Tales from the Genetic Memory My Very First Battle of Tewkesbury

Some of you may be familiar with the Battle Of Tewkesbury Re-encactment which takes place every year close by the battle site. It's now the largest festival of its kind in Europe, if not the world, and involves 2-3000 re-enactors strutting their stuff in all their plated finery.They travel to this small town in Gloucestershire from quite literally all over the world.

If you want to see how it looks today here's the site. I recommend a visit both to the site and to the festival.


http://www.tewkesburymedievalfestival.org/index.html

However, the early Tewkesburys were a very different affair from what they are now; more town festival, less battle re-enactment and I suspect that health and safety officers would have had instant coronaries  had they had any idea what was going on! 

So for this tale from the Genetic Memory, here's my view of the second Battle from  back in the dawn of time in 1985, where shopkeepers, accountants and retail assistants were for a single day mighty heroes of ....The Wars of the Roses.......


The Jellyfish man and the Beer Tent

I was fairly new to the society, having done the practice season (practices were once a month back then) a Wingfield Castle Show and some school fêtes. I'd managed to get some gear together – A coat of plates made from scrap metal, a surcoat, mail gauntlets and a converted firewatcher's hat (like the ARP Helmets form dad's Army) plus bit of soft costume (pixie boots were in fashion then and easy to get for example). I wasn't quite a wild-eyed nutter in dodgy kit but I was getting there. The kit was certainly dodgy enough!

Having no idea what to expect, I made my way to the beer tent. I should explain that as one of the two re-enactment groups invited to the event  back then (the other other being the Plantagenets) and the events status as a town festival, beer was laid on. Woohoo! Anyway, when I got to the bar no-one was there.

A bit nonplussed, I was looking forward to my pint after all, I was about to leave, when a hand appeared over the counter. I say 'A hand', but it had a quality which made it resemble a jellyfish more than the bony extremity a hand was supposed so be, and it somehow dragged up the most bleary, unfocused face I had seen in my life up to that point. 

Please remember I was fairly new to the LR and had absolutely no idea what was in store for me. The face wobbled in a way that reminded me of a sunflower in a gentle breeze and then it spoke. It said 'watcsh yer want then'., and when I said 'a pint please' it somehow poured me a pint, poured another for itself, and then sank back into the depths of the bar, presumably only to appear again when summoned by some arcane ritual known only to followers of Great Cthulhu himself or maybe the next guy wanting a beer, though I have my doubts.

This was my first experience of the event and a really tiny hint at what was to come; but once I'd got my pint, the first of many that evening, I found hundreds of people (well about 200) around a large bonfire close- ish to the Abbey (and yes the event was far smaller than it is now) plus us (the Lion Rampant) our friends the Brotherhood of the Axe (whe weren't invited but turned up anyway because they knew us) and the Plantagenets.

I feel a need to tell you a bit about The Brotherhood Of the Axe at this point. The Brotherhood was a lovely bunch of guys who did some shows with us, introduced us to moonshine (well me anyway, but I don't remember much of that for some reason) and had a penchant for very Viking black leather and armour made with the aforesaid black leather overlaid with highly polished steel discs.

Their dress sense lead some (not us) to give them the unkind epithet of 'The Brotherhood of the Milk-bottle Tops' but since you had to be able to lift a 150 kilo anvil to join their group  and they were all in the region of 6 feet tall I really don't know anyone who dared call them that to their face! I should also mention that the third re-enactment group present, the Plantagenets now organise much of the weekend, at least  as I understand it. Thanks guys!

We got to rub shoulders with our 'friends' and 'foes' of the morrow. Some were showing of their new gear, which varied between  'Liquid' (don't ask) Len Clatworthy's incredibly nice, even by modern standards, full gothic plate armour and a mail coif made out of blue wool by a guy who we instantly dubbed 'the Tewkesbury Air Force' (and many Dambuster's marches were sung in his honour. Amen).

As for weapons, there was a similar variation; from swords and polearms made out of balsa wood to some very nice looking but incredibly heavy two handers and poleaxes made out of mild steel. Later, I ended up making a bunch of swords for those guys (who were or became the 'Back Bear' medieval society) which bought me my barbute and a good set of leg armour which lasted throughout my career in re-enactment. I still have the helmet on my mantlepiece, but Gurnsy (of the Fate worse than Death Story) ended up with the legs and I thought they got trashed after years of good service. I've recently found out that they are still giving good service in the Lion Rampant though the thigh plates have been replaced. The thigh plates did in fact get trashed, because Gurnsy didn't get live to live too often when he trod on dead people's balls. Serve him right too! That's my theory and I am sticking to it.

Back round the fire others of course were just getting drunk and partying hard. As far as I remember it we did a pretty good job of that as well with 25 odd of us ending up in one small tent! I was having the time of my life and much later poured myself into my own tent and slept the sleep of the very drunk, waking up refreshed and ready the following day. I wouldn't manage that today!

The Eve of Battle

Early-ish that morning we were given the script for the battle, which was basically that the Lancastrians would charge 3 times, the west wing (us) would lose our banner on the second charge and get it back on the third when Devonshire, our leader, would die. After that the Lancastrians would be pushed back to the end of the field and be slaughtered or taken prisoner and poor Somerset would be beheaded in front of the abbey.

It was the smallest of small footnotes which said 'townsfolk taking part will be taught a safe method of fighting on the day.' Oh bollox, was my first thought and health and safety guys of the future had their first corunary courtesy of a fortuitous wormhole in time and space which opened up because of a random circumstance which had nothing to do with Douglas Adams or the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy or indeed battle fleets from G'Gugvuntt and Vl'hurg. In the event the townsfolk  were so careful that you weren't going to get hit let alone injured, and the most serious injury of the day was self inflicted – but I'll get to that in a bit.

I was of course wearing my Beaufort Portcullis Surcoat and was carrying a shield with the same design on it so I was a Lancastrian straight away, but the society was split, some of us being Yorkists and others Lancastrian, pretty much by whatever surcoats we were wearing.

So while the townsfolk went off to learn their 'safe' method of fighting which was 'fours' in order for sword swingers and clacking the ends of your polearms together for the balsa wood polearm guys, we walked up and down a bit to get a feel for the ground and that was pretty much it until we got geared and ready for the big occasion which was looming....

The Mighty MOSH!

Well, as we lined up on our sides the thing I noticed something I'd not seen before. There  were an awful lot of archers on the other side. I thought (having been the lovely blonde Vanessa's main target for the practice season and my previous shows such as they were) that I was ready for this, but believe me I wasn't!

There were 1-2 archers for each fighter as as we walked slowly across the field the arrows started falling out of the sky, easy enough at that stage because they were basically spent, but these bows (I was told after) pulled at about 50 lbs. The arrows had paper flights and 'points' made out of copydex which broke up if they hit anything solid, so pretty soon they were coming lazily straight at you then buzzing past with a noise like an angry hornet.That was, all except for the shafts of one archer (who shall remain nameless except she was blonde and her name began with V) who started hitting my shield solidly pretty much straight away - damn her!

I soon discovered that these arrows were very  very nasty indeed. At the time I had very basic gear – my firewatchers hat, mail gauntlets, baby blue coat of plates and my very first set of (crap) greaves, so all I could do was watch these damned things coming towards me (that was the worst part I think, seeing them coming) and put my head down at the last moment and hope my nether regions weren't going to be the target because my shield was too small cover my eyes and those very tender parts! There were a lot of arrows too and boy they hurt more than being beaten over the head with a frozen chicken while being stood on a barrel of radishes! 

Well I think so; I have never actually been hit with a frozen chicken while being stood on a barrel of radishes. Look it hurt a LOT, ok?

All in all it was a relief (not least to the guys being hit over the head with frozen chickens) when our leaders felt we'd got close enough and the order to charge was given by our Lord Devonshire in his mighty armour of proof plastic (though it did look pretty good as I recall). As we charged across the last stretch of the field the archers retreated behind the thin line of melee fighters and we really tried quite hard to get to them. I wonder why.

Still, after my first pass, all I got to fight was a shopkeeper and his son with their balsa swords, who spent most of the fight  saying 'dammit why won't you fall over!' and I really did have a hard time not falling over laughing because there were exchanges like this going on all up and down the line – if the original battle of Tewkesbury had been like this no-one would have died and we'd have gone on to lose every war we fought in thereafter. Yes we were truly THAT bad.

Still we had to retreat for the second charge (and the second arrow storm) and by this time my legs were starting to look like a leopard skin with nasty round bruises developing all down the unarmoured bits. The guy next to me took an arrow in just the WRONG place and down he went like he'd been poleaxed. Fortunately we weren't that close to the audience at that point so after suitable time for recuperation and much shedding of tears he was able to crawl over and go see the St John's Ambulance guys. .

As for me I finally got to fight someone in REAL armour, It was only when I saw the look of abject terror in his face that I realised the full plate I thought I was up against was much more fragile (in fact it was well made papier mache). DAMN!

It was around then that Martin from the Brotherhood managed to knock himself out with his own sword, all because he refused to spoil his good looks and image by wearing a kettle hat. What happened was that someone else in the Brotherhood blocked Matin’s enthusiastic head shot equally enthusiastically. Matins sword bounced, landed right in the centre of his own forehead whereupon he looked really quite surprised and fell over. 'Serve him right' I thought uncharitably, but clearly many women felt otherwise because they were round him faster than the Roadrunner on speed, so much so that the poor St. Johns Ambulance Guys had to wait to get him out. That was (by far) the most serious injury of the day, but later on Martin was showing off his scar and drinking every bit as hard, if not harder than the rest of us – I imagine he still has the scar now but I bet the story of how he got it is far more heroic than the one I just told you!

Well, the retreat sounded and it was then we realised we'd not managed to pass the banner over so as I recall Lord Devonshire took it off our banner bearer and quickly ran it over to the other side. No-one noticed, honest!

Then it was the final, despairing charge the retrieve our lost banner. Fortunately arrows were running low by then. Unfortunately most of the ones coming at us were recycled and many had broken 'points'. Fortunately we just ran at their lines so it was a quick transit. Unfortunately the banner was in the hands of Sir Robert Percy (variously Mark or Animal in other stories). Fortunately we'd seen this and prepared a small commando team of Rampanters to get the banner off him. Unfortunately the townsfolk got there first.

There was a boiling mass of people around poor Animal.Well it was more tepid than boiling and he wasn't that poor, but they were at least trying. As we expected he wasn't going to give the banner up without a fight and preferably a big pile of bodies. I say preferably. That's such a wishy washy word. Let me tell you he was going to have his big pile of bodies no matter what and damned be the script! 

Since the poor townsfolk had only learnt their safe method of fighting that morning, clearly banner retrieval wasn't going to happen and we couldn't get anywhere near the damned thing. It was at that moment that something happened which caused me to lose all interest in the banner and nearly in the rest of the battle and it went something like this:-

A Leviathan's Demise

The indomitable Lord Devonshire charged into the maelstrom of battle, a colossus on the field of war, a titan of combat. Intent only on retrieving the banner the Yorkists had won at such great cost in the last charge, he was willing to spend his life, if necessary, in this endeavour. Only one person prevented him from reaching the whirlpool of death surrounding the standard. Only one girl, clad in mail though she was, who would surely prove to be no obstacle to such a juggernaut.

'Hello Dear!'  declaimed the Doughty Devonshire.

'Umm... hello' said our very own Jacqui Maunsell for it was she (from the Henry's Bar Picture).

'Can you fight?' quoth our mighty leader.

'Well yes!' she replied.

'Oh.' was the answer. 'I can't!'.

And thus the mighty attempt on the standard was defeated.

I was stood next to them and this was the exchange as it happened word for word. I laughed so much I cried. For some time was unable to stand straight, and when I recovered, there, standing in front of me, with a wicked grin on her face, was Jacqui. While she pounded me into a small wet pulp, I saw the continuing melée around the standard. No less a personage than the mighty Warwick was there (looking really quite good for a guy who was supposed to have died At the Battle of Barnet a few days before) standing shoulder to shoulder with Rob Percy (Animal). 
'Give them the F*%CK*NG FLAG!' yelled the mighty Kingmaker inb his best knightly tones. 

'Never!' Was the reply 'Death First!'. 

Clearly it was going to be a long third charge......

Well we got our banner and Animal got his pile of bodies, and Devonshire got his heroic death, even if it wasn't quite as he’d planned it. By that time the rest of the Lancastrian Army was in full retreat and so were we. We later heard that the 'Tewkesbury Air Force' had got his new coif soaked from falling oin the stream and had to be cut out of it before it strangled him, which didn’t stop him appearing in its twin next year. But still, having only slightly overrun time-wise (nothing to do with the mighty stand of Rob Percy by the banner of course) Somerset was beheaded in front of the abbey.

According to some accounts the grim dignity with which he faced his doom was marred slightly when he stuck his tongue out at his headsmen but I'll remind you that it's the victors who write the history books.  When his head was duly stuck on a pike all sorts of ick came down it, including, according to some, a large amount of baked beans. What can I say?

As for me, my end was humiliating and final, being tickled to death with no historians to record the atrocity. Perhaps in retrospect that was a good thing..........

There was another great party that night, and then we were off, for the Battle lasted only one day in those far-off times....

The Battle of Tewkesbury has certainly had its ups and downs. The following year with the fort  remains my favourite of all time, and one day I’ll get around to putting that and the other Tewkesbury Tales down on paper, but here’s where it all began for me, in a small town festival with guys  in their home-made kit. The sheer fun of those early days kept me going there  through what were some dark times (in Tewkesbury Festival Terms at least), but while it was a very different (much smaller and less impressive) thing compared to what it is today, the spirit  of the event  made it massively special and I'm so very, very glad I was there.

Tales from the Genetic Memory - A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH!!

Takes from the Genetic Memory are those stories that somehow outlive their orginators and get told for years after they leave the society I was in (The Lion Rampant). I've skipped ahead a bit but I liked this story amd I was reminded of it earlier so I'm telling it first. The Flowerbed Story, which by the way I still need therapy for,  I will take to my grave but this Tale from the Genetic Memory is from I believe August of 1988, where we had finally just about got round the 'everyone having a sword' problem, but when English Heritage and its wonderful venues were still an unrealised dream and we were still working very hard towards getting there. I guess this is not so much a tale from the genetic memory as a tale about Gurnsy and I. You’re getting it anyway! It was a lovely day. We were performing at Arbury Hall, the melee was  storming around us, and I was dead.

Being dead was not such a bad thing. I was getting a nice rest from my usual place on the ground, and I could practiced my fixed zombie-like stare and see see what was going on around me. But fate was to play a few nasty cards which I'll get round to in a minute because actually, before I move on to the main body of the tale,  I feel a need to talk a little more about Arbury Hall. 

We had performed there the previous year in the most appalling torrential rain I had ever seen. It took me weeks to get the rust out of my lovely new mail shirt and that brass cross (which is a whole other story) had come damn close to nutting me when we did La Volta. But there were a few people there and we put on what I felt was a damned good show, even if we did do the Farandole to the most excellent and authentic medieval tune 'Black Adder'. Inconceivable!

I remember being amazed that anyone would come to a place so far out  in the sticks as Arbury in such conditions, but they did and of course the cliche says 'the show must go on'. It was only later, when we were being served a most excellent (and needed) cooked dinner in the hall, that we found out that there were in fact at most two visitors to the hall that day and the vast majority of people we had been performing for were in fact the staff! Well they'd had fun and I guess so had we, in a strange, soaked-to-the-skin-but-loving-it kind of way.

Arbury Hall in the Glorious Sun

Well that was what had happened last year and there I was lying on the ground very much dead as the melee raged around me. I'd had a pretty good day so far. It hadn't rained for one, and we'd even seen some sun and had a solid, appreciative crowd. Lord Arbury was watching us, which was a nice fillip, and I'd just had an excellent single with Animal, where I had got to play with Gurnsy's flat milled sword with the lovely forged crosspiece I admired so much.  You see, while by that time I'd made a load of swords for other people, the pommel had fallen off MY sword and I'd not had time to put it back on.

So, to get back to the story proper, we'd had a fun ting tang earlier but it didn't get around the fact that there I was, deader than the average Blackadder character at the end of the series.  You see, the thing was... I'd fallen over in the wrong position. Instead of falling over on my side (because its safer and its harder for the audience to see you breathing) or my front (because the turn and fall thing looks good and its easier and safer to control) as I had taught innumerable people to do, I had fallen on my back. There was a reason for this which escapes me, but I think it was because I had fallen over someone's feet. I had briefly considered having a sudden death spasm, but that would have looked rubbish, and at least I had a good view of the melee from where I was.

What that all actually meant was I had a really good view of my good friend Gurnsy's looming shadow as he backed rapidly away from whoever was pursuing him. I was OK.. really I was.. the  worst that would happen was that he would trip over my feet. Only... he didn't.

At the last second my good and dear friend Gurnsy swerved to avoid something, stepped adroitly back to avoid a swift strike and put his great big foot in exactly the WRONG place. 

Excruciating, red hot agony shot up from my nether regions, consuming my consciousness as that o-so-gigantic foot descended on a place no o-so-gigantic foot should EVER descend upon, because believe me when a man in armour treads on your balls, it really, really hurts even if you are wearing a box. Thank goodness I was, or I might be singing falsetto for the Bee-Gees today.

Well I was of course unable to remain dead. I reared up, making some inarticulate 'AAAARRRGGGHHHHH!' noise while poor Gurnsy backed off, as did his opponent, who was trying not to laugh and failing. I  stood up ever so slowly (I could not have stood up quickly at that moment) our eyes met across the field, and I gave poor Gurnsy this look, this ever-so-special look (which he still remembers if you ask him) and managed to croak out the immortal phrase 'NO-ONE TREADS ON MY BALLS AND LIVES!'

You know, one of the things about having friends who are far cooler than you is that they usually get the best one liners. I am sure they would have done much better but I think that, under the circumstances, I put in a virtuoso one liner worthy of the Mighty Schwarzernegger himself. Of course while I'm sure he's an avid fan of my blog, I doubt he'll comment on this, but at that moment I was the Terminator, and bruised balls or not I was going to utterly annihilate this upstart Gurnsy guy who'd put me in this humiliating position.

So. I sped lightly across the field and completely overcame the mighty Gurnsy with a few well-placed blows and Terminated his arse like the remorseless, unstoppable killing machine I was. 

Well maybe is wasn't quite like that. Perhaps it was ever-so-slightly more like this....I lurched across the field like a Thunderbirds puppet with half its strings cut and poor stricken Gurnsy, overcome by guilt, far more than any skill I was able to muster at that point, obligingly fell over. 

Personally I think the first version was more accurate, but I think I need to do my best to give all my avid readers sufficient information to make their own judgement. I do remember sinking to my knees and falling over (in the correct position this time) as the remainder of the melee raged around me, trying not to laugh, because any kind of movement hurt, and giving enormous thanks for the 'let the dead arise' routine, which gave the pain just a bit more time to subside. Somehow I got off the field and into a nice dark, warm, safe place, where I could lie down and cry. 

A lot.

So you see, there is absolutely a fate worse than death.

Gurnsy (right) and myself (left in Englands Royal Arms)  in a later encounter
Not that I was bitter or anything.

  

Of Swords and Stuff

In my profile I mention how a motorcycle accident was one of the best things that happened to me. Well part of that was that I got into games. Another part was that I joined a re-enactment group called the Lion Rampant. Here's the story.

I joined the Lion Rampant almost by chance back in the mid 14th century. OK maybe it was slightly later than that but it was still a long time ago!. After the motorcycle accident I had lost my 'proper' job which involved a degree of heavy lifting and I had somehow managed to land a part-time job in Not Just Stamps, my local games shop; an event in itself which lead to me setting up my own shop years later and of course fed my gaming habit.

I'd come in on a day off really because I just liked being there and the then membership sec. Sue Harrison was putting up a the 'LR Wants You!' leaflet on the notice board. If I hadn't had the bike accident I wouldn't even have known the shop existed let alone worked there,  if I hadn't been there when it was going up I wouldn't have spoken to Sue, if I hadn't spoken to her I would probably have ignored the leaflet, if I hadn't come in on a day off I would never had had all those years in the LR and crucially I wouldn't be writing this story now.

I thought that the whole thing sounded rather amazing, so I arranged to take a day off work. As I remember practices in St Mary's Church in Chesham back then were once a month but people used to meet around members quite regularly – and made my way to Chesham. The directions I'd been given were bloody awful, especially given that St Mary's is not hard to find really, and I very nearly gave up on it as a  bad job, but I found the local police station and they set me straight. Another close call.

St Mary's Church

One of the hardest things I've ever had to do in the Lion Rampant was walking through that door to the church. I'd not (really) met anyone, seen anything about the Lion Rampant, and had no idea what I'd be getting into. Worse, when I stepped though the door, what greeted me was a small(ish) group of people who clearly knew each other very well, were doing their thing and ignoring me completely! Not being at that point in my life sufficiently self-confident to intrude on conversations with people I didn't know, I was stuck in a corner watching until Sue turned up and I could get introduced and things got better.

Still that first practice (all 5 hours of it as I recall) were almost a complete waste of time, except for a glorious 5 minutes when I got to swing a mild steel sword which bent every time you hit something had to be straightened across my knee at least 3 times. Not knowing anything about how swords were supposed to feel and perform I just assumed that all swords were like this. I also discovered that I'd be required to fight right handed, because no-one was allowed to be a lefty back then.  I went away wondering if it was going to be worth it. 5 minutes out of 5 hours was not a lot, but what an amazing five minutes they were!

Well I thought hard and took a day off again, which didn't endear me to the shop owners where I worked, and duly turned up to the second practice which was a lot better (for me at least). I had a couple of great sessions with the 'banana sword' which was it's official name, poor tired thing that it was. (I wonder if it still exists somewhere or has been consigned to the scrap heap?) I was introduced to the two handers of the day which were huge great unwieldy bars of iron made out of railway sleepers and required you to be Conan the Bloody Barbarian to lift, let alone swing properly – I went away from that particular experience with a hernia and in terrible fear that in short order I was to become a twin brother of Richard III!

It was in the second practice that I really came to Graham's notice I think. Graham was nominally in charge of fighting practice. We didn't have a formal Battle Captain back then (at least as far as I was aware) and knights were responsible for training their own squires. He decided he was going to have a session where we all got to have a short go against him one-on-one with the weapon of our choice. I can't imagine something like that happening today, and indeed in all my years as BC or BC's  assistant I never did anything like that, but everyone lined up and we got to have a go. New squires go to try out their skills with a one hander and we had some rather better stuff, from the top swords of the time

Then it was my turn and I picked up an ash pole.

Of course I got the living crap beaten out of me, but I'd had some quarterstaff training from 'Pizza Face' Martyn (for the two of you that remember him) and I managed to defend myself a bit and even landed a blow or two! That got me invited to the next Sunday afternoon session where I was introduced to garlic bread and found out that Jethro Tull was popular here. I had listend to their music for years which consigned me to the musical dustbin of life.

For me It was the first of many, many, awesome times. I also was invited to a society visit to the Tower of London, where they let us view the 'how a man shall be armed' video they'd made and we got to handle a few good replica swords – which started me thinking about how we could have stuff which felt a bit more like these did. The rest, in the words of the cliché, was history.

Sort of.

My First Gear

Back then there was no re-enactment industry to speak of. For those of you that don't know you can pretty much buy most things off the peg now, but back then it was rather different. A place called Tudor Armoury made some very poor 'fighting quality' stuff (particularly the weapons), and as far as I recall that was pretty much it. You could get gear for martial arts quite easily, but it was all a far cry from today's fairs and the relative ease with which arms, armour and costume can be obtained; providing your bank balance can handle it!

As a result we were forced to make our own stuff. When I joined Ken had sorted out the mail side of things, and we had people wearing some excellent mail shirts which were better (in my opinion) to any of the non-riveted kit which is available today.

For helmets, gauntlets and body armour we were forced to make do with what we could manufacture ourselves. Lacking the knowledge of how to raise helmet domes , and if I'm honest not knowing much about what these helmets were supposed to look like we'd use the good old ARP helmet (the helmet that Chief Warden Hodges wears in Dad's Army) as a basis for much of what me made and wore. That's . For my first hat I took a 'firewatcher's' as we called them, and riveted some metal strips to it which made it look a bit like a medieval kettle hat. Of course it looked terrible, but it served its purpose and I thought it was great!

Wild eyed nutters is dodgy kit

Our gauntlets were largely made out of mail. The universal use of plate gauntlets that's taken for granted today was a pipe dream and the vast majority of what we had was mail stitched to motorcycle gloves. Some of us had 6-linked the mail over the fingers , which worked better hand protection waslessthanadequate lets say.

By the time I joined body armour was largely mail, which was a tribute to the industry of the LR's mail makers. Ask Animal and Griff to tell you about the mail shirt they made by hand in 24 hours for a wedding sometime! Plate armour, such as we had, was made by bending the sheet steel around the body/leg/arm of the person it was intended for and properly articulated leg and arm armour was years away!

For me, mail was out of the question due to constraints of time and budget so I made my first body armour by riveting some steel plates to a turquoise blue leather jacket, which I manfully tried to dye black, only to have it run  the first time it got wet, leaving me with blotchy black skin! The blue was so horrible I kept on trying but I never could get anything else to take until I eventually gave up on the dyeing thing as a bad job! I did eventually manage to make a very bad set of greaves, but that was my basic armour for a long, long time. It wasn’t quite ready for the first show so I got thrown into an old surcoat and a norman nut helm and that was it! One new squire ready to go. Yessir!

Soft costume was a bit different. Mum made me a nice surcoat with the Beaufort portcullis on it, but boots were bought from Freeman, Hardy and Willis, a floppy shirt from Top Shop I think – and 'hose' which happened also to be in fashion then, from the same place! I do remember having fun winding up the poor shop assistants there, having in depth discussions with the other guys about the perfect colour to go with our doublets! Someone had thrown a pink doublet my way – very dapper! Still I put it to you that a man who chooses pink as his colour can't be afraid of very much.

Finally, we come to weapons weapons. Swords were extremely hard to get (well usable ones anyway) and my very first weapon was a large bill-hook which was a Victorian hedging bill (Ken gave me the head as I recall) which I shafted and put some metal stuff on the end to protect the pole. Really quite authentic, except the pole was a straight bo stick I'd bought in a martial arts store and the metalwas aluminium. I couldn't use it in a mêlée of course which was to have consequences for my first show or which I’ll talk about in a second.

My First Show

I was very lucky in my first show. It was at Wingfield Castle in Suffolk. I'm hoping to get mt firend Valerie to let me post her article about it  later so I won't mention it here, except to say that for a very long time it was the best venue we got to play at, with a lovely, intimate showground and a great tea room, with the most amazing chocolate cake!

My vrey first show - thats me in the dogy kit to right. I've not been in long enough to be a wild eyed nutter yet.

There were a few downsides. We were paid based on the gate, and since the Castle owner, Gerrard, had proven untrustworthy in the past two of us were on gate duty at all times, greeting visitors, but in reality counting them as they come through to make sure that Gerrard's gate figures were correct. Being new I never got to see what went on behind the scenes, for which I am profoundly grateful!

Gerrard, being the skinflint he was, also made us pay full price, not only for the cake, but for basic things like water and tea. Knowing us I do understand the cake, but a free cup of tea would have been nice and so would something different to Clannad's 'Robin Hood' album as the music they played. That beautiful, haunting music still sends me off in an axe murdering frenzy whenever I hear it!

Still the venue was amazing, except for the Oh-so-tasteful naked plastic bronze woman sat on a stone pedestal with a small pot plant growing out of her – well I'll leave it to your imagination! We had the run of the place, especially at night and being young and full of energy the parties were bloody fantastic and went on until the sun came up. I'm told we could be heard 5 miles away.

More Wingfield This one's for you Duke Henry Plantagenet (Right)

The castle didn't open for visitors until the afternoon, so we got to play more in the morning and made the first of many infamous LR videos. For this one everyone had to line up outside wearing different surcoats and charge the castle. Then we all had to get on top of the castle and shout at the bad guys, except that we didn't realise the sound was on, and while faint, the dreadful war cry of 'your mother was a hamster!' could still be heard. Next the archers had to go up top and six of us had to die to their dreadful volleys before we got to the gate. The only problem with that was that our archers had had no practice shooting from the gatehouse towers and only one arrow landed anywhere near us and we all had to go down to it! That's the 'Volley of Arrow' story – clearly it had been loaded with high explosive fragmentation warhead. I really had no idea they existed back then. Honours for the one arrow vaguely on target go to Jenny Pilling.

After a mighty fight at the gatehouse, the good guys were overcome and the women carried off to the single pav; (square tent) for tea and biscuits (I think) and we got ready for the show.

Our shows contained many of the elements anyone whose ever been to an LR  re-enactment event will be familiar with today i.e. archery, dance, music, fighting and our scripts, but they were all presented within two half-hour slots, which were in fact the two halves of a scripted 'play'.

The 'Good Earl', as it was called started out with some music and dance, being nobles at play (well except for we squires in our firewatcher's hats) and the bad guys would turn up and there would be some singles – which bear a mention because the two combatants would step out and do their fight, and when it was over they'd pass 'the weapon' they'd used back to it's owner because there just weren't enough decent weapons (swords especially) to go round!

Then, in the second half, everything went down, the archers were trotted out and we dutifully formed our shield wall to be shot at; hoping against hope that Vanessa wouldn't decide to shoot you in the balls – the archers weren't very far away  - AT ALL After that we got to wreak our dreadful revenge on the archers and the bad guys except that being new and utterly crap even by the standards of the day I had been issued with a cross-pein hammer with strict instructions not to hit anyone with it and stay away from the audience. Even the most half blind ignorant fool could see that the poor thing was an impostor! So my first mêlée consisted of finding someone with a large shield, hitting it once or twice with my 'warhammer of ultimate doom' and falling over quietly in a corner. I did love it so!

Even More Dodgyy Kit at Wingfield (but slightly less dodgy than last time)

On day two I got to do a single combat with my billhook, which a huge rush,  nut in the melee I got the banana sword which was as hilarious as the hammer, since Animal came screaming up to me with his giant Conan the Barbarian 2-hander, bent the thing in half, and smashed me over the head while I was desperately trying to straighten it over my knee. So I began my long assocoaiotn with both the grass at Wingfield and with Animal which lead to me being his best man. Revenge is sweeter than choclate....

So that, in a nutshell was my first show!

What Happened Next

I wasn't able to make many of the shows that year; I was still working weekends and getting time off was hard, so I missed the infamous Henry's Bar (though I know all about it of course). I did take part in the battle of Tewkesbury which was a very different experience from what it is now (and is a tale for another time) and some show in the middle of a football pitch, which was far more typical of the kind of venues we got back then.

The Infamous Henry's Bar Agin Duke Henry (front right) and Jacqui Maunsell (front Left) and Look GRIFF! (cente)

But over the summer I worked on a number of things, a sword being one of them, and turned up to the first practice of 1985 with a new job which gave me weekends free, and two finished (and much lighter) sword blades, one of which broke to due really hard use a year or so later. the other now lives on my cousin's wall 25 years on.

If I'm brutally honest about this time, we sucked harder than a Dyson Big Boy on Steroids. By today’s standards the costume was poor, we didn't practice enough and our weapons and armour (mail aside) were crap. But we did love it, and our audiences seemed to love us and we at least knew we had to improve if we wanted to realise our castle dream and were passionate about realising it.

Over time we started to specialise in various areas – swords of course were mine if you haven't worked that out by now. Griff did everything but specialised in armour, loads of people worked on improving our costumes, and Animal did a lot of research into exactly how mail was tailored and put together, becoming a very skilled mailmaker indeed – in which he wasn't alone.

There was a real joy in finding things out. It was all so new, each discovery had to be worked for and I think was part of a series of things which caused a massive sea-change in the way museums work. Many of the hugely skilled craftsmen (well the British ones) you deal with now were making their first faltering steps into an enormous and largely unknown world back then as re-enactors.

As for us, we worked hard and got better and better at what we did. Our shows and skills developed, we practiced hard, and eventually we realised the castle dream and had it by right for many years. The great thing was, we had such a huge amount for fun on the way! Some heartache but on the whole it was all so much incredible, intense, glorious fun!

And for me it all happened because I had an accident on my motorcycle!

Trying to live up to the Pretentious Title.

Well here it goes. I got into this because I wanted to play around with the design tools that Blogspot allows you to have. I know no-one is reading this but just maybe, one day, someone will. I intend to talk about the things that interest me and there are quite a lot! Despite my geekdom and I am the first to admit to being the ubergeek, I maintain a keen interest in tennis and odd other sports, plus I am an avid filmgoer, gamer, re-enactor, swordsmith and part-time rock star. Well the rock star bit's a lie but I have a group of friends who are! (At least in their own minds). I hope to write regularly, but like many I imagine I'll fail miserably in that lofty goal. I might just manage to string the odd cliché together for my huge group of avid fans! Well perhaps not.