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Tavern Night for Scribal Ithra (September 22, 2001)

This was my first event in Seagirt after having moved to Seagirt. I actually knew some people this time and, even better, I hadn’t spent 4 hours on planes and buses trying to get there and knew where I was supposed to be crashing afterwards. As a result, I had a much better time than I did at Daffodils

I got a ride with one of the autocrats and helped set up the hall. I know you’re all thinking, “but she has a bad attitude and doesn’t like to help out” but I moved tables, put out tablecloths and candleholders, and helped decide which wall hangings should go where. These wall hangings are like, super cool. I gathered they were mostly the work of Mistress Linnet Kestrel. They went up in maybe about 15 or 20 minutes, and they covered all the badly executed attempts at West Coast native art which had been put up by the Scouts who normally use the hall. On one side we had these sort of trompe l’oeil pieces in sections, so you had a piece of stone wall with a terrace entering onto a formal knot garden, a piece of stone wall with a window looking out at a distant monastery, etc. etc. On the other side we had kind of a purple and white colonnade of arches. I was totally amazed at all of this, because we have absolutely nothing like it (that I’ve ever seen) in Avacal, and it really added to the ambience. 

Wow. That was a bigger digression about the wall hangings than I intended. But they’re really cool. 

After people started to arrive, I met a few new people. I met the Royal Bard of An Tir, and I sang two songs with her, Johnny Be Fair and Follow Me Up to Carlow. I finally met Ekaterina, who I had been constantly hearing about in the context of:

Me: Hi, I’m Caterina, from Montengarde*
Other Person: Oh no, not another one! We already have an Ekaterina!
To make things even worse, I also met a new girl whose name is Catherina. I also hung out with some people that I had already met, and learned all sorts of interesting past details of their personal lives. No, I’m not going to go into any detail, I don’t want this to sound like a gossip column. 

We had something resembling court, in that a Baroness was sitting in a chair with a herald and we all had to pay attention, but it was Baroness Amanda Kendal wearing a Grand Chancellor of Ithra hat and handing out credits to people who had taught courses. Some people like Artemis de Montessori and Baroness Nadja even got cool scrolls. After we were dismissed, we got back to the really important business, which was partying. 

I had soup, a meat pasty, two cookies, and hot mulled apple juice for $3, which is a lot more food than I would get for three bucks at Moxie’s. I thought about acquiring some alcohol, but I figured as far as my budget would go I could only justify one drink, and one drink just didn’t seem worth it. Amazingly, though there was a tablero board, nobody was playing. A bunch of people were just standing around and talking, and the rest of us were dancing. 

We danced Childgrove, Sellenger’s Round, Rufty Tufty, the Gay Gordons, and some Bransle (I think the Pease Bransle) which involved the gentlemen leering at the ladies, and the ladies running away to find a new partner. As we were leaving the hall, we discovered that a bunch of people had gone outside and were singing (at the time we were leaving, they were singing the Arrogant Worms’ “Canada’s Really Big”). I was kind of sad that I hadn’t ended up doing more singing, but the problem with singing and dancing is that you usually can’t do both at the same event. Anyway, I had a lot of fun, and I’m going to give this event 4 pints, which is how much I would have had to drink there if I had had any money. 

Score: Four Pints

*This is actually a lot like saying, “Hi, I’m Mike, from Canmore”

 

 
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