Day 7

The work goes on, the weather holds. Site 1 (Moose) said to me (and I quote exactly) "I don't like it, it's too quiet". Think he's been watching too many old Westerns again...

The main activity has been on the part of the marquee guys, steadily putting up canvas all over the show ground. Late in the day, Moose's concerns were partly justified when the genny supplying Admin village and the Tardis compound hiccuped for a while, and then died. Emergency supplies were sorted to get us through the night, and a repair or replacement should be happening as I type this.

I also had a chat with Moose about the use of wrg forestry, or non-use rather. He said that he did look at getting a wrg team in, but the timing just wasn't right. There's a narrow window for this sort of work (before the birdies start nesting) and a wrg camp just couldn't be done.

I guess that's the other side of the volunteering coin; unlike contractors, you can't just summon a volunteer team when you want them.

This blog continues to attract positive tweets and the like; my thanks to those who do so. Meanwhile, Towpath Talk has drawn attention to a reshowing of the BBC2 programme, The Golden Age of Canals, tonight at 9pm.

Now for a few more photos:

Two thirds of the IWA marquee

 The biggest marquee will be that occupied by the IWA, as you'd expect. It will be visible as you come in through the main entrance.

Wrg eating marquee ready for action

 30 trestles are now installed, so we should be able to accommodate everyone.

Driving a peg

Anyone who's ever struggled to put a mooring pin in will look at this machine with envy. It drives the 30" long marquee pegs with little effort, but a lot of noise. At knock down, the beast can even be used in reverse to pull them out again.

Blacking out the sleeping marquee glass

 Every year, they fit the sleeping marquee with glazed doors. Last year, I did manage to get them to change them for solid ones, but this year it was decided just to fix black out material over the glass.

Commercial cabin

 Here it stands, all sad and alone, by the exhibitors' vehicle entrance. Come the day, there will be a marquee front to it, and it will be heaving with activity.

Plumbers' Fire Service

Seems a long time since the plumbing team got a mention, so here they are collecting the biggest step ladder on site, preparatory to climbing another tree.

Many thanks to all who sent us good wishes for our anniversary yesterday. In the end, we went to the Albion on Shobnall Road, an easy walk from the site. It's a Marston's chain pub, but the food was good, though only Pedigree was available from the cask, no guest beer that I could see.

Service was average; our starters came in good time, but then I think they forgot about us, and we had a long wait for our mains.

A damp day 3

It didn't rain with quite the abandon of the day before yesterday, but it still drizzled on and off. It wasn't enough to impede the work, and the ground remains firm and hard; it's been such a dry year, there's a lot of capacity to absorb the rain.

We made several trips to the site; on the first, we heard that there had been some incursions overnight. The fence had been broken in four places, and youngsters careered about, but no damage was done. The fact that there were three German Shepherd Dogs commenting loudly may well have discouraged the intruders from hanging about.

First job for wrg, then, was to re-secure the line, and walk the whole of the fence checking that all the clips were tight. It may become necessary to use anti-lift clips, that tie the panels down to the blocks, as we did at Pendeford a few years back. Siting the Festival in the middle of a town should increase the footfall, obviously, but at the cost of greater security problems. The security firm, Intaguarding, will begin work today, so that should help.

Matters otherwise progressed steadily; the sense is that we're well ahead with the tasks, as it often is at the stage; it's as the opening approaches that the pressure mounts. The Site Director, Dave Hearnden, aka Moose, has arrived, and will be spending a lot of his time walking around, accompanied by two of the aforesaid GSDs.

Plumb Bob's Arch

This is true in several ways, but in this case it was his chosen solution to get the water supply to the far end of the field past the entrance to admin village. There's some discussion about appropriate decoration; fairy lights or a pair of amber beacons?

The Comms team

 Peter and Pat are the comms team, running phone lines around the site. They're very shy, so I haven't shown their faces ;).

Workers' moorings nearly ready

 An awful lot of strimming, scrub clearing and hole filling has been done in two days to make the moorings ready to occupy today.

Plumber in a tree

 Plumb Bob asked me why I take so many pictures of him. He didn't seem entirely convinced by my explanation that the plumbing team works so hard.

Security encampment

The security team from Intaguarding will be living on site for the duration, enabling them to respond to any emergency mob handed.

Unloading a the big genset from the beaver tail.

Wrg has two gensets of its own, this larger one contained in a box trailer, and a small towable. When Bungle went to collect this one, he loaded it onto the beaver tail truck, then opened up the back doors to check all was secure inside before setting off. He was confronted by an enormous wasps nest, about the size of a basketball.

He's a very large bloke, but I'm told only milliseconds passed before he was back on the ground and moving away from the truck.

Later on, the seriously large generators will arrive from the contractor who's doing the main supply to the site.

The real day 2

Thanks to Brian on Harnser who drew my attention to yesterday's deliberate mistake! It's this doing the blog first thing in the morning; not only am I having to remember that I'm talking about the day before, I have to have woken up enough to to cope with the time juggling. Anyway, on with the motley...

It was indeed very wet, yesterday, as forecast, and we were very glad that we could legitimately stay snug in the boat working on the newsletter while it hammered down outside. Talking to folk later in the day, I gathered that it had been too much even for the wrg team, who had postponed starting work until gone ten. (Thanks to Grumpy Nick for the info.)

Thursday's edition is now almost as far as we can get it without the last minute stuff, so yesterday's job was getting Friday's issue into shape. It may seem strange working so far ahead, but with just the two of us to do all the tasks involved in publishing a newsletter, there won't be any time to spare on the actual day of publication.

Last year, we had loads of stuff in advance, because the theme was anniversaries of various sorts, and Sheila had emailed the relevant societies and trusts and got copy out of them. The result was that we arrived at Beale Park with all the issues half made up. This year, much of the copy is going to be self generated, though folk are beginning to send in contributions, so more work is being done on site.

In the afternoon, the rain had more or less stopped, and we were able to get out on site, looking for stories, meeting up with old friends and enemies (mostly the same people) and taking photos.

Plumbing team in conference with Supplies

There are two Bradshaw golf buggy type transports about at the moment, one for the plumbers and one for the chippies. They can tow a trailer, and make so much difference to getting stuff moved around site.

Inside the Tardis

 In effect, it's a mobile quartermaster's stores. John Baylis is the QM; least likely saying "Take as many as you want, we've got plenty!"

The pasty wagon

 So called because it looks like a van that might be selling pasties. In fact, it's an ex-CEGB field vehicle, and is used by Bungle in much its old role, moving large amounts of cabling and connection boxes around for wiring up places like the admin village, the wrg compound and the workers' moorings.

Tardis compound

 The workshop of the Festival, with a fully equipped chippies shop (goes with the pasties, I guess) and storage for materiel.

Who let the dogs out?

Woof, woof! Actually, it's the water supply. With permission, we've tapped into a fire hydrant, and a network of water pipes with radiate out from here to the entire site.