SC - A Redaction Challenge

[Alderton, Philippa]

In a message dated 5/9/00 9:02:42 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
catwho at bellsouth.net writes:

<< 
 I think that in period if a noble were to have a pot set in front of 
 him that he would be screaming for the steward or pantler's head!  
 Why such a shortage of serving apparati and servers?  I'm in a new 
 barony and it was made very clear at last night's meeting that if you 
 didn't sign to serve at feast and we were short on servers that you 
 would be yanked up from your seat to serve (hosting group's members 
 only mind you.)  
  >>
    I'd love to be able to get away with that kind of demand, and to have 
servers at our feasts, but in our group it won't work. Rather than being a 
Barony, with the larger numbers of folks you have to draw on, we are a 
medium-sized shire, and our people are stretched to the maximum to just do 
the essentials hosting a large weekend-long event requires! In addition, our 
big tourney is in late August, in the South, at a site where the only air 
conditioning is in the car you drove in. (Temps near 100 F., and humidity 
approaching 100% are par for the course.) Heat exaustion is a major problem 
for our folks, and by the time feast rolls around many of them can barely 
eat, much less serve tables! So in our case, until we get a lot more people 
in the group, we do the one-person-from-each-table-serves routine. It works, 
and gives everyone but the kitchen crew a chance to rest up a bit before the 
evening's activities start. 
    Being able to serve the tables properly is certainly the ideal situation, 
and when our group grows large enough I'm sure we will. But for now we are 
doing as much as we can manage--which does include serving tasty, period 
food! ;-)

                    Ldy Diana