Day 1, good stuff, bad stuff

As readers of my other blog will know, I don't think of Shobnall Fields as a particularly safe overnight mooring in normal circumstances, but we had hoped that the sheer numbers of us about would mean that we needn't worry too much just now. It transpired that this wasn't altogether the case, as at 2 am yesterday morning, one of the boats tied near the footbridge, Jenny Wren, got a huge lump of concrete on its roof, and another which smashed one of their windows.

The police were on the scene quite quickly, as the gang of yobbos responsible had already been attacking parked cars nearby. Jenny Wren's window frame will have to be replaced, as the bottom edge has been buckled by the force of the blow. Needless to say, she's moved to a location further away from the bridge.

The problem is that the footbridge is the walking route from a couple of shall we say down at heel estates on the park side of the canal to the city centre pubs and clubs.

Apart from this unpleasant start, it was a good day yesterday; the sun shone, the wind wasn't too bad, stuff started arriving in the right order, more or less. For example, this site has a couple of water mains and a gas main running under it, so we need to have tracking laid down over them before heavy vehicles can cross.

To everyone's relief, the tracking arrived before the Tardis.

That last sentence needs a bit of explanation to those not familiar with the IWA Festival. The hardware needed to set up and run the show is stored in a big pantechnicon, and kindly looked after for us by Andy Taylor, who runs a transport firm at Barton Turn. It's called the Tardis because you wouldn't believe the amount of stuff there is inside.

Here comes the Tardis, IWA style

First thing out once it's parked up? The step ladder to get inside.
Second thing? The gazebo that serves as the tea shelter for the workers in the Tardis compound, naturally.

The day's work had started a good bit before this, with the obligatory Health and Safety talk. It's one of the more sensible ones: don't do a job you are not sure about, remember the telehandler driver can't see you if you can't see him, a tidy site is a safe site, these are the first aiders, stuff like that. After the talk, we all signed to say we'd had it and were aware of the risk assessments, and were then issued with our "three week worker" wrist bands, which are in effect an access all areas pass.

We were also told a bit of news hot off the press. Because IWA has won the contract to manage the Olympic moorings next year, representing around six weeks work for the volunteers, there won't be a Festival in 2012. The payment for the Olympic work will replace the revenue from the Festival. There will, however, be an event in 2013. It seems to me (and note the disclaimer at the top of this blog) that this gives IWA a chance to take stock and think about the purpose of the Festival. I'll be returning to this theme as the next three weeks go on.

Dave Jones gives the H&S talk

Then the work could start in earnest:

Strimming  the bank where the workers boats will be moored

Starting fencing the show site

The start of the admin compound, and a typical denizen of it

and still the fence grew and grew...

As forecast, it's turned wet today, which is hard luck on the wrgies who will be coming this weekend to help get the majority of the fence up.

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.

First Monday

The fine weather continued yesterday, as did the work on site. After our first thing newsletter and blog session, we joined the WRG volunteers as they came in for their first break of the morning. On the way, we saw the swing bridge, which controls access to the lake, being opened so as to allow the exit of one of the work boats with its work platform alongside.

Although numbers are now much reduced, productivity remained high. The fence line which had had to be adjusted was completed, and much of the rest of the work involved improving the access route to the main entrance to the Festival. Uneven ground was levelled, undergrowth strimmed back and some potential hazards in the form of broken staples and ends of barbed wire removed from some fence posts.

As we were finishing this, it became apparent that another part of the fenceline needed to move. For some reason best known to the Site Director, although it was always apparent that this bit was in the wrong place, we had been instructed to put it there, and now its adjustment was urgent to allow the plumbers to run a supply pipe along it.This took up a bit of time after lunch, but when completed was hopefully where it will stay until take down.

Once more, we had a relaxed end to the day – things have been moving so smoothly, the WRG team keeps getting ahead of the supply of jobs. This will not last, on previous experience, but by the time the flow of work increases, we should be into the second week, with many more bodies available.

Three wise monkeys?

We’ve moved into the lake onto our mooring for the duration. This was quite an event in itself, but the tale properly belongs to tomorrow’s post.

The chippies workshop, source of a remarkable amount of sophisticated carpentry.

First Sunday

The routine continued yesterday, though as it happens there wasn’t so much to do to the Newsletter, so the main computer work first thing was posting to the blog.

When we went over to the WRG compound, the fencing crews were in full swing, and after a brew break, we went out and joined them. By mid afternoon, we’d finished the main runs of fencing around the site, though, true to form, part was taken down again later. It seems that Hall C can’t go where originally planned as the ground is too rough.

This means that the boundary will have to be pushed back, so the fence has been taken down until the Site Team makes up its mind. (This is not an unfamiliar situation, I have to say. Indeed cries of “Situation Normal” were to be heard as the fence came down.)

Sheila divided her time between helping with fencing, taking photos of it all and sorting out some stuff about the Newsletter with admin and other contributors.

We had an early finish, so quickly had things got on, and spent the rest of the afternoon sitting around in the sun, bantering and pondering what the weather forecast holds for the rest of the week.

Team work on fencing

Filling sacks with sand to dress the Historic Wharf display

Pondering the plans. WRG leader Mitch Gozna on the right, Moose Hearndon on the left

The WRG team taking a break

First Saturday

It was a really good day yesterday, despite poor weather for some of it. Having said that, it wasn’t impossible, just the kind of thing you expect at the end of a hot summer, with torrential downpours from time to time, but never lasting more than half an hour or so.

What was good was that Sheila and I settled into a routine which hopefully will see us through the Festival. The very first bit was a one off when we went to the Health and Safety briefing with most of the other volunteers. These have been refined over the years, such that we know most of it very well, but there's no really silly stuff, just the standard reminders about personal responsibility for safety, the need to draw attention to perceived hazards and the like.

The only oddity from our point of view is that volunteers working near the water must wear lifejackets, and we had some amused suggestions that whilst working on the Newsletter in the boat we should be suitably attired.

There may be a photo of this in a later edition...

After the briefing, we came back to the boat and worked on the Newsletter and blog until we’d done as much as we could for the day. That was all done by eleven, and we went across to the WRG compound to see what we could do there.

I spent the rest of the day fencing, very enjoyably, as it’s the straightforward stuff first. Mitch Gozna, the WRG leader, had persuaded around 30 folk to turn out for the weekend, so by the end of today, most of the heavy lifting fencingwise will be done with any luck.

This involves firstly fencing in the WRG and Tardis compound and the adjacent volunteers campsite, then setting out to surround the main site with fence. We’re using the standard “Heras” fence, about two metres high by four long, stood in heavy blocks and clipped together with a support prop every five panels.

Most of the people working on it had done it many times before, so there was very little need for instruction or discussion; it was just a group of people doing something they know how to do well, always very satisfying to be a part of.

Another team removed a post and wire fence that ran across the site, which normally comprises two fields:

The one hiding her face is Jenny, who is notoriously shy.

With a break for lunch, we were all pretty tired by half four, and knocked off for a brew. The weather then deteriorated, but relented just in time for a barbecue in the evening. The Sanity Again crew, not forgetting the dog, were all well exercised, so we retreated to bed not long after eating.

Plumbers in the rain; they don't like it wet, you know.

WRG compound behind its fence,

and the Tardis end.