Day 13 and the first issue

The continuing fine weather makes things so much easier, even if the ground is hard under foot. It makes this sort of job comparatively straightforward:

Marquee walking

One or two of the marquees ended up in the wrong place, and had to be moved. As long as they are not too large, the easiest way is just to pick them up. Here a blue shirt team is doing just that; my thanks to Chris Sheppard for the photo.

On our way into site yesterday, we collected our boater's pack of various leaflets and stuff, and this year's plaque.

Waterspace reception

There are now lots of wrg volunteers about, and at least one seems to have been taken in hand by Martin the American:

A well deserved rest

Here are a selection of photos from around site yesterday morning:

Site 3 demonstrating his marquee movement directing skills

Rigging the IWA marquee

 Shell stands have to be assembled in a giant 3D jigsaw.

RCR delivering Tony Brooks's engines

 River Canal Rescue sponsors well known boat engineering expert Tony Brooks to give a series of mini workshops, one of the best deals in the show. They are free, you don't have to book, and Tony really knows his stuff about engines, stern glands, electrics, you name it.

The Fun Fair

 Kids under 16 with an accompanying adult come into the event free, but they do have to pay to go on the Fun Fair rides.

Guy and Connie

Guy is looking after the Arena PA system this year, and here he is bustling about with his partner Connie.

On the canal, the boats pack closer and closer, and even seasoned boaters like the National Chairman can find it a bit of a challenge:

Clive Henderson arrives

Watching the fun was one of our ECOs, Mitch Gozna:

Strangely not distracting Clive at all

ECO stands for Emergency Control Officer. We have two, so that one is on watch all the time, ready to take over if there's any kind of emergency, from a lost child to a serious injury to a bomb scare. As a serving police officer, Mitch is well qualified to fulfill the role.

The Shunt

 One of the more unusual boats on display is this extension to a 56 footer. Her owner had had his original boat stretched once already at Streethay Wharf, and wanted more room yet. He didn't want to lose cruising grounds by going over 58', so designed and built this little push tow, the stern of which wraps around the bow of the main boat. If you come to the show, don't miss it.

We printed nearly 1000 copies of the first issue of The Shobnall Shoveler. Here's the team folding them ready for distribution:

The SS team

After the copies had been folded and sorted, the team set out in all directions taking them to the boaters, campers, traders and everyone else we can think of.

Finally, last night we went to the traditional Wednesday evening Chinese meal for the workers. It was very good, one of the best we can remember. After the meal, the Festivals Chairman, Ian West, gave his usual speech of appreciation for all the hard work. He also announced that the 2013 Festival will probably be at Newbury, on the K&A, subject to final negotiations.

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 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.

Ambling down the river

Today was certainly the right day to start moving again, with very pleasant weather for the easy run down river through Culham and Clifton Locks to tie on the meadow mooring we used on the way up, just above Day’s Lock.

This time, and on John Campbell’s advice, we walked over the fields to Dorchester on Thames, a very pretty village with lots of thatched houses and stuff. It made a good four mile walk, taking one route there and another, going more directly back to the river, to return.

Although it’s Sunday, the Co-op was open, which was handy, as the weather made the prospect of an ice lolly overwhelmingly attractive.

John reckoned that he preferred Dorchester to Eynsham, further up river; I have to say we didn’t agree. They are both very attractive and well worth the walk to get there, but Eynsham is built out of the honey coloured Cotswold stone, whereas Dorchester is mainly brick.

The only other thing I have to report today, apart from a second sighting of Ken and Mary Nelson on modern pair Ultima and Thule, is that I took a bit of time to insert a photo of Tom Rolt into the piece Sheila has written about him for the Saturday edition of the newsletter.

We’ll use an occasional afternoon opportunity to tweak both the newsletters and the Braidbar Quiz this week. Once the donkey work has been done, it’s very pleasant to do a bit of gentle polishing in this way.

The atmosphere is now a bit oppressive; I shouldn’t be surprised if we have a heavy shower at some point, and indeed one would be welcome before we try to sleep tonight. Tomorrow, on to Wallingford, another short run.

We've done as much as we can for now...

We’ve had another busy day working on the Newsletter, after yet another visit to Waitrose. We’ve also discovered that the only independent butcher in Abingdon doesn’t have a shop any more, you have to go round the back to his wholesale outlet. I’m planning to explore this a bit more tomorrow.

By this afternoon, we’d done as much as we could with the stuff we had waiting for the newsletter, and had written what we can of the stuff we’re doing ourselves. Obviously, some things have to wait for the event, like the report of the Opening Ceremony.

There might yet be the odd further item which may arrive beforehand, but otherwise, we can leave it alone for a few days. This will leave us free to work on the Braidbar quiz tomorrow, so it’s all coming together quite nicely.

This afternoon, we gave ourselves a break by taking a walk up to the lock to buy a couple of EA pump out cards, then looped back down the other side of the river, past the park area and into the Abbey Gardens.

We finished by rewarding ourselves with a Thornton's ice cream apiece (yum) and so back to the boat for a quiet cup of tea. If this post seems a bit short, it might be because I’ve written around 600 words today already, and edited about the same again...

Another day on the newsletter

There’s not a lot to tell today, as it’s been much like yesterday. We shopped and then settled to a day’s work on the Newsletter.

I’m gradually getting to grips with the iWork ‘09 Pages program in its page layout mode. It’s generally very intuitive for such a powerful program, but I’ve had to consult the excellent Missing Manual a couple of times, mostly reminding myself of tricks I’d learnt whilst working with it over the winter, when I was first setting up the layouts, but had forgotten since.

We’ve got maybe another day’s work to do with the material we’ve got to hand at the moment, which will hopefully leave us set up to plug in all the rest once we’ve arrived at Beale Park. There will be interviews, and news of events during the weekend, and things contributed by other folks which obviously can only be done the day before publication.

Once that’s done, we’ll take a bit of time to start work on the Boaters’ Quiz for the Saturday night of the Braidbar Owners’ Weekend in mid September.

It’s a case of going from one event to another, though hopefully not from bad to worse!

Working on the Newsletter

As readers of my regular blog will know, we’ve settled down at Abingdon for the rest of this week; it’s a chance to restock, and to start serious work on the newsletter Sheila is editing for the National Festival, to be called the Beale Park Bugle.

I’m going to run this new blog during the build up to the event, and as a handover, I’ll publish the same post to both my usual blog, Living in Sanity Again, and to this blog each day this week. Then, once we’ve arrived at Beale Park, I’ll just be posting to this blog, hopefully with some photos of the event taking shape, giving an idea of the amazing amount of volunteer effort that goes into it.

Today, we’ve been concentrating on the Thursday edition; we’ve got some material in already, and we’re writing some stuff ourselves, of course. If anyone is going to be there, either on the site team or just as a visitor, and has stuff they think might be suitable (either because it’s informative or entertaining, or both) please feel free to email it to editor(at)nbsanity.me.uk, replacing the (at) bit with @. (This defeats the dreaded spam bots, which otherwise would detect an email address on a web page and start bombarding us with strange offers.)

There’s not a lot more to say today, really; there’s been a lot of coming and going of boats here at Abingdon, and a lot of very heavy showers; we obviously picked the right week to stay put.