Ain’t no Christmas like a Sheridan Christmas
December saw two important dates in the NSC calendar: the Christmas party and the traditional Christmas Moot.
To mark the 150th anniversary of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea our Christmas party this time had a Verne theme. As you might deduce from the event’s title, “Journey to the Centre of Vauxhall”, our venue was once again at Hal and Grace’s Teahouse Theatre, which comes ready with a fairly Victorian clutter about it.
The theme was an open invitation to unleash your inner steampunk, and there were certainly plenty of cogs and brass goggles in evidence, but we also had a goodly helping of explorers, mountaineers and general Victorians. Special mention must go to the Mitchells for their usual attention to detail and to Rachel Effeny’s ingenuity in coming as a squid—CDs for eyes. Genius. (Kids, ask your grandparents what CDs are.)
In addition to the usual buffet meal and the traditional Christmas Lucky Dip (essentially a dustbin filled with shredded newspaper, hidden in which are some “prizes” that would fail quality-control in a Chinese cracker factory), we had three games with which to amuse the members and stimulate their etiolated competitive spirit.
Our first game was “Around the World in 80 Seconds”. The idea was to steer a balloon around the room, passing the four corners of the earth, before landing it on the roof of the Reform Club, all within 80 seconds. After batting around the idea of using a leaf-blower to propel a helium-filled balloon, we eventually settled on the thoroughly modern idea of a remote-controlled drone. I had planned to attach a conventional balloon and tiny doll’s-house basket to the top of the drone for visual effect but I encountered two problems: firstly the drone was much smaller and lighter than I had imagined and the balloon and basket weighed as much as the drone did. Secondly, I discovered that a balloon filled with air is heavier than air, so the balloon inevitably sagged to the point where it interfered with the rotors, which promptly shut down. So we made do with the drone on its own and players and spectators just had to imagine the majesty of a hot air balloon in its place.
The corners of the earth were represented by poles with flags on but the room presented many more obstacles than that. For the drone to stabilise it had to been on a completely level surface when switched on, which is practically impossible, and players did struggle to control it in flight. In fact no one managed to travel all the way round the room, though our winner, James Rigby, did make it three quarters of the way before crashing into a Christmas tree. Crashing was in fact how most attempts ended: to give you an idea, the drone came with a clip-on plastic guard to protect each rotor, and by the end of the game all four had been smashed off and lost somewhere in the Teahouse. At one point the drone disappeared under the stage and we feared it was lost forever, until the cunning intervention of Mrs Partington-Plans, who fished it out with a walking stick.
The Teahouse’s cat seemed both attracted and repulsed by the drone, on the one hand instinctively seeing it as something to be hunted, while on the other hand jumping out of its skin every time the drone took off.
Our second game was another variation on the hook-a-duck concept that we have used with such sublime success in the past. This time players were given a pole on the far end of which hung a plastic pterodactyl with a hook attached to its feet. Its prey were the doughty adventurers making their way across a Lost World prehistoric plateau. (In case you’re wondering, the adventurers were 28mm lead figurines from the “Rugged Heroes” and “Rugged Archaeologists” collections by North Star). Each figure had a loop of wire on the top into which the skilled operator could insert the dinosaur’s hook, thus enabling the pterodactyl to carry its victim away into the antediluvian skies. (Scarheart independently decided that the victims were then dropped into the volcano depicted in the backdrop.) A time limit of 60 seconds was set and we did have two contestants who both managed two kills in this time, leading to a tie-breaker that was won by Mrs Morley—making the Rigby/Morley household something of a power couple.
Our final game was running in the background throughout the party, and contestants were simply invited to use the felt tips and crayons provided to create a cover image for a new edition of a Jules Verne story. We handily supplied a printed list of all his works, which numbered far more than most people probably realised, including such tales as Keraban the Inflexible (1883), Propeller Island (1895) and The Will of an Eccentric (1899).
Many thanks to all who came along—a remarkably good turn-out considering the shadow of Covid under which the event took place.
See many more photos from the event in the album on our Flickr account: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sheridanclub/albums/72177720295650339
Our traditional pub gathering just before Christmas, the Christmas Moot, took place, if anything, even more under the shadow of Covid: although there were no rules banning such gatherings, all the pubs I passed on my way to the Rising Sun on Cloth Fair, just off Smithfield meat market—location of our own get-together—seemed to have about two people in them. In fact our own pub had just two people in it downstairs, but we had reserved the upstairs and the joint was jumping. In fact it was probably the only convivial conclave in the City and several strangers came up to share the craic. There is no structure to these meetings, barring an attempt at a group photo, just some booze swigging and chin-wagging. Merry Christmas to you all and see you in 2022!
More photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sheridanclub/albums/72177720295522220.
