Eye Show, Nr Diss
24th - 26th August 2002

Arrived Saturday morning after me and Lol stopped off at Phil and Trish's place to split the drive up a little for the morning.

Pitched the tent in a rather crowded and spread out campsite. Yet again we found ourselves rather near the beer tent and food traders....bonus! The rest of Saturday was spent sitting in a circle gradually getting rather pissed. The turnout this weekend was pretty good, from both our regiment and the Sealed Knot in general.

Sunday got kitted up in the morning, had a musketeer meeting before lazing around before the battle. Once again I underestimated my alcohol and cigarette consumption and had to head off for supplies!

After a walk to a battle field we were left waiting around (as usual) watching the cavalry play with themselves...well other calvary at least.... they proved to be true to their form yet again this weekend (Scotland they rode through the civilians, this week they just rode through anything)!

We were then lead into the middle of the field, hard to judge how many on the field, at the very least I'd say around 500. We then found the Irish and Scots, and for the rest of the battle was kept rather busy, so much so at one point we were surrounded on all four sides. What to do now? Just carry on hitting the Scots before the others charge of course!!

When we finally left the field the prospect of BBQ food and large quantities of drink seemed damned attractive! But, we did have to get the AGM (Annual General Meeting) out of the way first, ahh well; least we had something to look forward too! Once that out of the way, Phil's mum was kind enough to pass a little BBQ food over, along with letting me and him roast marshmallows YAY! Also relived my childhood by having hot bananas with chocolate in *drool*

Then the trouble started, during the week emails had been passed asking for people to bring along the drinks that have been gathering dust and never touched. The sort of drinks someone described as 'Used to get guests to leave when they've out stayed their welcome'! A large circle was formed and the bottles were passed round. There were some killers in these! One such drink was 151, called so because I believe it was 151% proof!! The trouble with this was I noticed it was going down much; I then voiced this with the bottle in my hand.... I really should have known better. Up went the bottle! Ok, it was only three or four mouth fulls, but DAMN!

This continued until two more senior members of the regiment were made their Depth Chargers, one because of promotion, the other I'm still not quite sure why! These ones were made from the drinks being passed round.... I can safely say I think they were the most painful Depth Chargers ever made!! Once everyone was pretty damned drunk we had a few sing song, the least of which me and one of the guys doing a rendition of The Time Warp in the middle of the circle *groan* I was impressed my legs were still able to move after that drink!

Monday morning was amusing, I tend to be one of the earlier risers, the only two other people up were the guys who got the Depth Chargers the night before....ill doesn't come close to describe them!

After doing some drill the rest of the day went in kind of a haze, as although I woke up in good spirits, the spirits from the previous night started to catch up! So come battle time, I really wasn't up for it, having to walk past a rather bad spillage didn't help. Rumor has it while they were pumping the port-a-loos out, the pressure got messed up and exploded over the guy pumping and the rest of the surrounding area. Goes to prove, if you think your having a bad day there's someone else having a worse one!

The second battle got a little vicious, including myself taking a deliberate sword thrust a little too close to my neck for comfort. Phil's musket got trashed by careless meleeing, and a few other regiment members had run ins with idiots. We left the field in high spirits though, and I personally didn't waste much time jumping into the car and heading home to Chinese and a nice, hot, well deserved bath!

Once again a successful weekend methinks, only a couple more musters left until the end season, where does the time go?!