My Dedicated Readers (well, some of them) have been moaning at me for not updating this thing. Sorry, lads. I've been busy.

Busy doing what, I hear you cry. Uh...dunno. Stuff.

Well, designing a temple, for one thing. And I mean "temple" in a very all-encompassing sense. Building, structure of priesthood, beliefs, rites and ceremonies - the works! It took a wee while. This is what I get for playing the High Priestess of Heramacles in our LARP group. I have to do all the work on said Ancestor and his temple. (This is the world of the Lorien Trust, in which we do not worship gods, we follow Ancestors, and we may not say "church" or "religion" - though "priest", apparently, is okay. It's some weird PC thing.) Actually, my temple is quite neat. I have a porch with cool acoustics where you can't eavesdrop, and a garden with roses, and suchlike nice things. All temples should have gardens. And I have an apprenticeship system for my priests, and a set way of electing a new High Priest, and rites which used to be bloody (some of them) but now are not. It's all cool. (I really should send it all to Gordon to put up on the website, now...)

Then I'm also on the world-building team for Armengar, which entails more thought and making things up. I invented our swear-words a few weeks ago. That was fun. And then Fergal translated them into Irish, which is even better. We will be able to swear at the Gathering and no-one will know!

We're using Irish as the official language of Armengar, because while very few of us speak it well, we all know a few words and phrases, so we can happily confuse all the English players by talking of the Ard-Sagairt instead of the High Priestess, and so on. Our battle cry is in Irish too - our official one. The unofficial one is "Who's bleeding first?!" Which is, admittedly, easier to shout than "Misneach is Urraim!"

It's sad, really, that most of us can't speak Irish, it being our local language and all. But it's so badly taught in schools that even after 13 years, few people can manage a conversation (though most of us manage to write essays about Irish poetry, in Irish! We have to. It's part of the Leaving Cert.). And then, of course, since almost no-one speaks the language in everyday life, it's very easy to forget most of it - and after 13 years of having it drummed into you in school, you have a big incentive to forget it as fast as possible.

But I digress...

Yeah, LARP stuff. I've been working away at my armour, which is almost done now; I just have to get more eyelets and some glue for the finishing off bits. And my belt-pouch is nearly ready too, though I still have to make the water-carrying one.

And of course there's been training every Sunday. We finally got thrown out of the Iveagh Gardens a couple of weeks ago. One of the park-keepers there utterly loathed us and his little bit of power eventually went to his head. He said we were disturbing the other park users (unlikely; they looked upon us as free entertainment!) and told us to leave. So we did. And went to the Phoenix Park instead, which is not as convenient to get to, but has the advantage of being much bigger, with a greater variety of terrain and more bits that no-one else wants to use. But now we really have to get our permit to make it all official to be there. At least our application has finally got to the right person, but we've been asked not to use any parks at all until it's approved. So we've been using downstairs in Fibbers (hah! You guys thought I made that pub up, didn't you? Well, I didn't) for the last couple of weeks. It's less than ideal; we can't fight there, only role-play, and the under-18s in the group can't come at all. The law changed recently; rather than being let in with a responsible adult, under-18s can now only enter licenced premises when accompanied by their parent or legal guardian. And since most teenagers' parents have no desire to spend a Sunday afternoon sitting in a dimly-lit room watching their offspring and their offspring's friend act weird... You get the picture.

The Gathering's looming ever closer now. We're off on the 22nd; god-awful early ferry to Holyhead and then about 4 different trains up to Derby. But if Patrick can get 40 LARPers from one park to another on no notice, he can certainly get the 15 or so who are taking this route from Dublin to Derby with planning.

Hmph. I had all kinds of stuff I was going to put in this entry, and now I can't remember any of it. You'd think I could write a lovely long blog after letting it lapse for a month. But I can't think of a thing to say. Oh well. Maybe something will come to me tomorrow.