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