A month or so ago I had asked Vetra if she wanted me to organize feast servers. She asked what I wanted. I said when doing that I don't actually get to eat the feast, and I really would like to. So we defaulted to the usual "one person from each table comes and gets a course".
However, then a few days before the event the Heavy List Champion went and made himself Prince, so Vicrene Lada was organizing retainers. She was having slight difficulty getting people to sign up and asked for ideas. My barony has 2 large households. My own (House Three Skulls) and another, Surtr's Brood. I know the spreadsheet had already been shared to my own household's facebook group, so I also shared it to the other one. A bunch of people immediately signed up and got at least one person, often two, covering the whole day. I had already signed up as well, thinking it was perfect. My first time retaining and it was for a friend. His first event getting retained for and it was all friends and people he knew. Lada had told me Ozurr's snack of choice was Cheeze-its, so I picked up a box of 12 snack bags, and made a quick pouch out of some scrap fabric I had that was the right size to hold one of the bags. So he could have his snack and not have it look obtrusively modern. He was delighted about that, I saw he hung the pouch on his belt for the remainder of the day. And he said he polished off the box before feast.
For the actual retaining, I signed up for 2 hours, while the martial competitions were going on. Caterine had the "retaining bag" and a bottle of gin, and I was given the "Drinking boot" (Go ahead and ask his Highness about it) to carry. We stopped at his car and he was getting some weapons and gauntlets for people to use if they wanted. He said he was given a bottle of elderberry mead and it was ok, but not to his taste. He offered me a taste and I said I loved it, so he said "It's yours". As he picked up the weapons and started carrying them to the fighting area I said "But I'm not supposed to let you carry things!" he called back "Try and stop me!!" Since my hands were already full I didn't fight too much. But later on when I had put down the bottle of mead, and Caterine put down Ozurr's extra alcohol, anytime he looked like he was about to carry something I snatched it out of his hands and said "Continue..." I've had practice already on that kind of thing from being a mom. While we were out watching the fighting I made sure he was drinking water, and he had already eaten so he was good on that. After the first hour Caterine switched with Raud, and with a half hour to go we went back inside. I had promised to participate in a quick activity at some point, but warned Raud I would have to step away for 5 minutes. As it happened, I was called to the activity while Raud was off getting a drink, so I apologized, and handed the bag and boot to Ozurr and ran outside. I saw Lada on my way and let her know, I think Raud had gotten back to Ozurr by that point and took the stuff from him.
I went back inside after and Ozurr was chatting with people before court. I was asked for help with one quick task that was right there where they were all standing, adding a decoration to court setup. Check back at Ozurr, he's still talking. I was asked to put the names of the winners on the scrolls since I had done the calligraphy. Run over to the table, do that. Check back on Ozurr between scrolls, he's fine. Finish second scroll, the kids are taking their turn at retaining, he's waiting for court to start.
I don't think I did a spectacular job at retaining, but maybe an acceptable level. I can try again at other events, and I can also practice retaining with my own Baron/ess at events in our own barony and out of area.
I also talked with Ozurr about the name he'd like to register for few minutes, I had brought my Old Norse name book along. I offered to let him take the book to look through in his own time, but he said he'd rather not take the chance of losing it. so I said I would continue to research the name and let him know what I could find.
I didn't get to stay to help clean after feast because my husband and son really wanted to get home. But I know there's always plenty of people who chip in and get everything done. My barony is awesome like that.
