Skip to main content

Huzzah!



For all the stoic talk some stuck-in-traffic fidgets appear… Still, when a journey is sufficiently endured the arrival is a delectable moment. We race past the drum and sitar players to our room. One monk's habit and one Saxon warrior bodice are swiftly recovered from cases. There is bodice lacing to be done!
In the lift down to reception are a nice Indian family heading to a wedding and an implausible Middle Ages duo off to banquet.
'Are you here for the wedding?' Aethelfrida The Invincible asks.
'Yes,' the nice lady says, faintly confused. 'Are you?'
'No,' Brother Mr smiles, though it crosses his mind to act surprised that they haven't joined in with the Medieval theme.
Two courtly ladies, two monks, one early Tudor gent and a Saxon tribeswoman meet up in the reception area and order taxicabs to Coombe Abbey.
'Have you been before?' Our Cabby enquires. We have not. 'You'll love it,' he declares. He's been. He loved it. The atmosphere, he mentions. And the mead.
Out we jump, into cold air, follow a box-hedged path, intrigued. Stone turrets rise out of sight, little leaded panes in high windows glint, and it's 'this way, this way good sirs, ladies, if you will,' into the candlelit fabric slopes of a marquee hall. Crusade colours, checkered jesters: at the bar chain mail chinks; eavesdroppers hear evidence of sword envy, debates on identity.
'Which King Richard are you?'
'The good one.'
'Oh? That's what they're all saying!'

Medieval times were raucous, and awash with mead.
Huzzah the throng shouts! More mead!
We gobble four platters each of food. With wine. And mead. Huzzah! And there is dancing, even if disco is incongruous. It is fun.
Huzzah!
Not all of us will recall the evening with indefatigable clarity.

Not one of us remembers where on the Abbey grounds we should reconvene with our cab, so we take a jolly caper through stone corridors, out through weighty wooden doors, over the moat bridge, through blown fine rain, under the midnight sky and the rain holds light and looks like stars falling.
Laughing, inebriated, in the taxi, out the taxi, to the hotel bar because we ain't done with our chatterings yet and agree a time for breakfast and cram the lift and oh! Clumsy bumps: one minor wound on Brother Mr's forehead. Right out of the lift he fell, looking up at one monk, one early Tudor gent, two courtly ladies and one Saxon tribeswoman pushing open the doors on a steel box, enquiring after his health.



Comments

Suze said…
:) Where all the good King Richards go.
4 November 2013 at 04:04
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Contact Pants Conundrum

There is weather today, I do note it: take a few moments to reckon the size of a cloud (big) and the frequency of rain (sporadic.) Centre of my interest though is a stack of magazines. Not the fashion kind. This is martial arts research. I'm not even sure what it is I'm looking for, but intuition calls loud. A range of old adverts skew some amusement. Contact pants, for example. Pants are not trousers where I come from. They are underwear. Professional contact pants: improved smirk value. But why would a person be likely to purchase a grappling hook and a lock pick set? For specialists and hobbyists only, the blurb assures. Guidance on the pheromone spray that attracts women against their better judgement? I doubt it works any more proficiently than the mysterious potion that defines your muscles while you sleep. But, then: I wonder is some sprayed on this paper? What was my intuition thinking, making this ghastly shout… Tea break time. There's a lot of words...
2 comments
Read more

Back From The Future Blog Party

Another joint blog adventure- if you want to see who else said what the list of participants is here . The premise is this: 'You're up before dawn on a Saturday when the doorbell rings. You haven't brewed your coffee so you wonder if you imagined the sound. Plonking the half-filled carafe in the sink, you go to the front door and cautiously swing it open. No one there. As you cast your eyes to the ground, you see a parcel addressed to you ... from you. You scoop it up and haul it inside, sensing something legitimate despite the extreme oddness of the situation. Carefully, you pry it open. Inside is a shoebox -- sent from ten years in the future -- and it's filled with items you have sent yourself. What's in it?' Here's how I imagined it: Before dawn? Shadows outside, first forming. Sleep has gone, I don't know where. Coffee I can find. All the way from Machu Pichu, this fair-traded pack. Scissors are in the drawer, which ...
26 comments
Read more

A Happy Kind Of Idiot

I am watching hazel leaves shimmy in a breeze, they are keeping time with the buzz of nettle stings that run from my fingertips to my elbows. It feels like I'm wearing gloves made of needles; why didn't I just wear gloves to clear the nettles from the raspberry hedge? But I like to know the plants, how they grow, how they smell, how they stain and sting, what bugs shelter in their leaves, what grubs and gastropods nestle at the roots. How the roots sneak under weedblocks, moon-pale, and over open ground where they are purplish, bullish.  I like the work to affect, I like interactive life.  It has a little pain and a lot of interest.  Not all the nettles are gone, of course, some must be left to house caterpillars, and they are a healthy vegetable for people too. Today’s crop is for compost though, to feed the soil, the miracle stuff from which this abundance grows. How could I not wish to be close to that?  At home I have a shower, scrub my sore hands- and still I sm...
Post a Comment
Read more