Saturday – FoH day one

We realised when we arrived at Wicksteed that neither Ady or I had charged our cameras up so we knew we’d be on limited photo supplies and were conscious of not running out before the end if possible. We ended up just using one camera a day, mostly Ady which means there are a lot less photos than usual and some that I would have taken which just aren’t there. It’s not serious but is a shame as I do like looking through them, both directly after the event and then again at a later stage. I suspect however that FoH is one of those places that you really do need a decent camera to capture the essence of all the action though, which we don’t have and even I had camera envy at all the people pointing their huge lenses at things.

We were away slightly earlier than the others but had to stop for teeth cleaning and water bottle filling on the way off the campsite and I think we all ended up arriving pretty much at the same time. The traffic (seeing a theme here?) was bad, as it was last year too actually and we took about an hour to get in despite leaving on time to arrive at 10am. Next year I think we’ll aim to get there for about 9am and just sit in the car outside instead, at least we’ll actually be there for some of the 10am start things. The gates open from 930am.

The queue to buy tickets wasn’t too bad (we are members of ET, thanks again to Clubcard vouchers). Scarlett spotted someone’s credit card on the floor so we handed that in,hope they realised they’d lost it and were able to retrieve it rather than the hassle of getting a new one but suspect the owner was already long gone as we watched people infront of us in the queue incase they realised at paying point that it was lost.

We started in The Pavillion, which has lots of activities of an archaeological variety. I’m always a bit torn at these sort of things as the activties are good and the children do enjoy them but there is always so much more going on than we ever get round to seeing I sort of resent ten minutes spent digging through a sandpit in search of broken pottery or scrubbing at a brick with a toothbrush to clean it up! We whizzed past the aerial photography jigsaws but did participate in vote for which era house would you most like to live in from the people who put those blue disc signs on houses where historical or noteworthy things happened (famous person was born here etc.). Both children then enjoyed doing a ‘what was this used for an in what period?’ type quiz on the Arcaeological Society stand. They were both excellent at it, lots of the stuff was Roman and they’ve seen it before at Fishbourne Roman Palace but it’s always nice to see a demonstration of these things going in :). I then realised that Davies’ YAC is the local offshoot of the YAC section of the society and the woman said they had a tent in the Family Zone where we could join the national group which I’ve been meaning to do for him for ages.

We talked to people in the Russian camp and learnt about the 1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death – I loved the way the ‘Russian soldier’ told it – it was set up to shame some of the resistant man into signing up to fight and they women managed to get past 3 German trenches. The men who were following found a stash of vodka and Russia having been dry for years took the opportunity to get drunk instead. The women managed to fight their way back, with minimal casualties despite being hugely outnumbered and with several hundred prisoners to boot. Go the women! 🙂

We talked to a German nurse about WW1 medical supplies and she showed us gruesome tools for locating and removing bullets and the size of the bullets they’d be removing. She talked about how everything would be reused after washing – somehow the idea of second hand bandages grossed me out more than syringes or scalpels! We looked at the kits laid out that soldiers would have carried on their backs and paused to watch some marching past carrying everything – made Ady’s rucksack look very lightweight ;).

We made our way to the Family Zone where we were hoping to hook up with people and were soon hailed by Jax who had found Kay. We’ve only actually met Kay (with Xanthe) once at Kessingland but I impressed myself with both recognising her and remembering her daughter’s name. Said daughter had grown somewhat though! 🙂

The children played in the sand, Chris and Helen and then Jo and Bill joined us and we ate lunch while the children watched Punch and Judy. All very pleasant 🙂

Lovely to catch up with Jo 🙂

The others all went off to watch one of the BZents storytelling shows. Davies did go with them but wandered back again. Scarlett was very reluctant to leave the sand :rolls: so I took Davies off to the YAC tent to sign up and mummify an orange. This is one of the places I would have taken photos but had no camera so you’ll just have to imagine it 😆 He also did some Egyptian writing and picked up some sheets for colouring and quizzes to bring away too.

Back at the sandpit we decided to head for one of the showgrounds and watched the Animals At War one. Ady went off to get a coffee (I’d had a couple of glasses of wine as part of my picnic so didn’t feel in need of tea) and then went off to the car to drop off the now mostly empty rucksack and the several carrier bags of stuff we’d got from the English Heritage clearance stand. We spent just £5 but got about £100 worth of tshirts, toys and gifts that will be perfect Christmas presents for several childen we know :). Scarlett went with him to use the loos in the parking field which we correctly guessed may have less queues. Infact that is my one single gripe with the whole FoH actually, not nearly enough loos. I’ve not been to many festivals really and I know it seems to be something that is a problem at all of them but I do think something that has such large ticket sales and is so well organised should have about double the amount of loos it does. There were constant queues, a good 50 people deep, so it was usually about 10 minutes and that is just too long when so many of the attendees are young children (or indeed the weak bladdered women who birthed them! :lol:).

Davies and I wandered over to catch the end of Peterkin the Fool. I don’t think we’d seen any of him last year other than his warming up the crowd for the jousting. We mangaed to wiggle to the front and both Davies and I thought he was hilarious. This could have had something to do with the wine I’d drunk and the easily pleased comedy nature of an 8 year old but we weren’t alone in enjoying his act very much. Ady and Scarlett caught the very end and we vowed to catch one of his shows again the following day.

We wandered over to a Tudor skinner and chatted to her for a long while. She did much of her chatting ‘in character’ and said she’d been at Kentwell and loved the lifestyle of travelling from one re-enactment to the next from May to October each year. The children were fascinated with what she had to show and tell and learnt all about rabbits, deer, hares, boars and various birds. Scarlett loved the idea of removing a birds wing, preserving it, spread out, and using it as a fan. Might try that with next batch of partridge or pheasant we get. She also talked about various uses for various other body parts – all game was first and foremost for food but the rest was all used with the exception of teeth. I know in cavemen times teeth were also used for decoration / jewellry too. She had skins and furs at various stages and was a really interesting woman to chat to, both in and out of character. I notice this afternoon she has also commented on one of my flickr pictures – nice to see D and S made an impression :).

We wandered back to the Family Zone and I joined the queue for the loos while Ady took Davies and Scarlett inside to do some of the many, many, mostly craft based activities in there. By the time I came out Scarlett was on her second peg doll and Davies was making a paper fortune teller (one of those folded up things you write answers to questions inside). It took ages to persuade them out of there and just as we did last year we missed the planes going over while they made stuff. They both made little felt purses which I wrote little notes for them to keep inside as traditionally they would contain a message from a parent to a child. I copied one of the examples in latin for each of them but quite liked both messages actually as I thought they suited both me and the individual child. Davies’ was ‘it is human to make mistakes’ which is almost one of my catchphrases to them and for Scarlett I wrote what translated as ‘the sun shines on everyone’. It was really hot in there and we finally got them to come out.

As we exited we were approached by a woman with a bag with four smaller bags in it ‘would you like some cream teas?’ asked she. The answer, obviously, was yes so she handed them over, apologising that it was 3 adult and 1 child rather than 2 and 2. As it happened that was about perfect as the child’s one contained a drink and a big bowl of fruit salad, while the adult ones contained two scones, a pat of butter, a miniature pot of jam and a tub of clotted cream. Scarlett was very happy with the fruit salad once we’d added a dollop of cream to it and Ady, Davies and I feasted on the scones with jam and cream. No idea why they were giving them away, Ady reckoned they were giveaways for some stall or other and had to be all gone by the end of the day. IMO worth missing the planes for :).

We caught the Grand Parade first through the main arena with a child each on our shoulders and then as we happened to be standing in just the right place we had a front row view of them walking back again to end. We gave loud cheers to all, most especially the suffragettes 🙂

I bought the kids an ice cream each (Davies was full after his cream tea so gave his to Ady) and the guy told me he’d sold nearly a thousand icecreams that day! 🙂

Once the parade had ended we had a wander round the stalls, of which there are just the right number to be a nice side part of the festival but not so many it all feels too commercial. Lots were for specialist items such as replica weapons, cooking utensils, clothing and footwear and I suspect over half of their trade is to fellow participants in the show rather than the paying public. I overheard a transaction for a spear where the purchaser clarified the 8foot long pole was made of ash, paid for it and then asked ‘you don’t have a bag for it do you?’ which made me and everyone else around him laugh 😆

Scarlett managed to get a freebie from one stallholder who was selling bracelets and beads when she pointed out a bracelet made of cat shaped beads had a cat with a broken ear. The stallholder said ‘oh I’ll have to sell that one cheap then. Actually would you like it?’ Scarlett’s thrilled reaction and effusive thanks would have been well worth the few pence it probably cost her :).

We looked round a US field hospital where we learnt that m&ms were used as placebos when they ran out of antibiotics and painkillers. Finally we got chatting to the man from Grymm Toom’s Travelling Museum who was utterly fascinating. I think we were there for well over half an hour as Scarlett asked him questions about every single one of the odd collection of things on his table. He was very engaging and entertaining and very happy to chatter away to us and shook all our hands at the end.


He even handed his merman over with the suggestion Davies and Scarlett might like their photo taken with it :).

We finally left at about 7pm, an hour after it had all officially closed. It was almost as interesting wandering around at the end watching the groups reconvene and start cooking, eating and drinking together than during the event.

Davies and Scarlett had eaten so well during the day they only needed a snack for dinner so we called into Tesco for bits for them and us to eat and a top up of picnic stuff for the following day and came back to the campsite via the showers.

Ady struck one of his deals with me about cooking dinner (he very often cooks in favour of something else he’d rather not do but I don’t mind, in this instance sorting the car out a bit and packing the picnic ready for the morning – a five minute job in place of a half an hours worth of cooking, seemed like a good deal to me :)). Alison, Lije and Lulah arrived and we had a mostly pleasant evening.

I say mostly because although all the right ingredients were there with people, wine and fine weather I lost my temper and waded into a situation between the children in a rather too heavy handed manner and poor Jax ended up doing a moonlit flit with an ill child in the early hours. We did a pretty good job of packing her all up and moving a sleeping child into the car to send her on her way and waited up to hear she arrived safely at the other end but it would have been a better evening without either of those two events.