Our New Year Begins!!

Regular readers may well remember that 'we' run our event schedule based on the financial year rather than the calendar one....and with that in mind the new year is just around the corner and this weekend sees the start for the new programme of events.

So what can you expect this year??

Pretty much the same as last year as it happens, a mixed bag of this and that culminating with an attempt to expand and improve on the Christmas event, thus putting this back to the pinnacle of our event year as it used to be. As such, an amount of the experimental work over the year will be going towards not just trying to improve our understanding of things, but also trying out new ideas and planning for the Christmas event, which is our best opportunity for both trialling new ideas regarding food at the Court of Henry VIII as well as showing them off to you all.

This weekend coming will be a fairly simple affair with little in depth experimentation as we shall be having a film crew round working on another Historic Royal Palaces project, there is a need for them to record fairly basic processes without any of our "mucking about" getting in the way...so that's what they'll get....the usual broad mix of roasting and boiling, chopping and grinding and the guys doing what it is they do best...talking for Britain.

Easter, which looms large at the end of the month, will be a different affair....can't give details just yet as I'm still waiting for confirmation, but I'll let you all know ASAP. The very next weekend though (May holiday weekend) , the Palace has the theme of love and romance to tie in with the Royal nuptials on Friday 29th..yes it's an extra bank holiday, so lucky us, we get to work!! As yet, the only thing I know that we'll be doing is that Dave has been asked to make something romantic in sugar....no idea what, but I'm sure it'll be fine...as for the rest of us....the jury is still out there, not really got any ideas yet, but hey, it's a month away yet!

After that, we should settle down into a more regular and sensible plan of attack for each event, as soon as things are settled planning wise, I'll let you all know.

That's it for now.

TTFN

House Rules

Ok, so I suppose this is a post with a little explanation in it, something to let you know why there has been a vacuum of silence of late I guess.

When I started all of this blogging a couple of years ago, I set myself some house rules that I would always aim to follow. In the main, they are of no great concern to all of you out there, they set out how I was going to layout each post and things like that. They also detailed what I would and most importantly would NOT post about.
Like a lot of people, I was always told that if you can't say something nice about someone, then don't say anything. My self set policy is to not report negatives or disagreements either within the team or within the organisation...that sort of thing is, frankly, nobody else's business and let's face it, that's not really what people want to hear...well not in our situation I'm guessing.

Over the last year or so though, there have been a much larger number of disagreements and problems that have either lead to bad feelings or operational problems within the setup that we operate in. What they are is immaterial, they are the sort of problems that any team that works so closely together experiences, they do however affect the way that I personally feel and mean that more often than not there has been "nothing to say" to you all....both figuratively and in reality. Painful as it is to say, the last thing I feel like doing a lot of the time is being positive and trying to find something worth writing as a blog post!

Now, I suppose the $64,000 question is, will the situation change in the future?

To be honest, who knows? The ideas that are being thrown around for the new financial year are pretty good and should make for an interesting year if they get approved....so yes, I expect to carry on boring you for some time to come, just how regularly I can't say. Will it get back to the way it used to be, lots of pictures of recipes and lots of cooking stuff...that I'm not so sure of..the pictures, probably not in the way that we used to, the recipe stuff, possibly but more likely if I can coerce others to do some writing for you as well.

So that's the situation as it is right now, hopefully this makes some sense of the vast periods of nothing from me, perhaps not. Please don't bother asking what the problems are as I won't be saying....either you know already or you won't, so don't waste time asking as a lack of reply may offend ;o)

TTFN

February Foibles.

New phone, worse signal! Oh how technology is a fickle mistress...still if you're reading this at least the tech' held up for long enough for the mail to send and at the moment that's pretty good!

Not much to report for you I suppose, we did a little cooking and an awful lot of talking, which seems to now be the norm....not that's any reason too complain as we had some great people round today, asking lots of taxing questions...as well as a number off different press people from both the UK and Germany. It appears that there's more of the same tomorrow.... .so another fairly "safe" day of cooking with plenty of chat and banter if it all works out. No pictures other than any Terry managed to post earlier I'm afraid, but a better description for you when a proper keyboard presents itself after tomorrow.

As promised the other day, then plan is still to process the last video from Xmas for you sometime early next week, so fingers crossed I can sort that out....but for now it's time for some sleep.

TTFN

What Occurs When....

....people put a little thought into things!!

Now as I mentioned and posted before, I made a number of time lapse recordings of the meal time at Christmas so that we could get some idea of how the set up flowed....it really makes it so much easier to notice how the crowd moves about and so on. The trouble is, certain people got to thinking about how best they could "play" with the recording and after an abortive, but interesting first attempt (which isn't worth showing), Robert came up with this

 

Click the image to visit the Gallery and see the fairly short video.

Now obviously, this had potential and was bound to go further....which it did. I'll post the results after the weekend when I've finished editing it...it's taking a while because the camera failed midway through the recording, fortunately it saved what it had shot to the memory card (which is a first, normally it wouldn't have!) but unfortunately there is some data corruption which I'm trying to clean up.

Now I suppose it's time to get ready for the weekend of cooking which is now upon us.

TTFN

T i m e L a p s e

First of the videos that I took of the Hall being set up/taken down and the King dining has now been edited, you can find it over at the Gallery...just click on the thumbnail to get there:

Sorry for the appalling picture quality, but it was a very gloomy day and the lighting was awful, that and the fact that I'm using a small pocket camera not a video camera all combine to give the effect of Henry dining on the event horizon of a black hole!!
That aside, you should get an idea of what went on...and "get" the "Lenin's tomb" reference. The 31st was really the day that everything came good I suppose. Teething problems with the layout of the Hall were dealt with, visitor management was spot on...great work by the team from Past Pleasures who man the "upstairs" parts of the Palace, absolutely first rate stuff, with just the right levels of solemnity and levity I felt....the State Apartment Warders and Conservation and Collection Care teams were also running like a dream too (not that they weren't before, but by the 31st everyone, including me, had relaxed somewhat and the atmosphere in the Hall seemed to reflect that).

Still more videos to edit, but that may have to wait whilst family stuff takes over for the next few days (hmmm, decorating, can't wait....not!), but when you do see them you'll see that very little changes....we'd got it just about right. That is not to say that it was perfect by any means....but as I've maintained all along if you were to have asked me, this was the beginning on a new road to the way that food and meals within the context of Henry VIII's Court are interpreted. There is still a L O N G way to go to get anything like an accurate presentation, but these tentative baby steps are a start......and much much closer to history than what was done in the past.

Hopefully, the powers that be at work were equally happy with the event as I was, we'll just have to wait for the debrief meeting to find out, but all in all I think we can safely say B-, could do better!

What would I change?........I think that can wait for another post, possibly with the last video, to give me time to think.

TTFN

Xmas Images

Just put a new album into the Gallery with some of the images that I took at Christmas....only 25 I'm afraid, most of what I shot was for internal analysis later on and not, I'm sorry to say, for public consumption....that and they're mostly blurred or out of focus due to the gloomy lighting on the day or my general ineptitude!! For images of the event I can recommend those taken and kindly shared by Terry L over at the forum, much more comprehensive than this small offering....but I digress.

As ever, Dave features large with this image



quite simply, the man gives great photo!!! Point the camera at him and.....assuming you use a fast enough shutter to freeze the movement or he's run out of steam, you'll always get a good image....damn him!!

There are a small handful of the table being set for the dining, not enough as although I was on photo duty, I was also needed to set the table up as well, so images took an unfortunate back seat (though a useful lesson for the future...don't try to do 2 things at once, something will give)

You can also see the "revised" public queuing/route system in operation too...



nattily referred to as the Lenin's Tomb effect by a number of staff...still it worked and that's the main thing.

I'm still working through editing the time lapse footage that I shot of the Hall being set up and the dining being viewed...it's just taking longer than I thought due to the need to protect the innocent/guilty (delete as you feel applicable).

Will update you with the video when it's done, but for now, here is the link to the Gallery >>>>> LINK

Navigate through cookery events > Henry VIII to find the Xmas 2010 album.

TTFN

Fire From The Skies!

Just a quickie as it's rather late!

Was walking back to the digs through Base Court and found one of those hippy sky lantern thingies on the floor. If you use them, please think of the possibilities of where they may land, fortunately the heat source had burnt out, but what if it had landed alight on the Palace?

Hippy types....thing before you light those decorative floatong lanterns....where might they land? Will it be safe?

Here ends the fire safety message....tipsy though it may be ;o)

Happy New Year!!!

Wishing you all the best for 2011.

With luck in the coming year I can shift this blue funk and keep you better informed than of late .

All the best and remember to drink responsibly tonight people....I may even allow myself a little drinky to celebrate the success of this event. An update will be forthcoming after the dust has settled, possibly a short one tomorrow too, but for now obscenely loud music calls to drown it all out!

TTFN and all the best

Why So Silent?

You'll notice a dearth of detail about the Xmas event for the moment for the simple reason, it's not sorted yet and I prefer to get it right this time before giving you the nitty gritty....silly really, but that's how it is!

From our point of view in the kitchens, all is tickety boo, just the meal part to get 'right', but considering it's the first time this has been done like this for several hundred years I suppose it's not going too badly!! Fingers crossed by the end of tomorrow we'll all be sorted and I can give you the SP from our end....for now though, pop to the forum for a 'punters view' and look at the pictures and so on posted by Terry L.

I can certainly say though that it is mentally draining trying to get this event 'right'...sit down for 5 minutes and I drop off to sleep....so draining in fact that I'll even let Terry's comment about me not working pass....I don't just 'supervise' you know....there is other stuff involved too!! ;o)

TTFN

Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas everyone.

Fingers crossed for a successful event over the next week and an equally successful 2011.

All the best.

TC