Pros-y weekend on a Thames Barge...
Sunday, 7 March 2010 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
byslantedlightOh, where to start... so a few of us went off to play with the lads together for the weekend, and it turned out that a fab place to do it was on board this Thames barge, moored in Maldon, Essex...
Of course we all had to get to the barge, which I did via Ely railway station, and a rather nice ploughman's lunch in Lavenham, with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
probodie in the passenger seat...
Luckily there was a pub parked right alongside the barge, so we met up with three or four or six or seven other Pros-y people, and had a bit of a drink and a chat, and an eat until we were allowed aboard (not that you had to have been drinking in order to be let on board, you understand, it was the timing that was... oh, never mind...)
Can't show you the fab inside of the barge, cos there were us-people in it, popping in and out of rooms going ooooh, but this was the view from the deck...
Of course it was dark by then - but look, you can see the pub in the distance... The second pub was a bit closer, but in the other direction... *g* And there's our neighbour-barge, which left with the tide at around four in the morning, with much creaking and groaning...
Oh, and the fun of working out how to use water on a boat - such as for flushing loos... Turns out you have to pump this handle, which sucks... stuff out, and then you flip other switch and pump handle more, which presumably flushed through, and then you flipped the switch back to prevent flooding. We all agreed that last step was a very important one to try and remember... *g*
Luckily we'd had a Pros-y show-and-tell, and there were compensations to help us along with sweet dreams...
(Snagged purely in the service of my fandom to add to the PhotoShoot Snap, you understand... *g*)
And then it was morning...
...and I popped my head up through the hatch to see who was around. We had new neighbours...
...and chain and an anchor and stuff...
Okay, admittedly we're back to the Pros-y Show and Tell of the night before with that last pic...
And then we had Pros-y discussion (What Fandom Tropes Came From Where... and how tall is tall anyway... *g*; what do we really mean by "AU" vs "crossover", and do they cross over? If you put the sons of Bodie and Doyle in a modern CI5 setting, would it still be Pros slash?), and then we had lunch, and then we actually left the barge for a Pros-y Treasure Hunt (put together by someone who'd never actually been to Maldon, via Googlemaps, which made for interesting...ness. But yeay everyone, and the winner of the 1970s-sweets jigsaw wasprobodie, who can probably relate everything everywhere to Pros... *g* Go on, see if you can get this one - which Pros ep is it?
We may have stopped at a pub called...
... The Blue Boar for a drink when we were done. I rather liked these birds all lined up on the weathervane too.
Then dinner, and look, it was dark again...
(I'm leaving those full-size, cos if you double-click through - the stars!
There was a rather fiendish trivia quiz next, put together by maestrochestercity2... and a cleverly wrapped and instructed pass-the-parcel where we all got Pros-y wrapped chocolates found between each layer... *g* (thank you jaycat92!)
...and then there was slashy Consequences, which I always eye up sideways, cos you hardly ever end up with B/D together and I do not want to think about Barry Martin/Towser or any other combinations, thank you very much... (there have been threats to post the results elsewhere - you may see what I mean!)... and then there was an ep (on the brought-with telly!) but for me that was the end of the night... zzzzzzz...
Of course, now that I'm on my clever new up-at-6am schedule, I am waking up very early indeed, no matter what time I go to bed - but I did decide to get energetic with it this morning, and go for a walk along the quay...
I found Maldon seasalt! And what I thought was a tree that looked very much like a man waving, when I saw it in the distance from the barge? Hee - turned out to be a man waving a sword... *vbg*
He was called Burt, and he was an Anglo-Saxon who fought against appeasement with the Vikings in 910 and was killed... so a very English hero... *g* (Also, the whole appeasement deal never seems to go well, whichever way it's played... *headdesk*)
On the way back I realised that Z had been up before me... *g*
Back to the barge with frostbite on my fingers, but there was coffee and bagel and eventually people, and then it was time for - The Reading Room Live! We had a fab little collection of stories that people had recced, and we all agreed that Love in a Cold County by Jojo was fab, we mostly agreed that Fly on the Wall by Lezlie Conch wasn't bad despite the Americanisms, and that writing is a funny old thing... Why do people write? What about ratings? Warnings? The difference between technically a good writer, and a good writer? Can you edit a fic too much, so that the life leaves it? And...
And then we had to clean the barge - waaah! And head off for lunch - waaaah! And then people headed off - waaah! And I hope everyone got back safely, and thank you for a lovely Pros-ily boat-ish weekend too! Sorry this isn't very coherent - I am so sleepy right now that it's not funny. I shall try and make more sense tomorrow!
Did anyone work out The Jolly Sailor? And does anyone have any lads-on-boats type recs for my new StoryList over here? Since I'm in a boat-y mood?
And hmmn - doesn't my icon ofMS Doyle go well with that sailing-pic of LC? That's matching clobber, innit? *g* And now I am soooooo sleepy...
Bye bye lovely barge...
Of course we all had to get to the barge, which I did via Ely railway station, and a rather nice ploughman's lunch in Lavenham, with
probodie in the passenger seat... Luckily there was a pub parked right alongside the barge, so we met up with three or four or six or seven other Pros-y people, and had a bit of a drink and a chat, and an eat until we were allowed aboard (not that you had to have been drinking in order to be let on board, you understand, it was the timing that was... oh, never mind...)
Can't show you the fab inside of the barge, cos there were us-people in it, popping in and out of rooms going ooooh, but this was the view from the deck...
Of course it was dark by then - but look, you can see the pub in the distance... The second pub was a bit closer, but in the other direction... *g* And there's our neighbour-barge, which left with the tide at around four in the morning, with much creaking and groaning...
Oh, and the fun of working out how to use water on a boat - such as for flushing loos... Turns out you have to pump this handle, which sucks... stuff out, and then you flip other switch and pump handle more, which presumably flushed through, and then you flipped the switch back to prevent flooding. We all agreed that last step was a very important one to try and remember... *g*
Luckily we'd had a Pros-y show-and-tell, and there were compensations to help us along with sweet dreams...
(Snagged purely in the service of my fandom to add to the PhotoShoot Snap, you understand... *g*)
And then it was morning...
...and I popped my head up through the hatch to see who was around. We had new neighbours...
...and chain and an anchor and stuff...
Okay, admittedly we're back to the Pros-y Show and Tell of the night before with that last pic...
And then we had Pros-y discussion (What Fandom Tropes Came From Where... and how tall is tall anyway... *g*; what do we really mean by "AU" vs "crossover", and do they cross over? If you put the sons of Bodie and Doyle in a modern CI5 setting, would it still be Pros slash?), and then we had lunch, and then we actually left the barge for a Pros-y Treasure Hunt (put together by someone who'd never actually been to Maldon, via Googlemaps, which made for interesting...ness. But yeay everyone, and the winner of the 1970s-sweets jigsaw was
probodie, who can probably relate everything everywhere to Pros... *g* Go on, see if you can get this one - which Pros ep is it?We may have stopped at a pub called...
... The Blue Boar for a drink when we were done. I rather liked these birds all lined up on the weathervane too.
Then dinner, and look, it was dark again...
(I'm leaving those full-size, cos if you double-click through - the stars!
There was a rather fiendish trivia quiz next, put together by maestro
chestercity2... and a cleverly wrapped and instructed pass-the-parcel where we all got Pros-y wrapped chocolates found between each layer... *g* (thank you jaycat92!) ...and then there was slashy Consequences, which I always eye up sideways, cos you hardly ever end up with B/D together and I do not want to think about Barry Martin/Towser or any other combinations, thank you very much... (there have been threats to post the results elsewhere - you may see what I mean!)... and then there was an ep (on the brought-with telly!) but for me that was the end of the night... zzzzzzz...
Of course, now that I'm on my clever new up-at-6am schedule, I am waking up very early indeed, no matter what time I go to bed - but I did decide to get energetic with it this morning, and go for a walk along the quay...
I found Maldon seasalt! And what I thought was a tree that looked very much like a man waving, when I saw it in the distance from the barge? Hee - turned out to be a man waving a sword... *vbg*
He was called Burt, and he was an Anglo-Saxon who fought against appeasement with the Vikings in 910 and was killed... so a very English hero... *g* (Also, the whole appeasement deal never seems to go well, whichever way it's played... *headdesk*)
On the way back I realised that Z had been up before me... *g*
Back to the barge with frostbite on my fingers, but there was coffee and bagel and eventually people, and then it was time for - The Reading Room Live! We had a fab little collection of stories that people had recced, and we all agreed that Love in a Cold County by Jojo was fab, we mostly agreed that Fly on the Wall by Lezlie Conch wasn't bad despite the Americanisms, and that writing is a funny old thing... Why do people write? What about ratings? Warnings? The difference between technically a good writer, and a good writer? Can you edit a fic too much, so that the life leaves it? And...
And then we had to clean the barge - waaah! And head off for lunch - waaaah! And then people headed off - waaah! And I hope everyone got back safely, and thank you for a lovely Pros-ily boat-ish weekend too! Sorry this isn't very coherent - I am so sleepy right now that it's not funny. I shall try and make more sense tomorrow!
Did anyone work out The Jolly Sailor? And does anyone have any lads-on-boats type recs for my new StoryList over here? Since I'm in a boat-y mood?
And hmmn - doesn't my icon of
Bye bye lovely barge...
