Play Clothes and Borrowed Viking Bling...

Dear Friends;

This past weekend was an incredible event for me. I attended the West Kingdom’s Crown Tournament. I was warned that it was referred to as March Drown by the regular attendees, but I really had no idea as to what that would mean for me.

Now I am wondering my Dear Friends, why it is that every time I journey northward and attend an event in the Principality of Cynaqua, it rains. And not just rains… Pours buckets… Like giant tears falling from the sky. As in cats and dogs tap-dancing on the walls of the tents and pavilions. As in I end up a muddy, drenched, cold, forlorn mess. I am wondering if it the Cynaqua fashion statement… “Everything goes with mud”… Or “The women look better wet”… Or “Oil Caaaannnn, Oiiiil Caaannn”…

My wonderful guardian angel picked me up in the city and we battled the traffic to the site. The tent I was sharing was already set up by another fabulous person, and shortly after the arrival and disposal of my suitcase and bag into the tent, I was dressed and ready to take on the party. Which I did. For a while. It was very quiet.

Seems that in this particular principality they really do like to go to sleep early. I had been warned about this when I attended the Coronet back in October and ended up in a motel for the night. I should have remembered this information when what was left of the party people ended up in our tent talking and laughing and trying to un-stick the garb from various body parts. This was about the time that the constable came up to the tent and told us to be quiet… Apparently it was to late to be partying… What is wrong with this picture? It is still dark, and there are still hours of good darkness left in the land to laugh over… Were we actually supposed to be sleeping?

So we dispersed a bit, and the remainder of us hovered together under the pile of sleeping bags on a really tall airbed. I say really tall because it was the only thing to keep our bodies out of the murky wet as we awoke to the swishing of water in the puddle that used to be the floor of the tent. It was not just a puddle, it was a giant puddle. Everything was soaked through.

When we stuck our heads out the door after the daylight arrived, it was awful. Sammy’s tent had the river running through it, Peza’s pavilion fell on one end and Shaia’s tent had completely collapsed into what looked like a Lake Erie of a sinkhole. Compared to that, the moat around our tent, and in the tent around the mattress, did not seem so bad…

Until I went to get out of the clothes that I had slept in the night before, and discovered that everything was ruined. As in destroyed, utterly un-wearable and hardly salvageable.

And I cried. For clothes, I fell apart at the seams and cried.

And that was where Crystel Leake found me, totally embarrassed for being, yet again, the pampered princess who could not bear the rain. And I do so love the rain… Just not when it involves cold and mud and layers of long dresses stuck to my legs so that I cannot move about and it destroys everything that I have to wear for the weekend. Everything that I worked so hard to make. And then just as we were seeing if anything at all survived, and lucky for me the Viking apron and Saxon overdress with all the handwork made it okay… My wonderful angel showed up at the door to the tent bearing clothes that she thought that I might need as I had traveled so light and might be wet and cold.

And then when my angel found out that I had the choice to wear the wet muddy dress from the day before or to go about in my reproduction of the Emperor’s new clothes, she found another lady who was about my size, who was more than happy, and very gracious, to offer me the wearing of some of her beautiful clothes for the weekend. The angel then took us to buy dry undergarments, and launder what was left of my clothes.

Everywhere I went, incredible people who had heard what had happened and offered to help in any way surrounded me. By that afternoon, I was a better person and back to my regular self. I now have Pensic worthy garb that can be destroyed even more because what more could I do to it. I finally have SCA play clothes!

I proudly wore my SCA play clothes with borrowed Viking bling and attended my first West Kingdom Court. I have popped into courts in the West before, but I have not actually sat a court. Well… I guess I still have not sat a West Court… I was standing behind the thrones attending to Peza so that I could actually spend some time with her. This way, I was also able to play the “Let’s make funny faces game” with so many other fabulous people. And the cups kept being passed back and forth, from thrones to our hands to be filled with some beverage or other, and then passed back up. The royals up here do believe in being well hydrated.

Note to self; take that philosophy back home. A well-hydrated person is a happy person… Of course the populace as a whole was rather happy, with all the singing and waving of arms I kept waiting for kumbyah to break out… I loved it! Then the Vaudevillian Court was over and the parties began.

Even the dinnertime is a party. Everyone together at big tables… and food being passed all around… and sharing off of other people’s plates… and the stealing of forks… and the endless laughter. I felt like I was at summer camp. The toasting went on forever… Which led to more laughter… and then the great mingling from party to party around the Erick.

The best part was that there were different types of parties that all took place next to each other. The silly rowdy one, the mix and mingle around the huge dessert table one, the bardic circle one, the regular ebb and flow one, and the one with the only fire pit and no people… I went from party to party and had the most wonderful conversations. I hardly recall what they were about just that we were all laughing and smiling and it was good. I think that I like those the best. And I did not even worry that I had been in the same dress for more than four hours or that I had to wash my hair in the sink at the laundry mat and dry it outside in front of the 7/11 next door, or that I had on the most hideous bright pink galoshes. I was somewhat warm, I was dry, it was not raining, and I was in stimulating company. I am fairly certain that I was grinning like a fool for most of the night. My cheeks hurt when I finally did go to bed.

Have I mentioned that I have discovered that I like the hospitality of the West so much that I have already adopted it?

We had some friends, who were planning on day tripping that we offered to share a piece of the mattress and bedding with, and another who had totally wet bedding and was going to sleep in a car… So we all climbed in like little sardines in a can and lined up one by one on the short ways of the bed to sleep. The answer to the question of how many people you can fit onto an airbed is four… but it makes for tight quarters… Get it? Quarters… HaHa… Yeah… But it was. At least it was warm. And I, being the short one in the group, actually managed to have my feet on the bed and not hanging off.

Note to self; next time two airbeds… More bodies and more room. I love the slumber party atmosphere though. I could not stop laughing. And I did manage to dose for a bit too. So I am now even closer to my friends than ever before. In ways that I never expected. And I have made so many new friends as well.

I guess that my repeatedly being compared to a cat might not be so inaccurate after all…
I dislike getting wet. I like to be well groomed at all times. I want attention on my own terms, and typically get it. I can twine around legs with the best of them. I fit into small spaces, I can balance on the edge of an airbed and I always seem to land on my feet.

PS. I thought you all were joking… I did get a really big laugh that there truly was a granary across the street and several train cars as well… Next time I am soooo crossing some things off my list!!