Another day in downtown Droitwich

St Richards Festival

A day of preparation

May 2014

What does one do on a lazy day in Droitwich, waiting for the festival to begin on Saturday?

Well, we are here early because the forecast for today (Thursday) was terrible and neither of us had the inclination to slog through a bunch of locks in the rain. Nor, for that matter, do we want to be rocking up at the 11th hour, as is so often our habit.

Wand'ring Bark starts to enter into the spirit

So, like the Homebrew Boat, we have been making preparations, which sounds almost Biblical. Boats have been shuffled to optimise the space available whilst ashore tents have been erected and the infrastructure connected up. Most crucially of all, I saw the barrels of beer being unloaded so as Forest Gump's mother used to say "that's one more thing".

The Homebrew Boat

The council have been hard at work too, delivering big rubbish mins and applying a fresh coat of paint to the Voulenteer, a pretend boat in Vines Park. The crews of Areandare and Wand'ring Bark have also been hard at work livening up their boats with some decorative bunting but, as ever, the Capt's attempts barely passed muster. She who must be obeyed was satisfied with the end results but less enthusiastic about the non environmentally sound plastic coated steel garden canes used to hold the bunting aloft. There was me thinking that fact that it matched our corporate green would be the all important factor in winning her seal of approval!

Volunteers get the site into shape

But we did some more practical work and a huge batch of Red Onion Marmalade with Sloe Jelly was chopped and produced ready for future events. In between all this industry I managed to find time to natter to Barry for an hour or two... and then a later session in the pub. Its a tough life.

Oh, have I mentioned the beard. I thought I would drop that in at the end.

A gauntlet (well a thinsulate glove to be 100% accurate) was both thrown down and picked up to let the facial hair grow for the duration of our time away. If you are not a Facebook follower of Helen this is the sequence for the 1st 5 days:

 Day 1

 Day 2

 Day 3

 Day 4

Day 5