BATTLE!

Okay, so this post is also quite late, but many weeks ago (5th to 6th of September), I hired a car and drove from Cambridge to a town near the border of England and Wales called Leominster to watch a re-enactment of The Battle of Mortimer's Cross. The car I hired was a Vauxhall Corsa, and the only good thing I can say about it was that it took me 350 miles and was still 1/3 full. It was terrible to drive, though, both because of its complete lack of power and its poor design. For one thing, the indicator was on the left-hand side of the steering wheel. This doesn't make any sense, since in a manual car one has to operate the gear stick to shift down at the same time as indicating one's intention to turn. My first hour in the car was plagued by the wipers being turned on at every corner...

My second discovery was about English drivers. I have encountered impatient drivers in Australia, but never like this. While travelling at the speed limit on the motorway (70mph), if someone travelling at 85mph is forced to slow down in order to change lanes and overtake, as they pass they will lower the window, shout obscenities, and often raise the finger as well. I couldn't believe how frequent this occurrence was, often despite there being two free lanes to my right in which to overtake me. I always laugh at people becoming so impatient that they feel the need to shout their frustration at being slowed down to the speed limit for a couple of seconds... particularly when they accelerate right into a speed camera.

On the topic of speed cameras, the system here is quite interesting. Instead of straight speed cameras, average speed cameras are often used. I don't know how effective the implementation is, but if it works it would be a lot better than the single shot cameras, at least for people who do obey the speed limit. I'm always worried that I'll be hit for a ticket when I am accelerating to overtake someone, so average speed would make that less of a worry.

My drive across England took about 3 hours, and I reached the battlefield at about midday. There were heraldic flags denoting the location, and I parked right next to the entrance. There was a rather anachronistic ambulance tent by the entrance, but beside that was a tent demonstrating traditional surgical techniques. Unfortunately, this was where I realised that this particular fair was a little more focussed towards the younger audience than some of the others. There were a large number of toy wooden weapons etc. on sale, and not too many serious forged ones. There were however 3 tents which catered to reenactment enthusiasts, and those were quite interesting. One could buy all manner of armour and weapons, as well as bows and arrows, though being for the enthusiast crowd they were less decorative and more functional; not what I was after.

During my wandering around I came across an interesting tent run by one Dave Hodges, an interesting man with whom I had an extended conversation. It turns out that he is the person upon whom the Terry Pratchett character "Hodgesaargh" is based. He was also the owner of Lady Jane, a falcon which appears in Lords and Ladies and Carpe Jugulum. It was fascinating to talk to him about his Falconry and Pratchett and all sorts of things. He's a very talkative man, and really is a living TP character.

Another aspect of the show was the living history area. All participants in this spend the weekend living as a medieval army on the move would have done. They spend their nights in authentic tents, cook over fires using medieval ingredients (including hand-milling their wheat), and avoid modern tech. Many of them were quite keen to be photographed, so walking around with a camera gave me plenty of opportunity to talk to many of them. I made some contacts with the British Plate Armour Association, who have a branch near Cambridge, and I intend to go and visit their training at some point. That should be fun...

The battle itself started in the late afternoon, and I will post the photos soon. (I have about 1000 photos in my backlog that need sorting and editing!) It was interesting to watch, and they were certainly attacking with vigour! Someone fighting with a pick completely destroyed his opponent's shield, while another fighter was showing a bruise that extended from his wrist to his elbow caused by a swing that he had failed to block. This bruise was caused despite the full plate armour he had been wearing.

Anyway, the day was quite enjoyable, and I took a leisurely walk around the nearby Leominster, before driving to my B&B for the night. The owners of the B&B were an elderly couple. They were quite the unintentional comic duo; the wife was much taller than the husband, and the husband had a very high-pitched voice, so it was almost a role-reversal. They were very friendly, and my room was large, well-appointed, and comfortable. It also had the best 3G strength I have found anywhere outside of London, which was surprising on the border of Wales, outside a tiny town.

The next morning I met with two older couples over breakfast. One couple was American, and were in England searching for various lost relatives, with a peculiarly American lack of sensitivity; going into people's houses when they weren't there with the justification that "this was my family's house in the 1740s". The absolute doggedness with which they were pursuing this family tree was quite impressive, however.

I spent the morning visiting Hampton Court Castle. Note: Castle, not Palace. The castle is quite small, but on very beautiful wooded grounds. It's still inhabited, but parts of it are available for viewing, and it was an interesting experience to visit a place that has been inhabited by aristocracy for so long; there were artifacts from British colonial times (lions' heads, ibeks, Boer war memorabilia), as well as Saracen battle standards and many many suits of armour. Wandering in the gardens and eating in the locovore restaurant were very pleasant too. I'd love to go back there at some point. After leaving I drove straight home and left my car with someone who may or may not have merely been pretending to be affiliated with the hire-car company. Judging by the fact that I have not been receiving calls about the fact that my car has gone missing, and the fact that my bank account seems okay, he probably was, but he really acted like he could have been a scammer. Ah well... it would have been their problem and not mine if he had been.

If you've got to the end of this, I'm certainly surprised, since it's been a fairly long entry. Well, not as long as it might have been had I actually typed it out once I got back instead of a month or two later, but still quite long, so well done. Photos are due up soon, just as soon as I can get time to edit them and upload them. My flickr address is now www.flickr.com/photos/enlightened0ne, so I'm easier to find. I don't know why I couldn't find the setting to change that before. I'm thinking about setting up a site to sell art prints of some of my photos, since that might bring in a little money. I've also started selling stock photography, so we'll see how that goes. As far as AMS goes at the moment, I'm writing a review with a couple of others in the lab, which should be submitted for publication by the end of Oct! Scary stuff...

Feel free to comment on how long-winded and boring this has been... I can try to make my Turkey post shorter, or serial, (or absent) if you would prefer.