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I Get My Stuff Back...
Jan. 29th, 2007 05:11 pm...after finding that I barely needed to take it away.
The weekend involved a trip home, meeting up with Peach and building my mum's new computer, before going to the local pantomime that she had directed.
Chris and I hadn't been drinking in Droitwich for over a year (drinking in Bath, and drinking in Swansea, yes, but not in Droitwich), so assembling various budget parts into something that would take less than three minutes to boot up seemed like a perfectly good reason. While the microcask of Gem settled, components were assembled on a budget of just under four hundred and five pounds giving mum an Athlon 64 3200 with 512MB RAM and 160GB HDD, in a stylish-if-not-exactly-good case with bundled 300W PSU and a floppy drive. We used the motherboard's on-board graphics and sound as all mum does is write email, and provided a new keyboard, scanner, and 17" TFT monitor with on-board speakers. For the price, and considering how fast it now does its thing, we didn't consider this bad.
It fell, unfortunately, to me to assemble it - fine, I had expert and microscopic supervision from Chris, but it's the first one I'd actually put the parts together myself for, and it felt worrying all the way through. It might work like a charm now, but I'm still unsure about the way I do things and wouldn't be happy putting another one together without supervision.
With that finished, the Gem was cracked open and the panto was headed to. Mum had received various LARP weaponry and kit from both myself and Elizabeth in order to make Babes in the Wood (Robin Hood for the hard of pantomime) look better. The principle boy wore Daenaram/Rhinyn's jacket and bracers, Daenaram/Trillian's tunic, and at times Jarreth/Juilin's evening satin shirt and long scarlet waistcoat, and my chainmail adorned the wall of the Sheriff of Nottingham's chambers.
Unfortunately, none of the other stuff we'd passed over was used, slightly annoying as it included Phoenix's cloak which could have been used at the IC meal, and weaponry that could have been used as monster kit since november, but what can you do.
The performance was, as was unforetunately expected, bloody atrocious. When you have a cast of thirty containing only three who plainly want to be up on stage and performing (and, ironically, have talent), you're going to have trouble being any good. The sherrif (excellent), little John (keen as you like) and occasional flashes of inspiration from the fairy (on the illness-affected occasions they were played by mum) couldn't carry the rest of the cast's utter dead weight, and it stuttered along limply between utterly antiseptic to-the-sheet-music renditions of pop songs, and weak, weak timing on the part of those who should at least have tried.
Compared to what the Norbury normally put out it was a masterpiece, with typically unheard of things such as decent set, a band that didn't drown everyone out and few, if any, outright mistakes. Mum's direction is to be congratulated, despite the fact that she has a reputation as an downright ogre while at the helm of a show. Unfortunately, "downright ogre" in their book translates to "someone who expects them to learn their lines, practice their movements, show up to rehearsals and pay attention, and who gets angry when they don't".
Amateurs. There are those who try to be worth more than the lack of fee they are paid, and those who don't. I have no problem with the latter coming aloing and having a laugh, but I object when they ask me to pay eight pounds fifty to watch them. Makes me wish we'd got drunk on the Gem before we'd gone.
The weekend involved a trip home, meeting up with Peach and building my mum's new computer, before going to the local pantomime that she had directed.
Chris and I hadn't been drinking in Droitwich for over a year (drinking in Bath, and drinking in Swansea, yes, but not in Droitwich), so assembling various budget parts into something that would take less than three minutes to boot up seemed like a perfectly good reason. While the microcask of Gem settled, components were assembled on a budget of just under four hundred and five pounds giving mum an Athlon 64 3200 with 512MB RAM and 160GB HDD, in a stylish-if-not-exactly-good case with bundled 300W PSU and a floppy drive. We used the motherboard's on-board graphics and sound as all mum does is write email, and provided a new keyboard, scanner, and 17" TFT monitor with on-board speakers. For the price, and considering how fast it now does its thing, we didn't consider this bad.
It fell, unfortunately, to me to assemble it - fine, I had expert and microscopic supervision from Chris, but it's the first one I'd actually put the parts together myself for, and it felt worrying all the way through. It might work like a charm now, but I'm still unsure about the way I do things and wouldn't be happy putting another one together without supervision.
With that finished, the Gem was cracked open and the panto was headed to. Mum had received various LARP weaponry and kit from both myself and Elizabeth in order to make Babes in the Wood (Robin Hood for the hard of pantomime) look better. The principle boy wore Daenaram/Rhinyn's jacket and bracers, Daenaram/Trillian's tunic, and at times Jarreth/Juilin's evening satin shirt and long scarlet waistcoat, and my chainmail adorned the wall of the Sheriff of Nottingham's chambers.
Unfortunately, none of the other stuff we'd passed over was used, slightly annoying as it included Phoenix's cloak which could have been used at the IC meal, and weaponry that could have been used as monster kit since november, but what can you do.
The performance was, as was unforetunately expected, bloody atrocious. When you have a cast of thirty containing only three who plainly want to be up on stage and performing (and, ironically, have talent), you're going to have trouble being any good. The sherrif (excellent), little John (keen as you like) and occasional flashes of inspiration from the fairy (on the illness-affected occasions they were played by mum) couldn't carry the rest of the cast's utter dead weight, and it stuttered along limply between utterly antiseptic to-the-sheet-music renditions of pop songs, and weak, weak timing on the part of those who should at least have tried.
Compared to what the Norbury normally put out it was a masterpiece, with typically unheard of things such as decent set, a band that didn't drown everyone out and few, if any, outright mistakes. Mum's direction is to be congratulated, despite the fact that she has a reputation as an downright ogre while at the helm of a show. Unfortunately, "downright ogre" in their book translates to "someone who expects them to learn their lines, practice their movements, show up to rehearsals and pay attention, and who gets angry when they don't".
Amateurs. There are those who try to be worth more than the lack of fee they are paid, and those who don't. I have no problem with the latter coming aloing and having a laugh, but I object when they ask me to pay eight pounds fifty to watch them. Makes me wish we'd got drunk on the Gem before we'd gone.
