Woke around 05:00 to use the toilet, remembered that I needed to give the charging cable to Keldor’s phone now that mine was full (we brought one usb cable each, but failed to bring a UK standard huge three prong plug, so we are borrowing one from Etienne while here, and, unlike the one we borrowed from Tania, it takes only one usb cable at a time, so we have to take turns). But when I went to plug his phone in I was having troubles seeing without my glasses, and couldn’t get the cable plugged in. My attempts woke Keldor, so I said “you do it”, handed them over, and continued tp the loo.
When I returned he showed my why my attempts had failed. No metal bit sticking out of the edge of the cable. I checked my phone, and the metal bit was sticking out of the socket of my phone. Not good! So I pulled it out, handed it to him, and got my cable out of the pocket of phone belt, handed it to Keldor, and went straight back to sleep.
My best guess is that I must have rolled over on it in the night or something at exactly the right angle to break it. (I have been keeping the phone under my bottom pillow at night ever since it was so cold at Double Wars as to drain the battery faster than normal, and kept doing it after arriving in Ireland, as the first couple of days were still cold). So now we need to buy a new charging cabel. Pitty, that was a good one, fast charging, and nice and long.
I woke for real at 06:00 and, for the first time in days had enough energy to do a yoga + pilates session instead of a restorative session. Then I cooked a quick bowl of porridge with almonds and butter and waited for others to wake so we can head to the event.
We managed to get everything in the car with careful packing, and then we squeezed Marguerite, their dog, and I into the back seat, which was much cooler (for me) than the front seat had been on the drive to their house had been a few days before, as I didn’t have the sun on me at all. (Marguerite, had Shelby draped over her lap, so she was warmer than I.)
We arrived on site, where it was so bright, sunny, and hot, that I immediately got my hat and sunglasses moved our stuff from the car to a shady spot so the food we’d bought on the way wouldn’t get hot.
Then we found our loaner (modern) tent, which the owner bought second hand a month ago, and had never seen set up. So we started in on the game “what shape is this tent, and how should it be set up?“.
We had gotten as far as “This bit is the main tent, that is a tarp for the floor, and those are some sort of inner tent”, when it started getting windy, the clouds came in dark enough to need to switch back to regular glasses, and word went round that in an hour it would briefly, but heavily, rain.
So we worked faster. Once we determined which way was up he started staking down the tent body (too much wind to try to put it up without that), and I moved our stuff to the center of the sunshade it was under, in hopes that it would be enough of the rain arrived before the tent was up.
It took some effort to get the tent, which is a barrel shape, up in the wind, but we managed just before any rain, and quickly spread out the tarp inside, tossed in the other bits, and I moved our stuff in.
Then Keldor adjusted all the stakes and the string tie-downs, while I borrowed leather gloves from Farraige de Roiste, the basket maker, to cut away all the thistles in the tent.
Then I looked at the inner tent pieces and figured out how they work just as Keldor had finished with the ropes and stakes (and thus it was possible to start attaching them to their hooks). He was only a little wet from the rain. I don’t know if it got heavier before clearing up, or if we got only the edge of the passing storm, as I spent time inside the tent setting up nd organising. (Keldor went out and helped others and/or greeted people.)
(Ours is the long barrel shaped one on the left)
We know that there will be one other person in the tent, so we took one of the inner rooms for sleeping and storing our backpacks of modern stuff, and I arranged our stuff in half of the common area, filling hanging pockets with toiletries (and leaving more pockets for our tentmate), repacked the garb suitcase so that all garb is standing in edge and visible as well as sorted by owner and type, set up a pantry corner, and an armour corner.
By the time I had it ready Keldor returned to get into garb, so I did, too. It being now only comfortably warm, but I didn’t know if it would get hot again, I opted for my 2023 blue-white print Thorsberg trousers and Yellow linen short sleeved tunic.
We went out and were social for a while, and then the big rental van full of stuff from Dunn in Mara was arriving, so I went to help unload it, and claimed the fun job of reverse tetris “what has to come out before the next item can move?“. Whomever loaded it was very good at tetrising stuff in.
- look up spelling of the shire name
I collected our loaner pillows from Agness and then asked if our loner air mattress was on site. I was pointed to the person in the dark green tunic, and so went over and introduced myself. Juliette apologised and explained that the mattres had accidentally stayed at home. So I asked “Do you have a car and time for a shopping spree?” To which the reply was “I always have time for a shopping spree!”
Julliette is a kindrid spirit, and I really enjoyed our shopping adventure. So we had a delightful trip into Wexford, arriving a half an hour before Tesco closes, where I bought a double air matress, fitted sheet, flat sheet, and a tea mug for Keldor, all of which will be left in Ireland, hopefully with Keldor’s soon-to-be Apprentice Erin.
After I got the bed made (Juliette has a battery powered bed inflator!) I went out and hung out chatting with people till 23:30, when the group scattered to their beds.
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