took a break to walk Sally and take some shots of progress on the field.

Warehouses appearing on the Historic Wharf

Still not much on the main field

The Bar, half complete

WRG was celebrating its fortieth anniversary in the compound last night; we copped out, I’m afraid, and had a quiet meal on the boat, followed by an early night. Elanor made it back by midnight, which was a bit earlier than we’d been expecting. I guess we’re all getting older.

First Friday

After doing the blog yesterday, I spent the rest of the day working with Bungle on stringing power cables to the various cabins. I’ve worked with him before, and he’s a great guy, multiskilled and always ready to help out.

This can mean that you spend a lot of time as his oppo standing around, usually with a coil of cable on your shoulder, whilst he has a conversation, face to face, on the radio or on the phone, about some other aspect of what he's doing, but it’s still a pleasure to work with him.

By the end of the morning, we had the marquees and cabins in the WRG compound sorted, and the nearby commercial cabin done too. After lunch, we went over to the Admin village and ran cables from their genny to the various cabins involved.

The genny in question was in fact a replacement, the first one having failed quite quickly with what sounded like terminal engine problems. It’s not good when an engine that has been smoking like a fifties pit chimney stops with low oil pressure and a nasty graunching rattle, having sprayed much of its oil out of the turbo seals.

Delivering a replacement generator

The new one seems to be behaving much better, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.

Whilst we were working there, arrangements were being put in hand to assemble and launch the shallop previously referred to on Tuesday. Unfortunately, by the time the crane was ready to put it in the water, I’d gone off site with Bungle and Malcolm, his colleague, to collect a Smalley Excavator.

Elderly excavator being unloaded from modern beaver tail truck

(sorry about the rain drops!)

These remarkable machines used to be the mainstay of WRG’s operations, and this last working example in its possession was wanted as part of the fortieth birthday celebrations for WRG taking place tonight.

Putting the shallop together

First Thursday

Gillian Bolt, the Marketing Director, had arranged for a series of three minute interviews on the Radio Berkshire breakfast programme yesterday morning, and I was lined up to talk at 9.20 about living aboard. Since the interviewer was Maggie Philbin, one of my favourite Tomorrow’s World presenters in days of yore, I was quite pleased to do it.

We got up at the usual time, and I was just having a relaxing shower when Sheila came into the bathroom; Gillian had been down to the boat, they’d changed the schedule and I was on in 15 minutes. After a quick exit and dry off, I had to run over to where they had a radio car set up.

The interview was going quite well when the studio decided the sound quality wasn’t good enough and we wound up. All concerned were a bit irritated as it seemed that everyone except the producer thought it would have been better to prerecord the pieces, which would have made for a much better result.

However, Maggie did come and have a quick look over Sanity Again, our first celebrity guest, I suppose you could say.

After a belated breakfast, we got some more office work done, and ambled over to the WRG compound mid morning. Tasks for the day were erecting the crowd barrier around three sides of the arena and removing some more unnecessary fence. More fence panels have been ordered, as even scavenging them in this way still leaves us short.

In the WRG compound, the marquee company started putting up the eating and sleeping marquees, and had pretty well finished them by the end of the day. Both are floored, and the sleeping marquee will be carpeted today, after the wooden floor has dried, having been washed last thing.

Erecting the frame

The finished marquees

Inside the sleeping marquee

Elanor arrived just before dinner, and she and Sally, her dog, are now staying on Sanity Again with us. Elanor is WRG administrator for the camp this year; as I write she’s wrestling with the spreadsheets sent from Head Office, two of them in the latest version of Excel, which she doesn’t have. Fortunately, iWork Numbers could cope with them, so we moved them onto my machine, I opened them in Numbers and then saved them back to the .xls format Elanor can use.

WRGies ancient and modern; the bust is of founder Graham Palmer

No peace for the wicked; the QM interrupts his lunch to deny having the heavy duty staple gun.

Strangely, the fanciest pontoon leads to the chippies' boats.

First Wednesday

The workers boats normally get shore power supplied on the evening of the first Tuesday, but there was a problem with the cabling and distribution boxes this year, and Bungle had to come back yesterday morning to get it finally sorted out. This he had achieved by lunchtime, so now we will have no need to run the engine for the rest of our time here. There’s a water tap within reach, too, so we’re set up for all our needs.

As I expected, after doing the newsletter and blog stuff, we found ourselves back on the fenceline. We’ve put up most of the night fence now; this is the fence which separates the exhibition area from the Food Court and Bar. Some of it can be left up,where it runs behind marquees but the rest will be taken down every morning of the Festival, and put up again every evening.

There’s to be a lot more fiddling about yet, but we are getting there.

In the evening, the toilets and shower blocks showed up to go in the WRG compound and campsite, and the marquees are due to arrive today.

I featured briefly on Radio Berkshire this morning, but that’s a story for tomorrow.

The view from our bow looking towards the Historic Wharf

Looking down the lake

Assembling the warehouses for the Historic Wharf

First Tuesday

Those three week workers (BODS in the jargon; it stands for Build Operate Dismantle) with boats had been told that the swing bridge guarding access to the lake moorings would be open between 8 and 9 in the morning yesterday, and then again between 5 and 6. The big question was which slot to choose. The Waterspace team has installed short finger pontoons, with space for four, five or six boats between them as the bank edge dictates.

Moose as Safety Officer testing a finger pontoon

First thing, I went and spoke to Mike Moorse who was organising the whole thing, and found out that we were in the middle of a trot of five. This implied that we would be better to go in later rather than earlier, but on the way back to the boat, I saw Wandering Whimbrel, the boat we would be tied next to, heading in, so we decided to follow.

This would have been fine, but by the time we got into the lake, things had been changed from the rejig of the rejigged plan, as some boats had proved to deep for their allocated spot. Having come in beside Wandering Whimbrel as instructed, I had to pull out again and reverse into a different spot. Now we were against a short boat with a cruiser stern, and physically couldn’t leave Sanity Again. This was sorted temporarily, and during the day, the Waterspace team built a new pontoon between us and our neighbour, Amy Em.

This will be extended today, to give Amy Em a better exit, as one of her crew is disabled. We’ve ended up with a very nice mooring with a good pontoon, so all’s well that ends well.

Much of the rest of the day was spent putting fencing up and taking it down, as will today, I suspect. The other big task for WRG now is brushcutting around the mooring sites out on the river, and on the other side of the lake.

I must say, the fencing has been even more frustrating than usual this year. (Mind you, I say this every year.) Some of the adjustments have been as a result of conditions on the ground, but many of them could have been avoided with better planning and marking out. It sometimes feels as if the site team don’t appreciate the sheer hard work it is erecting long runs of Heras fencing.

The cabins have arrived for the WRG compound, being the one which will be the kitchen and one which will be the brew hut. Only cooks are allowed in the kitchen, except by invitation, but anyone wrgie will be able to use the brew hut. It will contain a pair of Burco boilers, toasters, washing up facilities and a supply of bread, biscuits and tea and coffee.

Positioning the kitchen cabin

Red shirt/Blue shirt liaison in progress

At the end of the day, there was a celebratory tea party for Alan and Rosemary Whiffen, two longstanding volunteers who have just celebrated their Golden Wedding. It’s typical of the Festival volunteers that such an event should not go unmarked.

Alan and Rosemary cutting the cake

Two halves of a shallop which will form part of the display on the lake.

A reproduction of Elizabethan executive transport on the Thames, this one appeared in the film version of A Man for All Seasons which starred Paul Schofield.