The Saturday that I volunteered at the Mary Rose Museum during the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard Festival of Christmas, was the busiest day, but also slowest dayI have worked on so far. There was a constant stream of people zipping through the museum, to the point where as I have been told would be the case, it was evident that people only went through the museum due to the fact that it was included in a special ticket for everything at one price, so they were rushing through to ensure that they crammed everything into one visit, or maybe they might have come back the next day, due to the fact that it was only the second day of the Friday, Saturday and Sunday run of the event, I don't know. This meant that they probably weren't looking at the exhibits, and they weren't bothering to ask questions to us as about them, meaning that it felt to me like I was just sitting there watching people go by, not actually having anything to do. I only stayed in the Mary Rose Museum and did not have time to look in the other museums or at the stalls set up for the event selling products like fudge, but I didn't mind because it was cold, and going around outside didn't really appeal to me because of the temperature. The upside was that the Mary Rose Museum had given me a costume to wear for the occasion. I was dressed up as what I was told was a Tudor Lord.
The costume was made of a really soft and comfortable material and it felt almost like velvet, although I doubt it was. As we were all dressed up, it added to the atmosphere of the day even if people weren't interacting with us as much as they would do on a normal day. We had over 4000 patrons.
It was a worthwhile experience to be part of the event, and to have all the other volunteers dressed up at the same time in authentic Tudor dress was fun, it's just that I don't feel like played as big a part as I expected to, but sometimes it just happens like that, it was a fun day anyway.
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University of Portsmouth: First Year Diary
No FicciónThe documentation of my journey through the first year of my English and Media Studies degree at Portsmouth University.
