Ahriell writes: After a very busy week of preparations for the party punctuated by frequent trips to Edinburgh to catch various shows, including Flight of the Conchords (Bret mcKenzie, aka Figwit’s show at the Fringe Festival)… a few times, the weekend finally arrived. On Friday evening (the 8th august), Silien (Claire from Wales) arrived at Edinburgh airport where I was waiting for her, not wearing my pointy ears this time, but flaunting my Ian McKellen t-shirt (the one with the Gandalf drawing he made himself), and holding a “lovely” Scottish Fellowship banner. We met up and headed for Rivendell (my house in Dunfermline, a few miles north of Edinburgh). Silien helped me a lot with the final preparations.
Saturday morning, and I was up at 7.30am (don’t ask me how I did it, I still don’t know myself), and I did my housework, the shopping and the tidying up (the things you can do in an hour when you know you have visitors coming which include an Elf ;-). Then off to Dunfermline train station (the 1st of many similar trips that day) to pick up Sky (Roxane from London) who had just spent a whole night on a coach to join our party. What commitment!
Back to Rivendell, where Silien and Lady Sirion (Sheena from Glasgow) then arrived, and there was a lot of activity, and a lot of excitement at the prospect of Bret McKenzie coming too a little bit later.
Everything was set up, the barbecue, the weather which was glorious too, the Council of Elrond garden furniture arrangement on my patio, the Scottish Saltire bunting, the party games (they were: Pin the Pout on Figwit, The Battle of Helm’s Darts and Nobody Tosses a Ballrog, LOL), the food, drinks, etc…
At 12.50 I drove again to Dunfermline train station to pick up our star guest. He got off the train, looking a bit bemused at the crowd of Celtic football supporters that got off too (there was a big game that day between Celtic and Dunfermline Athletics, and police everywhere, who thankfully were too busy checking out the footy fans to worry about an Elf and a mad SF woman walking around town), and we headed for Rivendell.
I was impressed at how well Bret remembered the area from last year, and arriving at Rivendell must have felt to him like coming home (I wish!!!)…
He was duly introduced to the other guests, and was immediately made to feel welcome: within seconds he had a drink in his hand, a burger in front of him, and Silien had shown him all the exciting auction goodies.
We had a fantastic time, chatting in a very relaxed atmosphere about the festival, the latest Scottish Fellowship members and news, last year’s madness when he was here with not only 3 other kiwis, 10 SF members, a friend filming a doco, a journalist from the local paper with a photographer, but also a NZ TV-crew to boot… nothing like that this time around! It was more a question of enjoying the calm and sunny day, and the most stressful part of the day for Bret must have been deciding whether to have mustard or ketchup with his burger.
We played Irish Bingo, a very new and probably very strange experience for an Elf, we took some interesting photos, and then unfortunately it was time for Bret to leave, as he had an appointment back in Edinburgh to do an interview with Brian Logan of the Guardian newspaper.
All guests received a party bag, and Bret’s included information about the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust: a video, some leaflets and a photograph of the group of 3 dolphins we sponsored first: PJ, Figwit and Tristan, which he was delighted to see. Imagine what you would do if you met you… as a dolphin (small in-joke inserted here for the people who have seen Bret and Jemaine’s show)…
Bret and Jemaine’s show at the Festival Fringe is doing extremely well. Audiences are growing in numbers every night, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the last week was sold out. The new songs are amazingly good, and it is a nice touch for them to do requests… I never miss an opportunity to shout out for the Frodo song 😉
After Bret left, the party went on! The auction was a resounding success (a huge thank you to all who placed bids, especially Silien who spent a fortune and must now be in talks with her bank manager now to re-mortgage her house!), and adding to that the money we made from the Irish Bingo and the “Nobody Tosses a Ballrog game”, we have raised A STAGGERING 258 GBP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This means that we can sponsor another 2 dolphins, and a 3rd hopefully after the dvd party coming up on the 30th of August. We chose the following 2 names for the new dolphins: Haldir and Lorien.
We also did the caption competition, and the winners were: The Greenwood, Silien (she didnt get to vote for herself!) and Lady Nurlhawen. More details in another email soon.
In the evening we all went to Edinburgh to watch the Flight of the Conchords, and we all had a fantastic time. Silien even had Bret and Jemaine pose on stage for her camera! Hilarious moment!!! This photo, along with many more, will of course be on our new website (when it is launched soon), but in the meantime, I leave you with 4 photos: one of Bret with Lady Sirion, Silien and Sky, one of Bret and me, one of the 4 of us with friends 😉 and one of Flight of the Conchords, when they posed on stage for me one evening last week!
A very good time was had by all… I can’t wait til the next party! But I’ll be wanting a bit of rest first.
