In years to come, they would call it the Wet Raglan... pt 1

So we're all home, and now mostly dried and aired out, and are (gradually) being put away. I'm still getting my usual workday routine back, but have spent most evenings slobbing after some halfhearted laundering and putting-away. 

This year we travelled in splendid spacious comfort with armillary, who found that renting a 3-seat small van would be £200 cheaper than an estate car for the days requested. Go figure. So we actually brought all our camping kit home, instead of stashing it in the VitusVagon as usual - probably for the best, as a great deal of it needed drying out. 

Why, you ask? Ah, well, we can thank Wales' lovely liquid sunshine.

Our travel was uneventful, with most Londoners still avoiding roads after months of predictions of travel chaos during the Olympics from TfL. armillary kept remarking on the fine conditions, and I kept knocking on wood or wood-like substances. It doesn't do to tease the London travel gods. 

We arrived at teatime to find the site heavily windblown; while waiting for our kit to be decanted from the VitusVagon we helped Matthewe Baker set up his enormous pavilion, which was taxing in the serious wind. I was very glad of extra hands to hold ropes and hammers for stakes!

Our own pavilion, blessedly, was its usual pleasure to put up - 17 minutes from staking out with magic string to last pole, including a quick canvas repair at one of the loops. I was a bit alarmed by the 'play' in the centrepole and spars; this may have been the harshest test yet for our pav, but it held up. Hurrah for oak centrepoles.

That evening's meal was courtesy of the chippie, and fish and chips never tasted so good after hours of wrestling with canvas and wood in the wind and rain.

We crawled into bed early. As much as I wanted to visit, I now know I'm better off with a decent night's sleep at events.

Thursday started promising, but midway it started to rain, rain, rain. We were caught just near the end of an IKAC, and had to take a break to keep ourselves from total drenching, vs getting just soaked. I was amazed as many people stubbornly stayed to shoot; it was getting pretty uncomfortable, and the straw butt had soaked up water like a sponge and was danged if it was giving back any arrow points!

It was a great relief to get back to the campsite for midday dinner, and a not-terribly-medieval cup of tea.

In the afternoon I think I armed to catch Mssr Cernac's C&T class but only caught the tail end of it, but it meant I was available to marshal Sir Vitus' ransom rapier tourney - which proved to be a sort of freeform fountain-court-of-treachery, with death-from-behind thrown in. The only aspect that slowed it down was the handing over of tokens, requiring people to take gloves off, put hands in pockets and pouches, find slippery pearl tokens, hand them over to ransomer. 

With the death from behind proving so popular with the youngest fencers, it was very tempting to treat the tourney like a pantomime (HE'S BEHIND YOU!) but after the first couple of deaths I decided to leave them to it. 

Wet Raglan, pt 2

Thursday: Later that day was the salon (not, as HG Sir Alaric called it, a 'saloon', which is a different social setting that only he attended!) discussion, at which we threw around the ideas about the ideal courtier. I was delgighted to find people trickling in, for a total of 20+ bodies, from noble, to 'base, common and popular'.

HRM aryanhwy started the stakes high with a quote from John of Salisbury, and Lynette nusbacher replied with a serious challenge. I think it would have ended there, had it not been for HG Sir Elffin, who stepped in with questions as a 'humble country knight', and got the talk rolling. Circulating some platters of treats also helped. jpgsawyer and edith_hedingham did their usual wonders, feeding us a steady supply of fritters and treats, sweets and savouries.

In all, I think we talked for over an hour on assorted topics, with the leading ideas bouncing back and forth. What I took away from it was:

- the primacy of the arts of combat; without knowledge (and, for the original authors, proficiency) of these, one cannot be a competent courtier

- the importance, for our current middle ages, of leadership - except that 'leadership' as we think of it - leading by example, the leader who serves the body of people - is much more a modern idea than a medieval one. There is a glaring exception of course - the example of Jesus Christ, the servant-leader - but precious few emulate him to that degree, even within the church, as Elffin pointed out.

- nusbacher argued that 'leadership' as a term is unknown in the medieval writings, but Etienne stated that Machiavelli used it, and so we might follow his writings in this regard. 

- we briefly discussed whether or not women could be courtiers and peers, but there wasn't much heart in really thrashing this one out. :-)

The discussion came to a fairly natural ending, I think, and I thanked everyone, and drank more watered wine. Whew!

Over the rest of the event, I found people taking time to say they'd enjoyed the talk, even if they didn't speak up themselves. It certainly showed that our ideas of what a medieval leader is (if not a courtier) range widely - HE Clancy is convinced that all nobles were effectively mercenaries, while Robert (unsurprisingly) does not see that same view. Sir Elffin said it was among the three most enjoyable such talks he'd attended. And her Majesty was delighted, and 'serving where the Queen can see you' is always an asset. :-)

From the 'meta' aspect of the discussion, though, it occurred to me that I've read shamefully few of the 'mirrors for princes' - medieval advice books intended for leaders. They are a genre unto themselves, and there's examples all the way through our period, even well before print technology. I was delighted, and humbled, by how many people came prepared for discussion, debate, complete with references. 

So from that, I've proposed a sort of medieval book club, focusing on the mirrors for princes books we have access to - one with a leisurely pace, aiming to read one book at a time, and then discuss it at coming events. 

I'm aiming for the books that are easy to find, either online or in used bookshops, and it may be supported with a blog, to accommodate those who aren't able to reach the events.

So we're starting with 'Book of the Courtier', which inspired me with the idea, and is available in both online and paperback format, in different translations - and we'll see where the discussion leads.

So far, most of the interest has been from within Insulae Draconis, but I'm sure the idea can travel, and there's no obligation for me to drive the whole thing. If people want to meet more locally for their own discussion, that would be brilliant - maybe with a blog post to follow.

my favourite pic so far

...courtesy of badgersandjam*.

I wore my heraldic cloak and visc circlet to approach the thrones, but took them off before kneeling.

I wanted the impression of setting aside my honours, so as to approach the Pelican investiture as 'just' Genevieve.

Robert held my cloak and circlet for the ceremony.

 
I'm promised more pics soon, as HE Ursula took a great many on my behalf. Looking forward to seeing them.

Wet Raglan pt 3, in which we get much wetter

So Thursday morning we'd woken to find that jpgsawyer and edith_hedingham had laid duckboards under the dining tables in our encampment. This pic gives you an impression of our dining area, as we were sorting and bailing, courtesy aryanhwy

Our encampment, as many know, is the 'under bridge encampment', where we commandeer two bridge arches and the flat area next to it, as our cooking and eating areas, and camp on the adjoining grass. We moved to this area after the last windy Raglan, when jpgsawyer's pavilion pole snapped; we raised our pav, but we didn't feel safe in the conditions, and we needed a more sheltered spot.

Since then it's become our favourite spot - built-in shelter, an obvious division between cooking and eating space.

Well, as the rain came down, the sheltered area began to fill with water, and the arches began to drip, with a pool forming close to the lip of the wall, near the moat. It was running down the walls, and most worrying, when I took the bridge above to reach the castle, I realised there was a large pool of water almost immediately above our heads within the gate, at least 4" deep, and if it kept running into our encampment we would flood entirely.

This doesn't sound too disasterous - except that we have an extensive encampment, and flooding would make the cooking and dining area unusable, which would affect about 10 peoples' food plans.

So the engineers of the encampment (armillary, jpgsawyer and Robert, aided by our guest Dutchman Floris) set to managing the waterworks - largely with buckets, sometimes with siphons. Our shires' fighters dropped by, and spent a goodly hour or two bailing our working space, as the water continued to run through the encampment.

One of them, Gabriel de Wyck, suggests a trench, from the point where the water was flowing down the wall, through the kitchen to the 'pond' by the moat (which was slowly but steadily being siphoned off). After some more bailing, Robert starts to draw this trench - awkward, as it cuts right through the working space...and a miracle happens.

As he draws and digs into the mucky gravel...the water begins to bubble and drain, right in the middle of the working space. As if by design, almost as if there had been a drain there all along, the water level began to drop. In about 5 minutes, the pond by the moat was gone.

We called it the miracle of St Robert of the drains.

But it kept raining. The cooks, committed to a royal dinner, carried on cooking over the open fire, though with the bread oven wet it wasn't safe to use, whch meant no more fresh bread (the bread and tarts we'd already had on site were brilliant). Servers appeared in the rain, and carried dishes to Ursula and Clancy's pavilion...and it in turn suffered a near-collapse, with both centre poles needing splinting with great weapons and duct tape.  Other tents were failing, and we were fortunate to have somewhere mostly-dry to retreat to, with places to hang wet clothes.

It was a long soggy day, all around.

Wet Raglan 2.5 - evening pas d'armes

...not quite at midnight anymore, we're all getting old.

This was a similar format to last year, where Sir Vitus laid out a broad  'path' of torches (1 hr burn) and four tenans (himself, Robert, Duncan Forbes and Sir Alaric) held the field, and the venans issued challenges as they met each tenan.

It meant a *lot* of fighting for the tenans, particularly as there seemed about 2x as many venans as last year.

Our own forces of Thamesreach include our two newcomers from last year (Ben and Al), Gabriel de Wyck, Elliot, and young Kate, never mind the newest fighters from Coventry, and the regulars from around the principality.

Aside from some very fine fighting, the excitement of the evening was provided by 'Kev', our collective Lochac mate, who nearly passed out at the sight of his own blood when he got a graze on the eyebrow, inside his helm. The prince thought he was concussed he was so woozy, and I went all round the houses finding appropriate event staff to treat him.

Kev was fine, in the end, but face wounds always bleed like crazy, and make everyone jumpy.

Navigating a puddle-filled castle in the dark, in Dutch clogs, is exciting all on its own!