Is what I've just been enjoying, but it's time to get back to work (well Monday will be anyway) and more importantly for this, time to get back to talking to you lot!
First things first, my meagre contribution to the weeks photographs have been sent to Flickr.....all 3 of them!! Well it just turned out not to be a picture taking week, mainly because there was no need in the main.......although Robert kept his end up over the last couple of days and I'll let you see them in a day or two as soon as I've got them all sorted and saved to the hard drive.
So how was it? Well New Years eve was pretty quiet....in fact for the first time in a long while we all spent midnight in the Palace.......party poppers, toasts and handshakes all round. This lead to a fairly easy New Years day (no hangovers to negotiate!) even though it was fairly quiet.....but then 'real' people probably had better things to be doing than coming to see us wheezy gits in a cold kitchen.
Overall the week went fairly well.....no massive shocks......nothing out of the ordinary to report, hence the fairly dull posts I suppose. On the up side, for me at least, was the discovery of the time lapse setting on the camera.....which has lead to seeing the kitchens in a new light I think.....next time I'll try some of the different time intervals, but for the moment all the footage is taken 1 frame every second.
With that in mind, here are a couple more clips for you to see......one of the washing up after the public have gone home and one of the main room in the kitchens over the space of about an hour on New Years day. I know I said I was going to hold the washing up clip in reserve for times of need, but I managed to edit out the footage that shows lewd or lazy behaviour (and miraculously still have footage left!!). Well boys will be boys and we find washing up a good release after a hard, mentally demanding day at work. The 'black' frames in both clips denote a passage of time...or embarrassing faux pas!!
Before anyone asks about the modern kitchen (and I think I've said this before), the washing up isn't part of the learning/experimental work that we do....there's absolutely no artifice involved and we're very open about telling people how the washing up is done. It's just one of those things that has to be done each day in order for the project to function, so it's all done in a modern kitchen with modern products.......although in so saying, we have in the past experimented with Tudor methods of cleaning.....scouring with sand or horsetail grass, washing in lye or soft soap.....so can compare the modern products to their historic counterparts when we need to.
Although New Years day wasn't that busy you do sort of get the impression of what we do from the second clip, hopefully in future events I'll be able to get some better footage for you.
That's all for now, pictures from Robert as soon as is viable.
3 comments:
Loved the view from "behind". One can understand the medieval woman's attraction for a "well-turned calf"!
How long does the washing up usually take?
How many "outfits" do you all have? Are they changed only when necessary for cleaning or do you have sartorial preferences on certain days? Were they made for you or are you supposed to participate in the construction?
Over the last week, the Palace shuts to the public by 4.30 p.m. and we were all back into the office by 6.00 p.m. with all the washing up done, kitchen re-set for the next day, fuel bunker re filled etc.
With regards to the clothing, although we all have multiple changes of underwear (like you needed to know that) we tend to have the one set of outer wear...hose, doublet & coat. Theoretically, as time goes on and they begin to wear out they get replaced and this leads to a wardrobe in varied states of repair, fairly much as records seem to indicate was the case in the past. Unfortunately, we are a little behind on the replacement schedule at the moment due to delays in receiving replacement cloth, mainly due to the large amounts of naturally dyed material that we require I believe.
When it comes to construction, the majority of the guys make their own clothes, or assist as much as they can in Robins case (chunky fingers are his excuse for not sewing ;-) ) As with many things to do with the project, by making our own clothes it gives us a much better understanding of what it is we are talking about when we're answering questions about the clothes.
Ha, I did do some washing up, between talking.
Yes, we moslty make our own, do not get started on fitting hose...grrr
Washing up takes approx half an hour or so.
What is interesting is that no one is told to go and wash up, we all slot in, some of us actually like doing the bronzing (some of us get peeved when a Mr F gets there before them ;-)). Some wash, some carry the baskets up, a bit of drying.
The time lapse shows it pretty well, the washers and the carriers and driers. I must remember not to lean so much against the sinks though.
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