Water Sports and Hats

The weather this summer has, for the most part, been beyond a joke, even by this country’s motley standard. Three of my events this season have been cancelled due to heavy rain making the site a bog/river/lake.  Night time rain has traumatised myself and other survivors of Kelmarsh into lying fretfully awake in our tents, fearful of waking up to similar scenes of flooding.

We made it to Herstmonceux on the Bank Holiday Friday in good time and had the tent up and the trailer emptied before the rain started (to fill it up). We watched with growing trepidation as the ground assumed sponge-like qualities: water visibly squelching up as you trod down, and this was inside the tent. As it turned out, the rain did not linger and although it was most definitely welly weather on Saturday, the ground dried out nicely and Sunday was glorious, ending with a breathtaking view of the very starry, starry sky.*  Of course, just as we were packing up on Monday evening, it started to rain again, against all probability and just to be annoying. Naturally, now that I am not camping out and have started to write about the rain, we have wall-to-wall sunshine. It’s enough to make an atheist wonder if there is a god, who not only plays dice but loses heavily.

*There is an observatory at Herstmonceux, so the night sky is unhampered by light pollution.

Herstmonceux is always a great event. This was its 20th year and we have been going, originally as visitors, since the beginning, with the last 8 years or so trading. This year was no exception and with Saturday being a bit slow thanks to the weather, we shopped. Buying fabric goes without saying, (you may have seen the lush velvets I picked up), but I also came home with a rather nice wooden chest (treasure, not prosthetic), a brooch that absolutely insisted that I buy it, a hanging candelabra (fork handles, to light the tent as our single candle lamp is barely adequate for a tent that size) and hats** Oh yes, I likes a nice hat and hats like me. I got a rather funky purple tricorn (getting ready for my old lady purple hat phase),which gives me a fabulously menacing Amadeus shadow, and a low top hat, otherwise known as a dressage hat. Wanna see?

**note the use of the plural here.

Can’t hear you…Oh well, if you don’t want to see… here are my DH’s purchases instead:

Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him and a veritable dandy he was too, don’cha know. Decorative to the end, he will adorn a corner of the Garden of Darkness, (minus the topper, which is for DH to wear to the Ball 🙂

What’s that? You *do* want to see my hats? Oh OK, I’ll get DH to take some pics and post them up soon 🙂