Yet Another “quiet” Saturday morning.
Like that’s going to happen!
The Friday night setting up was pretty much as usual, but Kim and I had plans to come back later, the plot thickens, (well it is pantomime season) as regular readers will know we had our Christmas in September, Thomas and Alex asked what will we do in December? After a short discussion they decided on the theme “Pirates of the Caribbean”. I thought perhaps they might want build a cannon in my workshop and it all started from there.
Thomas and Jordan spent the day building the cannon, 1.5 metre long barrel and impressive carriage, I thought perhaps a firing cannon would be nice, popping a balloon might give us noise and enough oomph to blow some tissue out the end, not a chance, an hour went past with Thomas trying all sorts of clever ways to produce the effect but nothing, then he had the bright idea to try party poppers and bingo, a bang and stuff flying out the barrel at the same time, brilliant.
By the end of the day they had a finished wood stained cannon on a four wheeled carriage, a chain draped round it on four fancy hooks and a length of thick rope to pull it, the barrel was painted black and the firing design sorted, they completed the project with an unused pre turned perfectly shaped plug for the back end of the barrel. But it didn’t stop there, can’t have a firing cannon without a target can you? So later that week Kieran arrived, while Jordan painted the last few black bits on the cannon Kieran drew and painted an 800mm round target, red, yellow, blue and black, job done.
So back to the Friday night set up, as soon as the senior helpers had gone home Kim, myself, Ron, Keiran, Jordan and Thomas went through the operation of firing the cannon, time after time, tweaking here and there and after 2 hrs of intense training and 60 party poppers we had a perfect run. It took quite a while to clear up the mess and at 10pm that night we all went home excited about tomorrow, the big day.
The following morning I arrived earlier than usual, I covered the cannon up and put a table in front of it, some of the gathered crowd had dressed as pirates, even a couple of adults, they all stood at the far end of the hall, I did the usual chat and the pictures of the fancy dress where taken, I then explained how the cannon idea grew and handed over to the boys, they performed perfectly, everybody applauded and laughed, brilliant, hours of hard work done and dusted in a couple of minutes, it was worth every second. I unknowingly left my camera running while practicing on Friday night, it recorded 10 minutes of priceless footage, lots of shouting from you know who and three very excited young pirates in a world of their own, we had a brilliant time.
With that done with it was over to turning and craft activity, we did dangly things for the Christmas tree with the under 12’s, and Angy had tabards and head scarves for them to stencil scull and crossed bones and the like on, Emily did a lovely one for me. The others did various projects of which I’m sorry I was just to busy to record. There was the usual mid morning break, and yes there was Banana cake, also some chocolate fingers and other bits and pieces, thanks go to everybody who brought food today. Nikky made short bread men for them to pipe icing designs on, very popular that was, especially because if you didn’t like your design you could just eat it! You could eat it if you did like the design! And I guess most did.
Nikky works hard during the year to prepare hot meals and refreshments for the senior club members; I thanked her on their behalf and Emily and Aden presented her with a beautiful basket of fruit. Many thanks Dave for sorting that. Tons of clearing up but worth the trouble every time, I did for the first time I think since we started get to chat to everybody at the end, it was very obvious that everybody thought it was possible the best morning yet, I think I have agree with that, I’ve since been informed from Dave the girls thought it was the best, they really enjoyed themselves. So a huge thanks to all the helpers and the juniors for making our Saturday morning brilliant.
So with the hall back to clean and tidy and Christmas greetings going to and fro it was time to lock the doors, and there goes an extra brilliant junior club morning me hearties, pieces of eight and all that.
Boots Dec 2008