river water

 Hobbies can sometimes lead to useful transferable skills.

Decades ago, I ran a commercial postal RPG called 'Delenda est Carthago'  It even won an award.

I employed several people over the years - one interview was with a Dr Who fan, the kind who knew every detail of pretty much every episode.

That was what got him the job - it demon stated his ability to get involved with a fantasy world and to learn all the relevant details.  And he turned out to be a very good GM.

My daughter hs a volunteer at Little Woodham - the 17th century replica village. She's become a dab hand at entertaining the visitors with leather-working demonstrations, all sorts of interesting historical facts and also by organising groups of children into being the crew of a canon! (I gather the kids absolutely love it, even the ones who get 'killed' by standing in front of the barrel when loading it, etc.)

Turns out that this is a transferable skill also.  It was her time at LIttle Woodham that got her an interview with a company doing coach tours (she has a bus-drivers licence, but that wasn't the critical element).  They were looking for someone could entertain the passengers as well as drive them safely.

Monday Passenger: "You're very knowledgeable.  How long have you been doing this? It must be a couple of decades."

Lindsey: It's my first day...

She'd done a lot of research and stacked up anecdotes about all the places they would pass en route.  A bridge Winston Churchill fell off as a boy; another bridge that had a Civil War fight where a dozen cavalry held off around 200 infantry, stuff about Lulworth Castle, etc.

So, if you ever take a coach tour from Bournemouth rail/coach station to the Jurassic Coast, maybe you'll meet her!

 Just back from several days a Chippenham Folk  Festival. Shattered, but had a good time.

Two days before the festival, the lady who was to be calling the maypole and doing the children's morris had to go into hospital (she should be fine, nothing too serious).  

So, I got asked to take it over at short notice.

Fortunately, the original musician was still able to make it, and proved to be the best person I've ever worked with for maypole. He never had to be asked to speed up or slow down, he automatically matched the best pace for the dancers and played a bar or two extra slowly when a small child needed to cross the dance set.

It was good, especially as having a lot of adults in the set allowed me to use a greater range of dances.

We did (my granddaughter and I) an entry for Southern Star Longsword in the annual Chippenham 'Stick and Bucket' competition.  As Southern Star was founded because of a Discworld convention, we had to enter...

Only having two dancers present did not deter us in the least.  We took spare swords and buckets and trained a scratch team.  One of the team had a mere 10 mins practice before the performance!

Here's the performance - Southern Star are 5 mins into the video, but you can watch all the teams entering.  

The man in the orangutan outfit is my husband, Richard.  That's his collection costume for fesivals - he's a Pratchett fan as well...