A few months? Gah

Okay, so it's been a few months since my last post. That's what I get for thinking I can get away with a regular blog! Oh well. Moving house/new job/etc does that to you. On with the fun stuff.

So quick update! I've looked very closely at getting some 13th century Templar kit - which is a bit of an investment, both mentally and financially. I need to be very strict with it, seeing as they were the strictest order at the time. So, as I'm not going to be representing a knight, I can't wear white overgarments. Period. So, sergeant it is - brown, black and that's about it. So I need a brown mantle (cloaky-surcoat thing) with a red cross over my left breast, I need to dye my gambeson brown as well. I'll need to recolour my helmet so that it's black or brown (or both), and I may need to borrow some maille for public events. Aside from that, I'm pretty much set.. although I still don't have a heater shield. I'll need to do something about that.

Okay, so - photos later on tonight after we've finished with the house! Ciao!

Timeline Fair

Time for another update! I'll try and keep it brief and not too boring. Over the weekend some members of JOAS (myself included) and the staff of Manning Imperial attended the Berwick Timeline Fair. It's usually called MMFAT (Melbourne Medieval Festival and Tourney), but there were different organizers this year. Same festival, different name.

All in all, it turned out pretty well. The merchant stalls were placed in the shade of the trees and buildings at the Old Cheese Factory, while the reenactors set up their tents in the field behind for the public to wander through. There were several displays from various groups - jousting by Full Tilt, combat by quite a few clubs including the New Varangian Guard and the SCA, firearms displays, the full shebang.

Quite a few time periods were represented as well. Want a list? Here we go!
-Ancient Greeks and Romans

-Dark Age Europe (Vikings, Saxons)
-Medieval Europe (13th, 14th and 15th centuries)
-Renaissance

-Victorian Era
-World War 1 and 2

Most of the above had at least a couple of clubs for each category, and the field was lined with tents around the borders with room in the middle for displays. All in all, pretty packed.

The main event for myself, however, was the birds of prey display by the Full Flight Conservation Centre, based in Flemington, VIC. I didn't see the full display, but they did have three peregrine falcons, a wedge-tailed eagle and one owl of some sort out the back. It was quite interesting - the people running the display showed us how the falcons hunt by letting the falcons fly off, spinning a lure above their heads and waiting for them to dive for the lure. Of course, they did have an extra treat for those watching - holding one of the birds. Because I love the attention, here's a photo of myself holding the eagle.

All in all, a good weekend for all. Not as many of the public turned up as we would have hoped, but certainly not a loss for those who arrived.

Slinging and Kryal

Okay, so it's been more than a month since the last update. Here we go!

There were two reenactment events in the last few weeks that I was invited to in the last few weeks, both with the Kings Horses - one of the only groups in Victoria that does equestrian reenactment. What that means, in layman's terms, is jousting! Lots and lots of jousting. Plus plenty of peasants to help out.

So, the first event at Maryborough apparently went well. I didn't go to this one, so I'm not entirely sure what happened. I'd give a proper update on that, but I really don't know how it went. Oh well. The second one went off without a hitch however! Last weekend (2nd and 3rd of October) we had an event at Kryal Castle, just outside of Ballarat. There were quite a few groups there, including the Melbourne Swordplay Guild and the Jomsvikings. Look them up, they're both quite interesting groups.

Anyhow, the Kings Horses put on their displays on both days. The entire weekend was fairly busy, considering the football was on and the entire country was rabid at the time. The first display we put on was basic jousting - nice and simple, Sir Geoffrey and Sir Angus charged at each other three times, and scored appropriately. All well and good. There was also a skill at arms display and the hunting of the boar, as well as a demonstration of Sir Geoffrey's bronze mace. All in all, a good weekend, minus the sunburn!

Oh, slinging. Right. Just a quick update in that regard - I've found a couple of depictions of soldiers using a small shepherds sling in the Maciejowski Bible. Good enough reason for me to start using one, so I made a quick and dirty sling with some scrap leather and a couple of shoelaces. Seems to work pretty well, though it turns out that stones about an inch and a half across are easier to manage. More updates and possible pictures to come!

Archery

Okay, so I found this non-posted post in my drafts, so here's what you missed out on a fortnight ago!

I really need to think up some better titles for my posts. I mean really, Archery - honestly. Then again, it's 12:30am and I'm watching soppy movies.

Right. I mentioned archery, so I shall speak on archery! Now - as some of you readers might know, I'm a member of JOAS, the local medieval reenactment group. I think it stands for Juvenis of Accendo Sarcalogos.. and I've no idea what that means. Having said that, it's not relevant anyway. But our focus is on 13th century France at any rate, so our dream goal is to dress up like Frenchmen.

We also fight like them, which is fortunate. Back then the Franks didn't shy away from a fight. Now, our training days are on Sundays but we mostly train with melee weapons - swords, shields, daggers, spears, axes, etc. This Sunday (edit: a couple of weeks ago) was different however! We took the trip to the C monsters place (Craig and Cherilyn), set up some hay bails and started to launch arrows at them. We had a brief demonstration of the various bows, their weight (laymans terms - how strong the bow is), how to fire and how to aim. I, naturally, picked the most awkward bow I could to start off with.

A little bit of history - for the most part, combat archery is enacted using 30lb bows with blunted arrows. Very blunt. You know those rubber knobs on the bottom of some chairs? The arrows have those on 'em. So, we fire those at each other. A 30lb bow is pretty standard - there's enough weight to hit something hard, not enough to kill someone unless you're using field arrows. So.. a 55lb bow is fairly tough if you're not used to any real archery. Luckily, I didn't choose the 55lb bow. I chose the 80lb bow, and god my fingers were bleeding by the time I was done. Gah. Long story short, I gave up on that, stole somebody else's 30lb bow and had a shot at the crossbow that was dragged out.

OH! And we found a lucky lambs foot. Not so lucky for the lamb, I picked the damned thing up by the wet end. Ugh.

Update Thingy

Okay, time for an update. What's happened since the last one? Quite a bit, actually. I've purchased a second sword and helmet for myself from Manning Imperial.

The helmet is a 13th century French kettle hat, in the style shown by Goliath in the Maciejowski Bible. I decided to bling it up a bit - quite often helmets were painted, and a big reason for that was general maintenance. You don't need to polish it and keep it spotless, as the paint does the job for you. So, browsed through the bible and settled on a red and blue colour scheme. I think it looks quite nice.

I bought the sword second-hand, and considering it's about ten years old it's in surprisingly good condition. Any damage on it is purely cosmetic, luckily enough, and as far as I'm concerned just adds character. It's in the style of a Norman sword, but apparently the brazil nut pommel and the slightly curved crossguard were still in use in the 13th century. It handles like a dream, and I'm actually quite surprised how much fun it really is to use it in combat.

I'll cut this fairly short now, I'm about to head off for a photography trip (read: wandering around town with Mads and a camera) in a minute. I've been invited to four events! I'm not sure of the details of two - there's a festival in Maryborough in a week or two, and one in South Australia next May. The one in SA is a fairly large one and is held every year, so hopefully I'll have enough decent kit to go along. The other two events are at Kryal Castle on the weekend of October 2nd. That one should be a lot of fun, quite a few groups are going along, including my old reenactment club. Then there's the Timeline Faire in November, replacing MMFAT for this year. It'll be a very slack event, we haven't been asked to put on a show or display so we'll most likely sit around and look pretty for the masses.

Well, that's me done. More updates to continue, probably complaining about my bruises from the other day.

Correctness

Okay, another rant for you lot.

Hands up if you know people who are always right. Anybody? Excellent, we all know a few. Now do they often insist on their correctness regardless of all evidence to the contrary?

Yeah, thought so. Unfortunately my life is filled with these people. I'm quite happy to argue for my opinion, I'm happy for others to do the same. When it comes to evidence based goodies though, I've got to say that many people I know are sadly lacking. I was reminded of this last week when I was informed of a few things that I knew were completely untrue. I really wish this was the first time something like this had happened, but it wasn't. Unfortunately this sort of thing also led to mass embarassment or humiliation on more than one occasion.

Dammit people, swallow your pride and accept the fact that you just might be wrong! Just because -you- don't care about what others think doesn't mean that we don't.

P.S. Yeah, I know. I could be wrong too, but seriously - you'd understand if you knew who I was on about.

Wishlist

Well I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I have all these shiny new things that I want and they're awesome (insert excited hand-waving here). The bad news is that it's pretty expensive and there's a lot of work involved. Still, I have a year to work on the worst bits.

So, these shiny new things. Let's start off with the basics - it's all reenactment stuff. I really don't need much else to be honest. The first lot is 13th Century French gear - focused on being a peasant at the moment, but later on moving on to foot soldier/man at arms equipment. SO! The list for this.

1) Pitchfork. Can't be a peasant without one of these!
2) Eating knife. Can't EAT without one of these.
3) Leather pouch. Always handy, and I can hide my phone in it. I mean, uh.. peasanty things. Seeds and such.
4) .. that's about it really. OH WAIT!

5) Flail. Yup, big and thwocky, just like they're meant to be. Fairly easy to make as well.

The second lot of shiny new things comes from an invitation sent my way by two groups of people (thanks guys!) for the 2500 year anniversary of the Battle of Marathon. It's being held in Melbourne next year and they need a LOT of Greeks and Persians. Well, it turns out that every man and his dog is going to be Greek, so I'm volunteering as a Persian, along with a couple of others. Which means I'll be on the losing side, but I get to wear BRIGHT COLOURS! Whee, twirling on the battlefield!
Anyway, wishlist.

1) Clothes. I wouldn't be much of a Persian without wearing ridiculous amounts of brightly coloured (and clashing) clothing.

2) Spear. Wait, I don't need that one, I have one. Scratch that!
3) Leather shield. This'll be expensive, methinks. It'll take a few layers of leather to do it, and I won't go into detail here. But I'm probably looking at around $300 to sort that one out. At least I'll have help!

Okay, so that's the post for today. Once I figure out how to add pictures, I'll do so. Then you might have an idea of what I'm on about.

Luke