Nicky's journal

Feasting

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 06:08:13 GMT

Rowan volunteered to cook this feast so I got to be in the hall this time.
We've got quite a few new people, several of whom were persuaded to read poems or dress as hens for the play 'Chauntecleer and the Fox' from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

It seemed to go really well overall. Lots of smiling faces at the end, and plenty of people stayed to help tidy up.

We had a few panics - arriving to find the power off in the building being the first issue. There were workmen in the church who had turned it off, but it didn't take long to get that fixed once I'd found them and explained that we needed the kitchen to work.
One course got burned, but a quick run to Scotmid to get replacement ingredients solved that. I got a few funny looks as I was wearing 16th Century clothes for the shopping trip. :-)

... and heading home (also in 16th C kit) after the event I got asked what was going on by some people outside the Golf Tavern, so I chatted to them for a bit, and told them where to look for notifications of the next one.

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Party season

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 13:00:02 GMT

Making marzipan for younger grandchild's 1st birthday cake.
Insofaras her preferences can be established, she likes noisy musical instruments and Mummy best.
I went with making models of xylophone, drum and maracas rather than attempting portraiture.

In a couple of weeks it'll be the older grandchild's 4th birthday.

Then Xmas, Hogmanay, Twelfth Night, Son's birthday and co-Mother-In-Law's birthday.

I am stockpiling wrapping paper...

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August looms...

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 07:48:43 GMT

Working in tourism in Edinburgh means facing The Fringe (and the other festivals) in August.
... yes for some reason we have The International Festival (classical music... and to be fair they started it all), The Festival Fringe (comedy and variety and loads of street performers), the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the Book Festival, the Science Festival and the Jazz Festival all between the end of July and the start of September.
This year we look like being back to full pre-pandemic levels of busyness.

... which means for Job One the walking tours along the Royal Mile miss out a section of the Royal Mile. Slight complication in that the sides of The Mile are steep so getting anybody who is mobility impaired up and down the alternative route is a bit of a challenge.
... and for Job Two (whisky and beer tastings) we'll be getting lots of frantic messages about travel delays and inability to find the venue due to stages blocking the view of the area...

Overall it'll be fun, but it is going to be a challenge.

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Whisky and beer

Sat, 30 Jul 2022 07:20:28 GMT

My second job is doing beer and whisky tastings. Currently only on a Monday evening.
I'm enjoying it but it's a big challenge getting to know the wide variety of whiskys on the High End option.
Basic and Intermediate have a standard set, but the High End has loads, including stuff from silent distilleries, and it changes all the time.
... well, I said I wanted a job that stretched my brain... and I've definitely got one here. :-)

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Filming in Winter

Fri, 25 Feb 2022 06:12:46 GMT

One of my projects is a piece for Beltane about the changing seasons associated with the idea of Maiden, Mother and Crone (which is pagan revival, not incredibly ancient, but still interesting).

I'm playing the Crone, which involves a lot of getting up at 6am on Winter mornings to film stuff before places get busy with people.
Not enjoying how cold it is, but I'm pleased with how it's all working out.

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Crafty

Fri, 08 May 2020 07:48:11 GMT

I am making masks between other projects.
Don't have either the spoons or the overlocker to contemplate gowns or scrubs, but bravo to those who do.
It's a shame and disgrace on the Westminster government that our NHS was so poorly prepared. The NHS tested it's readiness for pandemic (and after SARS, Bird Flu, etc, we all knew it was a matter of when, not if...), and they had four years to sort out the many gaps in the system. But they chose not to.

I am catching up on various other projects that were waiting for me to get around to it:

- a batch of Tudor hats. I had cut out the fabric from old wool jackets before chucking them out. The characters we play are middle class but financially challenged, so shabby chic is the way to go, and recycling old fabrics both works well and saves the environment.

- Exchequer Boards - basically grids on which to do sums in Roman numerals. You can do long division with them, given a sufficient run up. Or should I say, my daughter can do long division with Roman numerals, thereby proving that she's much more of a geek than me. I can do addtion, subtraction (and multiplication if given a sufficient run up to it). Again, I'd had the fabric for ages.

- silk pennants - triangular flags for the top of tents. Slightly held up by my silk paints having gone into hiding, but Ebay provided a new supply.

- fake panelling banners for the feast hall. We hold two medieval feasts a year as a rule, and generally get between 25 and 45 people at each one, so the hall is quite big. We have quite a lot of decorative banners already, but they end up a bit random and they cover the various modern notice boards in the hall we use. For my daughter's wedding the plan was to completely cover the modern notice boards with hangings and then put banners over them.
Since her wedding was March 21st it ended up as a lovely, tiny intimate affair with only close family attending. We went ahead with the lunch after the ceremony on the basis that the local attendees had basically constantly been in each other's company for the preceeding month as arrangements were sorted. But the big wedding receiption in the evening has been put off until after lockdown.
So anyway, I thought, since I have time, why not paint panelling on the hangings...?
So 25 banners, 8'x5', each with nine panels painted on them... to be dyed, hemmed, marked out and painted in two colours. I am on Day Thirteen of that project and probably have another two or three days to go. It's entirely my own fault really. And it will hopefully look good when it's done.

- a new outfit for me for the wedding feast.
That was definitely not even slightly feasible in the run up to the wedding.
There were six months to do the bride's daytime dress (my co-mother-in-law is doing her evening one), my son's new jerkin, various matching accessories in bridal fabric (shrugs and sashes for the bridesmaids, ruche ties for the men of the wedding party), make wedding buttonholes for 40... (down to 15 on the day, but I'd made them by then...) and hemming the hangings (see above), make sweetmeats, etc, etc, etc.
But now there is time, so yay, new dress.

Tudor hats

Painted silk pennants

Kirtle lining (and masks)

Exchequer Board

Fake panelling for the hall. Repeat x25

The wedding party.
I made all the bright green items, and the red rose buttonholes. And my hat. Because the Mother Of The Bride Hat is definitely a thing.

Some of the sweetmeats for the wedding cake.

Rainbow masks

More Masks

More masks. I have friends who don't believe that black goes with everything, so I keep coloured fabrics for making stuff for them...

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Splendid Isolation...

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 10:51:30 GMT

Have now passed the 14 days since interacting closely with friends and family, and three weeks since I was last physically present at work, and I don't think I've had Covid-19.
I've had ear ache, a sore throat and a chest full of gunk, but that's probably not it, most likely just my usual chest infections.

Am trying to exercise, practice music and practice Gaelic a bit each day, although on the days when I felt unwell I skipped the exercise because post-viral fatigue is not a fun thing.

I have a large backlog of craft projects, so I'm not short of general stuff to do. And have been being extra vigilant on the cleaning because while there's nothing to be done about CV-19 except hope I end up with the mild version, I don't want to add in the possibility of secondary infections.

Virtual choir, virtual gaming and virtual pub nights are also a good thing. And Skyping with the kids and with friends is also helping with the sanity.

It's kind of unreal. There's a world altering crisis out there and people on the front line are working stupidly long hours with stupidly little proper protective equipment and there's relatively little I can do to help. Sitting in a bubble, waiting for the storm to pass.

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Oranges (and not lemons)

Mon, 22 Jan 2018 10:41:55 GMT

Tried out a Tudor recipe for candied whole oranges.
This required getting marmalade oranges which are only available at certain times of the year.
They worked reasonably well and were certainly tasty, bit like solid marmalade (obviously) so fairly intense.

Only three weeks to the next feast, so lots of organisation to do...
I really should know better than to volunteer for these things. This time I'm cooking it.

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Mischief managed...

Tue, 02 May 2017 11:51:53 GMT

This year at Beltane I was the left wing of a giant albatross puppet (her name is Coleridge, obviously).

Rehearsals involved the usual frustrations of playing games instead of getting on with stuff, resulting in a huge amount of stuff needing done outside of main sessions, and no fewer than two extra three hour sessions each week for the last fortnight.
The choreography could also have been sharper if we'd rehearsed more.

However, all that is just normal for Beltane. It frustrates me every year, but I know it will happen every year.

On the night things went well. It was pretty intense as the chap on the other wing was leading the movement so I had to watch him constantly and be ready to copy whatever he did. At the start he seemed a bit nervous and kept making fast movements, which are hard to follow (and we'd discussed as an issue previously) but once we started moving around it worked pretty well.
I'm hopeful that Coleridge looked like a bird moving, not like four different components in a loose association.
The other problem is that when watching and flocking to the other wing I couldn't also watch my own wing tip, and the crowd were pretty close, but I managed not to hit anyone. I put this down to luck and a bit of my steering.

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Mistaken identity...

Fri, 21 Apr 2017 17:22:01 GMT

I'm fairly used to being mistaken for Ed's social worker when we're out and about, but today was a new one :
Picture me in jeans, DMs with rainbow laces, black t-shirt and long black coat, probably hair all windswept too...
"Ed! Your lawyer has arrived!"
Seriously. :-)

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Constructive...

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 21:47:13 GMT

Today I did some more sewing on my Beltane costume, and started work on my mask (with help from Brian).

AJ and Matt drilled a hole through the wall from the kitchen to the bathroom with an actual masonry drill and moved the pipe to the shower.

Then we ate sticky toffee pudding. With custard.

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Ding dong, the witch is still dead.

Sat, 08 Apr 2017 19:22:34 GMT

... and Justin Sullivan is still alive to celebrate his birthday present.
As are many of us.

But injustice and inequality are still killing people.
Time to drink a toast, and then keep on fighting.

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Even the stones should weep...

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 19:35:22 GMT

As Mothers Day approaches I was thinking back to stuff that the kids actually appreciated from us as parents.
It tends to be the things we shared as a family:

"Our teacher asked how many kids had dinner with their parents every night. Only four of us put our hands up..."

They like us doing re-enactment together so we have shared interests and activities.

They even vaguely appreciate having been taught to cook, clean and mend now they're living independently.

However, as a parent of an LGBT kid it gets even easier to be considered a great parent. All you have to do is not actively reject your child. Then not only they, but all their LGBT friends think you're doing amazingly and tell you so repeatedly.
I wish we lived in a world where this wasn't the case, and LGBT kids could take for granted that the worst thing their parents would do is nag them about cleaning their rooms.

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Stating the obvious...

Mon, 23 Jan 2017 11:36:29 GMT

Yesterday I argued with a former police officer about whether sexist, racist and transphobic jokes were funny.
I also pointed out that saying "Oh it was just his way, he didn't mean anything." when describing a grossly bigoted colleague's behaviour was not a valid excuse.
I kept repeating: "No, that's just wrong", "He was being cruel", "No, he wasn't being funny, he was doing harm to people who are already disadvantaged and vulnerable"

We then graduated on to:
"No, most rape accusations are not false, there has been extensive research which is widely available to read"
"The reason why small remarks like that matter is that if you have to hear them repeatedly it's like Chinese Water Torture, it builds up. Each thing in itself is tiny, but the accumulation of them is beyond horrible"

... and guess what? he only listened to the points I was making when the man sitting next to me nodded at my comments and repeated what I'd said back to him.
... who could have predicted that?

Having said which, he did wince at the analogy to Chinese Water Torture, so maybe that bit actually got through.

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Growing old disgracefully...

Thu, 29 Dec 2016 16:45:39 GMT

I was at a 40th birthday party last night.
Birthday boy was a little bit unhappy about the inevitable march of time, so I pointed out that I was 11 years older than him and therefore he still looked young to me.
Later on in the evening we all ended up in an Irish pub with a live musician and I dragged him onto the dance floor for a few jigs, and was told that I'm setting a good example of how to age without giving up on the fun things in life.

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"but the photo on the mantlepiece, it always made you cry..."

Wed, 28 Dec 2016 08:58:03 GMT

Watched "Pride" last night.
Overall a really uplifting movie, but the bits where families rejected their kids were really hard to watch.
... and the fact that that is still happening to LGBTI people even now is beyond horrible.

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Time travelling sprouts

Sat, 24 Dec 2016 11:24:39 GMT

The offspring's various plans mean that this year we'll be celebrating Xmas on Boxing Day.
So, obviously that means that Xmas Day will be Boxing Day and will involve bubble and squeak made with leftover sprouts and potatoes... Obviously... :-)
We will, however, be doing the normal Xmas Eve things today.
Last minute shopping is accomplished and the ceremonial opening of the family cards is scheduled for this afternoon before some of the offspring flee.
Postal strike may also mean that my lack of organisation with Xmas cards goes unnoticed... or at least excused...

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Reading lists

Mon, 05 Sep 2016 18:41:18 GMT

Gus introduced me to a new book series The Invisible Library and The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman.
I suppose any book about a female librarian who runs around parallel universes rescuing books (and the odd human being as well) is likely to be something that appeals to me... :-)
It's a fairly straight forward narrative, and there's a bit of telegraphing about a subplot that'll probably get dramatic further on in the series.
Anyway, I'm enjoying it enough to keep me off the internet while reading it.

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Kentwell and suchlike

Thu, 21 Jul 2016 11:27:46 GMT

I was assigned to be on combat school at Kentwell this year.
In addition to those of us from Edinburgh, we had one new person who was very promising, a returner from previous years who is good and another newbie who also seemed keen, but had small kids and therefore mostly wasn't around.
Combat School is now slowly building up a group of regular pupils among the participants, which is nice - makes it look more appropriate.

On the first day I discovered that the dairy staff were all sick and there was one of the bakers in charge of it, on her own, so I went and helped out there instead. Unfortunately my kit was a bit posh for it.
On the second day the (massively overworked) bakery couldn't spare the baker, so the day started with me and one actually person who was supposed to be in the dairy, but had never done it before. It took until nearly midday for J1 to manage to find somebody who had appropriate kit, was free, and had done it before. I did a quick reminder on what was what and then fled.
... and none of my clothes smell of cheese... which is probably a minor miracle...

Another minor miracle was a dry day for packing up camp.

From there we headed to J2's farm.
We did more sword practice, some archery, and quite a bit of new cookery with different equipment, which worked well.
I'd forgotten the dye pan, and the river was in flood so we didn't get to soak willow to make baskets or build an oven in the river bank.
Also had a day trip to Hexham for a change.
Unfortunately the day we packed up there wasn't dry. It's taken a week and a bit to finish drying everything out back at the flat.

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Kelvingrove

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 19:00:00 GMT

I've been to the Kelvingrove before, but I think this was my first time as a generalised visitor rather than in the uber-geeking capacity.
Previously it's been to spend ages looking at specific exhibits in detail.
This time, accompanied by G, it was a general potter around.

It's an odd place. Disjointed. Things mixed up between different cultures and different purposes.
It's not random enough to look like an old curio collection, but not really organised enough to make any sense.

For example: Here is a pangolin, they have scales to protect them. Armour has to be flexible to move. Now here's a random helmet and a sword made of shark teeth, because we think those are connected. But we're not telling you how.
If they'd put the pangolin next to a gauntlet with tiny plates on the fingers it would have made sense, but as it was it just didn't.
Then there was: Here's an Innuit artefact. Here's a Masai artefact of some different type with no obvious connection.

An interesting place, and an enjoyable day. The building was pretty to look at too.
The individual objects were also good, but the slightly surreal attempt at a narrative was just rather jarring.

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Sweet Liberty - review

Sun, 12 Jun 2016 10:06:02 GMT

The film Sweet Liberty is mainly about a history professor's attempts to prevent the movie of the book he wrote being turned into a complete travesty.

But there's also a story arc about the exploitation of women in Hollywood.
When the professor (played by Alan Alda) asks the leading lady "Would you like to read Faith's diary?" he probably means "Do you care enough about the real history to get this right?" but what she hears is "I have something you want/need for your role. What do I get in return?"
... and he fails to spot or wilfully ignores about a hundred clear indications that she doesn't actually want to have sex with him, that she just thinks she's made a deal with him where sex is the price.

As to why she thinks that : well, that is made clear by the actions of the leading man, who basically refuses to make any effort to act in his scenes with her and ruins them, because she's not sleeping with him.
She complains to the director, who makes one vague half-hearted effort to remind the guy that he's being paid to do a job, and that he should be doing it, and then he abandons her.
So, she starts sleeping with the leading man, at which point he actually does his job.

So then the professor suddenly decides she's a hard-nosed bitch who never cared for him.
... instead of realising that she's making the best of the limited power she has in the situation.
And, indeed, realising that he (the nice guy) was exploiting her, just as much as the sleazy leading man was, even if it was less consciously in his case.

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Sincerely held beliefs...

Thu, 26 May 2016 04:15:10 GMT

Earlier this week a young friend of mine was telling me that he'd been feeling suicidal again.
... because he's gay and his religion and his parents tell him that's wrong.

He left the religion, and has limited contact with the family, but even so on difficult days he finds it hard to shake the idea that he should have tried harder not to be gay. That it is somehow wrong to be what his genes and his nature are.
His life is literally in danger because he was brought up in a religion that condemns people for who they are, not for anything they've done, and furthermore actively encourages members of the religion to spread hate and persecution.

I've had conversations with people who believe that the bible says homosexuality is wrong, and when you ask them "Why do you treat your fellow human beings so badly?" they reply with a variant of "It's not up to me. God says I have to."
And that's one big reason why I don't think belief in God is a benign thing. Why I think it's important to say, and to keep on saying, that God doesn't exist.

If religion was only a thing that, as the religious claim, provides a good moral framework, encourages people to be the best they can be, then it would be somewhere between harmless and actively beneficial. And I do know Christians who are good people, who live good lives, who seek to help others.
But too often it's used as an excuse for hatred and the ill treatment of others. So long as people are claiming that God told them to oppress women, to hate gay people/transgender people/anyone different from them, then I can't, in conscience, allow the existence of God to go unchallenged.

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Creativity

Wed, 11 May 2016 08:21:46 GMT

Today I am sewing all the things again.

Making new linen coifs, since it appears that my default design isn't okay for a late Elizabethan event.
There was the obligatory 15 mins spent looking at the pattern and going argh about the fact that only two of the dimensions are actually specified, and the instructions are less than comprehensive, but I think I have it sorted now. Fingers crossed.

Naturally I can't find the several metres of dark red wool that I know is around here somewhere. I may end up with an orange jacket over a red skirt... [/fashion victim]

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Tell Me Why...

Wed, 04 May 2016 07:29:14 GMT

Recently I was having a conversation in which the subject of Rolf Harris came up. Guy I was talking to launched into a rant about how he thought it was dodgy that nobody had mentioned problems at the time.
If it was for real surely, he said, somebody would have spoken up.

He didn't know me well enough to know that I was abused as a child, so he missed my first attempt to indicate distress.
It was hard to get my breath, let alone form words.
I held up a hand, barely, like an unconfident schoolchild who isn't sure of the answer, and the third time I said his name he stopped and looked at me and realised that something was wrong.
Again, words were troublesome, but I had enough space in his silence to put a few together "Give me a minute. Then I'll tell you why."

There are so many reasons.

1) I was ten. In the days before sex education I didn't have the words or the concept to actually describe or explain anything that was happening.
I get pretty angry about people saying that sex education 'destroys children's innocence'. That's entirely about adult discomfort, and not at all about children. Knowledge is power.

2) I wasn't aware that refusing an instruction given to me by an adult was an option.
Good children, and especially good girls, are supposed to do what they're told. In childhood there's a whole bunch of 'because I said so that's why' and 'it's for your own good'. Innoculations and the dentist hurt, so the mere fact of a thing being unpleasant doesn't offer any indication that a child has a right to complain.
I remember the first time there was a news report on the formation of (I think) Childline. I was 20. That was the first time I'd heard that anyone would regard what happened to me as something that was morally wrong. I remember the white hot fury that nobody had told me that.
Nobody had told me.
I went out for a walk, and freaked my flatmates out completely because it was way past 1am when I felt able to come back and they were on the point of calling the police.

3) Victims get the blame.
Look at what happens even now if somebody complains of abuse.
Even if there's supporting evidence somebody will claim that they're 'exaggerating' or that they must have consented really or done something to make it their own fault.
Even the current pope, who is about a million times less evil than his predecessor, is still claiming that tiny children provoked or invited the abuse they suffered at the hands of adult males in positions of power over them.
Abusers aren't stupid. They mostly don't do this stuff in front of independent witnesses. Almost all complaints of abuse will boil down to one person's word against another, and abusers have both power and a vested interest in personally discrediting anyone who reports any abuse.

4) Nothing would be done.
It's incredibly recent that the police now keep reports of abuse on file in case other reports on the same person come in.
They used to just be thrown away because they weren't sufficient on their own to justify a prosecution.
Nowadays it's still unlikely that an abuser will face justice. Even a decade ago it was practically impossible that they would.

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Fly, my creation, fly...

Sun, 27 Mar 2016 16:48:10 GMT

I'll be in the Aerie for this Beltane.
Costuming is going pretty well. I have pretty much all the sewing done and have been working on the mask today.
I'm going to be a raven.

We may have a slight issue, however.
One (white) person raised the issue of black facepaint last year. And as we all know, one single complaint in 30 years from somebody with no actual connection to the alleged issue apparently means that there is now a huge panic among the powers that be.
So I may have to be a raven with a blue or purple face.

... on the positive side, nobody's expecting me to stab a handbag to death this time... :-)

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