On Striking a Heroic Pose

A mere couple of years ago, I stood in the swirling clash of a melee, my mighty enemy all but vanquished in front of me and for once I was neither dead, nor concussed by a tankish foe and by some miracle my balls had not had a massive foot descend upon them from heights to heady to imagine. It had been a long road but it had all been worth it. My glorious return to the field was complete, my heroic pose struck, and I was about to land the final blow. 


How had this incredible event come to pass you ask? Oh go on, you know you want to. What do you mean that you couldn’t care less? Tough, you’re getting the story anyway. 

And the background. 

So there.

Anyway I now actually had some spare time (if very little or no spare cash) had kicked my World of Warcraft habit (I am now a fully fledged member of WOW addicts anonymous and have been clean for 5 years now) so I’d come home and stare into space for hours while my brain put itself back into some semblance of order. Typically my lone brain cell had been ritually turned into scrambled egg during the course of the day, and it took me hours or processing time while I tried to remember what being a ‘bit of a character’ was like, or maybe I was just preparing to be patient zero for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. I’ll leave you to form your own opinion.

A while back I’d had to close my beloved comic shop, done a stint as a shop assistant as Waterstones and was very lucky to get a job as a drone paying bills. Yep that’s what I did all day. Scrutinised an invoice for all the things I had to scrutinise it for, check whether it was right, argue with the supplier if it wasn’t, establish the required audit rail in red ink (no other colour would do and *Green* ink was right out) write it up put it on a database, put it on the payment system, put it here, put it there, sign it, file it, sign in triplicate, send in, send back, query it lose it, find it, subject it to public enquiry, lose it again, and finally bury it in soft peat for three months and recycle it as firelighters.. It went like this again and again and again and again (and yet again and again) on and on and on with no end in sight. Forever and ever. Amen.

However one of the advantages of this is that I was working regular hours. Actually that’s not fair. I was working regular hours before, it's just that an average working week consisted of about 70 of them. 

So, rather than practise my best zombie poses, I decided that (for reasons I really can’t quite figure out) that I would try to get back into re-enactment. Insanity can’t be ruled out, but I missed the way I felt whilst swinging a sword and perhaps felt a need to be not quite as politically correct as work demanded. I also ‘felt a need’ to sound the odd Barbaric Yawp across the castles of the world.' Barbaric Yawps are an important part of the re-enactment scene and don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise – even if it is ever-so-slightly American and just possibly not medieval. Millions of SCA members The Dead Poets Society and Walt Whitman can’t be wrong!

I started the long, long, long journey to try and get fit enough and because there’d been a lot of water under the bridge, not a few Maccy D’s to contend with (and the wonders of modern medicine keeping me alive but having some not-so-good side effects) it wasn’t easy. As a result when I started this particular journey I really didn’t know whether I could cross the finishing line. However, I felt the attempt was worthwhile. As I write (after some more water under the bridge but no Maccy D's) I am trying to do it all again.

With plans afoot to be phased back in for the following year it was actually going quite well until a crisis struck the Lion Rampant (the re-enactment group I’d been a member of since pretty much the dawn of time) in that they didn’t have enough people for a show in Sheffield, and would I agree to come along. Yes, they had scraped the bottom of the barrel and after that, well there I was, all covered in barrel scrapings and sh!te..

So it became a literal race against time to get fit enough to maybe do a bit of training and talk some, which in my fevered imagination was, fight loads, look amazing and have thousands of dusky odalisques fall adoringly at my feet. I was on board at the fight loads part and the dusky odalisques were just a massive bonus. I was off!

In the usual vain attempt to bring truth, objectivity and mum’s apple pie to this tale, the reality might just have been ‘can you come along and make up numbers - a bit’ but as you must know I am not about to let the truth get in the way of a good story!

It was then I found that a lot of my old kit had vanished over the years since I last used it, eaten in spite of mothballs by lepidopterans with exceedingly good taste . Fortunately the modern re-enactment marketplace came to my rescue and it was a matter of making a called to Mr Duke Henry Plantagenet (that is his name) plus his mate Phil Fraser and everything I needed (hose (trousers) arming stuff, hat, belts and shirts) was delivered in about two days. I was not about to step onto the field for the first time in ages without being properly accessorised. My manly image would have been ruined!

For your reference back in the day when everything was made for you by friends who made things in the evenings and at weekends, the watchwords we lived by were ‘Ordered at the Dawn Of Time’ so this was a bit of a culture shock for me. When it all arrived there were a lot more bits of cord to tie things on with, no elastic in sight and I really wasn’t sure about this separate leg business but it was all there and exactly what I’d ordered.   

So after a bit of existential angst and heartache, the weekend began. The Sheffield venue was a far cry from the castles of old, being a rather nice hill surrounded but the town and the show itself could not have contrasted more with the old days, being a big multi-group event with periods from Ancient Rome to World War 2 and pretty much everything in between being well represented. There was an American Civil War encampment (which was huge) and a ton of other stuff which I’ll try to show in the pictures.

I have to say that the weekend didn’t start well. It was bloody freezing and the sleeping bag which my mum had kindly bought me was not at all up to the job so I was wearing pretty much every stitch of clothing I had brought with me and I was still damned cold.

But I gradually unfroze as the day went on and I did get to talk for the training bit but given the numbers worked out odd with me on the field I couldn’t take part in that so no fighting so far, and no sign of dusky odalisques either! I had clearly been brought in on false pretenses.

We then did the script of the day which was a fairly simple affair in which the bad guys interrupted a marriage ceremony, carried off the bride for tea and cake from which dreadful fate she was rescued because well, no gentleman can allow a lady to be seen in public partaking of tea and cake unless it’s the right sort of tea and cake in the correct company. After the rescue everyone lived happily ever after except for the big pile of dead guys who were an obligatory part of these things.   

My part of it was to be a component of the pile of dead guys, which it must be said was not new to me, so I manfully turned  up to do my bit, except that I ended up against the lead bad guy, Sir Lance. Yes really, Sir Lance Du Lac. Lance is about the biggest ham bone since preserved meats were invented and also a great bloke. The fact that he’s at least a foot taller than me and has a black belt in Tae-Kwan-do does not in any way factor into my assessment.

Now normally coming up against a lead man in a script is not good for your future prospects, but I have killed king Edward IV at the Battle of Tewkesbury once or twice and therefore altered the course of history, and besides Lance’s ‘Aura of Invulnerability’ tm had worn off since he’d served the wrong tea and cake to a lady in a public venue, so I could go for it.

So….we fought and in the swirling chaos of the melee I stood alone, my mighty enemy all but vanquished in front of me and for once I was neither dead, nor concussed by a tankish foe and by some miracle my balls had not had a massive foot descend upon them from heights to heady to imagine. It had been a long road but it had all been worth it. My glorious return to the field was complete, my heroic pose struck, and I was about to land the final blow…..

It was at that exact point fate decided that my wonderful new trousers bought from Duke Henry Plantagenet were to fall down around my ankles rendering me more hors de combat than any mortal wound ever would..

You see I had omitted to buy the special thing that they were supposed to hang off (which is a bit like a waistcoat and probably is the origin of the garment) and had had to improvise. Sometimes it’s definitely not good to be a man. Oh yes.

So Sir Lance recovered from is near death experience, and while the field erupted into gales of laughter he struck his own heroic pose, without the dire consequences I had just suffered from (which is would have been just, if fate happens to be reading this) and mercifully put me to death. I am still quite impressed he managed that, because I’m not sure I could have, what with the pointing and the laughing… Especially the laughing…

So in dying I staggered off to a convenient tent (via a bench it has to be said) and expired because I was myself laughing so much I couldn’t breathe. Amazingly the audience had not (by some miracle) run away in terror, possibly paralysed by their own laughter, and the show got to end in more or less the way it should. Only more or less because the biggest ham bone since ham was invented was there after all and was unfairly assisted by his two daughters who applied the cute factor in spades.

So here’s another fate worse then death for my two readers. Perhaps the blog title should read. Strikes heroic pose.. unstrikes heroic pose when trousers fall down. Thank you Mr Milligan!

Postscriptum

I nearly froze that night and was saved from literal hypothermia by being lent spare bedding by friends. Phew! I am glad however that I was not a brass monkey. (and if you don’t know that saying look it up- I am not explaining it here.)

The following say I was selected for a single combat which is far more than I expected. I suspect that I was chosen in the hope that I would re-enact the scene from the previous day’s script. I am truly glad to say that I didn’t, but when I challenged my foe of the day who I called ‘Knock-Kneed Nick the Nancy Boy from Nockington’ he did smack me (with a sword) over the back of the head while I bowed to him, which got a good solid laugh, if not quite the same gales of hilarity as my previous days antics. Thank you Nick!

Life lessons form the weekend were….

Even if what you are/do is a pale shadow of what went before sometimes a pale shadow is enough, even if it’s for the wrong reasons (at least in part).

When the forecast says ‘damned cold’ make sure you buy the bedding you need even if you don’t want to offend your mum!

If someone mentions dusky odalisques to you when you’re old and ugly – its probably a lie. Years laterI am still waiting for some to turn up.

And finally, they say ‘belt and braces’ for a reason. If you don’t use both your trousers *will* fall down at the worst possible time.

PPS. Just in case you're thinking of bringing this up in conversation may I remind you that even with no trousers I still have a mighty sword ...