Beer and loafing in PA

So I’m back, if not from outer space, at least from outta this century. I’ve just spent the past two weeks at Pennsic – two weeks of camping amidst 11,000 card-carrying hardcore nerds, geeks and history/fantasy buffs. My people.

Two weeks dressed as a pirate, attending classes on mediaeval/ renaissance history, spending money I can’t afford on baubles and trinkets, and drinking quantities of alcohol that would make Robert Downey Junior go “hold on, that’s a bit much”.

I normally go every year for a week of escapism, but this year I went for two weeks. My liver is still aching.

Now there were some fun parts to Pennsic this year. I learnt how to roast coffee beans. I taught a couple of classes myself (about the history and folklore of marine mammals). I went on the annual “rum roam” with an old buddie, had some quality time and caught up, and enjoyed an excellent “pub” crawl to boot. I learnt how to play scrabble properly, so that I actually started winning games (this is the one board game I always get trounced at normally – I just used to like making cool words, instead of playing strategically. But now I get it !). I had fun drawing on people with henna (including a henna Cththulu and elvish phrases, that looked totally awesome). We had an excellent band visit camp, who sang us piratey/bawdy ballads. I also had some quality time with a male friend of mine I only see once a year, who is hilarious as hell, and one of the nicest people I know – such that there was teasing in camp about our bromance. Plus, I GOT TO WEAR PIRATE CLOTHES EVERY DAY !

I also: (a) nearly got into a bar room brawl with someone over the war of 1812 (one of my special skills); (b) got very drunk one day and embarrassed myself with a fit of bad singing and obnoxiousness; (c) got hit in the head by at least three tent/ridge poles while trying to help camp mates; (d) spent way too much money; and worst of all (e) dropped my glasses in the porta potty (ewwwww!) – luckily I had a spare pair.

Duckpocalypse now !

Sometimes you just have to catapult rubber ducks from one half of camp to the other. You need to keep the riff-raff in their place by raining ducky destruction down upon their heads. Unfortunately this led to some revolution from the other half of camp, with us finding one day, the heads of decapitated rubber ducks on kebab skewers lining the walkways – very ‘Game of Thrones’. Ducks were also placed into a pie and presented to “duckmaster general”.

The resistance was brutal

A woade design on a member of the duckie resistance

This of course spawned duck-hurling retribution, with the cry “release the quacken !” more rubber ducks hailed down onto the revolting camp mates. This then spawned a follow-on coup, involving the other half of camp painting themselves blue and reenacting the “Freedom” speech from Braveheart (I admit though, being a Beneduck  Arnold and switching side at this point, and helping to mastermind the revolution – hey I’m a British/American dual citizen, I sometimes get conflicted).

“So you can shower me with ducks, you can drink my rum, you can hit me o'er the head with a tent pole, you can even gossip  and make up rumors about me all you want, but ... you can NAEVER TACK AWAE MA FREEDUM ! "