Friday, August 23, 2013
The screw
So, I drive Donna home and as she leans over rather exuberantly to kiss me good bye she tears the rear vision mirror off. We giggle madly but are still unable to re-attach it. It's fine, I say, I'm not offended and sure let's do this again in a couple of weeks. I will sort it tomorrow.
In daylight, I attempt to sort it. I can sort of work out how to attach it but I would need to dismantle the whole thing. I admit defeat, and go and get my husband the Archduke Piccolo. My husband the Archduke starts to unscrew the rear vision mirror mount from the ceiling. The first screw comes out, and he catches it and puts it in a safe place. The second screw comes out, and I catch it and put it with the first one. No prizes for guessing what happens next. The third screw comes out, hurtles through that worm hole and into a parallel universe.
That doesn't stop us looking for it. Somehow you have to look for the damn thing even though you know you probably won't find it. It's a tradition, or an old charter or something.* So governed by ancient instincts, we look for the screw. We find:
$1.50
The dog's spare bowl
A water bottle
A bottle of sun screen
A pen drive
6 pens (they came from out of the worm hole. My car is right at the mouth of the worm hole for pens).
No screw.
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe just next to our own, a woman is looking for her six special pens in her autocarrier. She calls in her wife the Archduchess Flute to help her. They are rummaging intently among the seats when a giant screw comes hurtling out of nowhere and kills them both.
*From Robert Rankin
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Loyal
Zack joined the army as soon as he turned seventeen, against his parents’ wishes.
It was the only thing he had ever wanted to do. It wasn’t a good move. Zack was a slightly built, thoughtful chap who struggled even to carry his pack. He was mercilessly and creatively bullied. It bordered on torture. His only relief came in the form of his new friend Coop. Coop was handsome and charismatic and a star League player. He protected Zack, stood up for him. At times when the thoughts of suicide stopped roiling around in Zack’s brain and stuck to the sides, Zack thought that Coop was literally, day by day, saving his life.
The army breaks you down and builds you up loyal. Really, thought Zack, his main loyalty was to Coop.
Eventually Zack was given a medical discharge. Army life had buggered his back. He moved back with his parents, mulled things over, tried to think of what to do next.
One weekend when Zack’s parents were away, who should turn up on the doorstep but Coop. Coop was hungover and dishevelled. He had a story to tell. The night before he had seen his ex missus, and discovered she was now with another guy. There had been an altercation. Coop had whacked the guy with a hammer, and killed him. Now he needed Zack.
Zack didn’t hesitate. He washed the hammer, wrapped it in plastic bags and put it in the family rubbish bin. Coop showered and took some clothes of Zack’s, and had a feed, and left to go into hiding.
Of course the next people to turn up on the doorstep were the police. It only took a day or two, but by then Zack’s parents were home. Zack’s family had always done a good line in guilt and respectability. One of the lasting horrors for Zack’s mum is that Coop had showered in her shower, washed a man’s blood off, in her shower. As the police took Zack away, they implored him to tell the truth, just tell the truth son, and it would all be all right.
It wasn’t all right. Zack’s whole instinct was to protect Coop. That only made things worse. Now, Zack, this slightly built, thoughtful, geeky chap, is looking at prison time. He awaits his sentencing while on bail. He has found support from a Christian church, which does a further good line in guilt and respectability, but which also cares for him. He is still living with his parents.
The army breaks you down and builds you up loyal. If he sees Coop in prison, maybe Coop will protect him.
Friday, August 9, 2013
This road
This Road
It would be a winter’s evening. The day would close itself
up. Music While You Dine would play on the radio. Its theme music was so
desperately sad it was more Music While You Die; it would just wrack the soul with obscure
terror. Birds would settle in. Kitchen lights would go on and the cabbage put
on to boil in all the damp wooden houses. There was always this little death,
like this simple ending was too much to bear, over and over, every day, each
day the same, the grey of closing, the lowering of the light, the end, again.
I would go down the hill and look at the road. Then it
promised north. North was where everything was. Up north there were cities and
seas and warmth. I could go to a city and live a life. I could go to London and
have a wonderful house where fucked up teenagers whose parents didn’t
understand them could live however they felt, and never be judged.
When I was thirteen I was caught shoplifting and ran away
from home. My family, those small minded fools, thought I would go south to
relatives. Of course I went north, on the road, hitch hiking for the first
time. The police were called. There was even an announcement on the local radio
station. At school the next day the general view was that I should have run
away on Tuesday, when Dial A Disc was on the radio. Then everyone would have
known.
It seemed I was not entitled to even this amount of drama.
When my mother was dying, I drove this road many times to
see her. 150 kilometres of straight two lane highway. I would do it at awful speed, towards the
end, in a kind of angry regressed state, listening to My Chemical Romance very
loud, drinking Red Bull, struggling with what seemed like a permanent chest
infection as I filled up with phlegm and gall. One time I was caught speeding
and thought of saying to the cop, but my mother is dying, and then I realised I
had no excuse, no excuse at all.
The day she died I drove down. I had packed my sleeping bag
and my lunch, but early that morning the dog had broken into it and eaten most
of the sandwich. I took it anyway. I got to the hospice and watched as the last
reflexive breaths tore themselves from her body. Then I drove back.
I got as far as Rakaia and lost my nerve. I checked into a
motor camp. They gave me a small bottle of milk and I staggered up the darkened
steps into a tiny motel room. The heater didn’t work. It wheezed cold air at
me. I wrapped myself in everything and put the White Stripes on and whenever I
closed my eyes I watched my mother die again and again, her face caving in and
eventually greying out.
Arriving the next morning, before going home, I immediately
bought four new tyres. It was a gesture of commitment to the road, to all the
work ahead of me.
I stayed in Rakaia recently, in the same motor camp .I
explored a bit. Rakaia turned out to be
mostly gravel. I tried to walk to the river in the evening and got lost in pits
of gravel, bedevilled by moonlight and the distant grind of traffic on the
road. I wasn’t scared; nobody died of gravel. Thirst, maybe.
East of the road is the coast line. East coast lines are
lean spare ribs of the land. More gravel. Agates. Thumping great surf. Wakanui
Beach lies east of Ashburton. I drive through flat fields blighted by dairying,
under a huge sky that could do any damn thing. On this day it hangs gravid with
rain. The beach itself rakes the edge of the fields, and fog clings to the
cliffs even at midday. It is desolate, in a Derek Jarman way. I love it. This
is the place angels come to drown.
There is something wrong with the cliffs. They have been
severely smitten. I wonder if it was earthquakes, but certainly something has
driven a giant axe through them and their insides have come out in places. It
has done weird things to the skyline; it looks like some sort of archaic pain. I
clamber up into the riven gap. It spits me out of its maw like a pebble. I land
on the beach again. , Maybe this is how pebbles are born.
Actually, there is a story about these cliffs. Some people
say two Chinese junks were thrown up onto the cliffs during a tsunami, some
hundreds of years before the Maori arrived in Te Waipounamu, the South Island.
Charred remains of boat wreckage have been found embedded in the cliff face,
and it is thought they were on fire when they landed. Imagine that. Imagine
smashing into those cliffs in a flaming junk on the wrong side of the planet.
Me, I more or less belong here. No flaming tsunamis. No
fabulous breaks for freedom hitching north on the lam. Just breathing.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
In which I become outraged about dolphins and the interconnectedness of all things.
We are in a café in a shopping maul. Donna looks at me and says, quite suddenly: You know, out there, there are great whales.
I can suddenly see them. Leviathans plunging in the vasty deep, encrusted with barnacles, noble and wise. It was very cool, thinking that just out there, just out east, over the horizon, there are these marvellous, almost mythical creatures and most of us aren't even aware of them and they probably don't even know that we are sitting here. Probably. How can I put this, that there are creatures out there who don't need us, who live by their own lights, who are themselves without us, who are not made by us.
Recently I went whale watching. These were the humpbacked whales, who migrate up the east coast of Australia in the winter. The ones we saw were young chaps, and they were the boy racers of the whale world. They were lobbing and breaching and twisting right of the water, which I think were the equivalents of burnouts and doughnuts, designed for show. They were all but doing peace signs over their heads and waving bottles of vodka. I so wished them well on their great journey.
Today, I was on the treadmill at the gym, and they always have the TV with the sound down. Sometimes I watch it a bit because it provided some random juxtapositions with the music I play very loudly. Today I watched dolphins in a swimming pool. They did tricks for a small group of people, and then the people got into the water. The people obviously loved the dolphins. They laughed as they stroked the dolphins and made the dolphins tow them along as they held onto their dorsal fins and tails. Then the people talked excitedly about how they had enjoyed their dolphin experience.The people seemed to be undergoing some sort of group therapy, perhaps a recovery programme of some sort. At the end of the programme they all cried and hugged each other.
I was appalled. I couldn't watch it. I put my head down and just concentrated on running and listening to Patti Smith real loud. Everything about that scene was wrong for the dolphins. Touching a dolphin hurts. Keeping a dolphin in a swimming pool is cruel. Dolphins only look happy because their faces are made that way. We find their speech cute but it doesn't mean they are wanting to be cute. They do tricks because they can, not necessarily because they want to. And most of all, dolphins are not tools. We might find interacting with them therapeutic, but only if we forget they are truly alive in their own way.
I have done my own dolphin experiences. I have swum (or more floated around) with our own lovely little indigenous Hectors dolphin, the rarest and smallest dolphin of all. I loved them so much and as one of them breached and leaped around me I had a sense of joyful recognition somehow - I called out 'I know you!' I have also fed wild dolphins. At Tangalooma Beach on Moreton Island they come in the evenings, and people wade into the water and feed them fish. I felt moved to be interacting with these creatures who I know to be intelligent and sociable, and to feel that they had some choice about interacting with me.
Probably the people in the dolphin therapy swimming pool felt the same way.
Our relationships with animals are fraught with contradictory demands - the demand for difference and the demand for similitude. We want animals to be a bit like us but not completely like us. We want them to be enough like us to relate to, but not so like us that we have to treat them like people, because that would be too complex or too just plain weird. We want them to be better than us, to be pure or authentic. We want them to be like infantile versions of us (neotony) - to have big eyes and little faces and make small high sounds. We want them to represent ideas we value, such as wildness or community or peacefulness or strength. I think all of this is important. Children learn to relate to others who are like-me-but-not-me by anthropomorphising animals. We expect our children to learn kindness and gentleness through our pets.
I don't know what animals want. The animals I share my life with actually want to have some sort of relationship with me, which I find extraordinary. Early anthropologists such as De Saussure thought it remarkable that any two humans can make themselves understood, and yet somehow people rub along even when they mix up cultures. I think it no less remarkable that my cat Isis Fang wants to sit with me or that my dog Tigger Ratbane greets me when I come home. What do they think about communicating across species? Somehow cuddles and gentle talking are never lost in translation.
Our ability to understand animals is curtailed largely by our inability to experiment (and just as well). However we know that apes have developed theory of mind, and that elephants grieve, and that some of the 'higher' mammals show what looks like altruism. There are two incidents I know of where animals have been suicidal. One was a captive dolphin, who starved himself until his living conditions were improved. Another was a harrowing example of a mother bear in a Chinese bear bile farm who was unable to stand the sufferings of her son and killed him and then herself. This was recently reported by WSPA.
I think animals are our next great ethical frontier. Most of us would now agree that women have souls (that was once put to the vote) and that people of recent African descent should own property. We are beginning to work out that marriage equality is not going to destroy society. We would probably assent, if pressed, to the notion that we are all on this one planet and we all have some responsibility for it. I am figuring here that there is a grand scheme of human development, and that scheme entails a widening and deepening sense of compassionate concern - from ourselves to our families to our communities to our nations to our humanity to our interspecies interconnected inter-everything world. If we can truly include all humans as valued equals in this world, my hope is that we can turn our gaze to other animals.
I can suddenly see them. Leviathans plunging in the vasty deep, encrusted with barnacles, noble and wise. It was very cool, thinking that just out there, just out east, over the horizon, there are these marvellous, almost mythical creatures and most of us aren't even aware of them and they probably don't even know that we are sitting here. Probably. How can I put this, that there are creatures out there who don't need us, who live by their own lights, who are themselves without us, who are not made by us.
Recently I went whale watching. These were the humpbacked whales, who migrate up the east coast of Australia in the winter. The ones we saw were young chaps, and they were the boy racers of the whale world. They were lobbing and breaching and twisting right of the water, which I think were the equivalents of burnouts and doughnuts, designed for show. They were all but doing peace signs over their heads and waving bottles of vodka. I so wished them well on their great journey.
Today, I was on the treadmill at the gym, and they always have the TV with the sound down. Sometimes I watch it a bit because it provided some random juxtapositions with the music I play very loudly. Today I watched dolphins in a swimming pool. They did tricks for a small group of people, and then the people got into the water. The people obviously loved the dolphins. They laughed as they stroked the dolphins and made the dolphins tow them along as they held onto their dorsal fins and tails. Then the people talked excitedly about how they had enjoyed their dolphin experience.The people seemed to be undergoing some sort of group therapy, perhaps a recovery programme of some sort. At the end of the programme they all cried and hugged each other.
I was appalled. I couldn't watch it. I put my head down and just concentrated on running and listening to Patti Smith real loud. Everything about that scene was wrong for the dolphins. Touching a dolphin hurts. Keeping a dolphin in a swimming pool is cruel. Dolphins only look happy because their faces are made that way. We find their speech cute but it doesn't mean they are wanting to be cute. They do tricks because they can, not necessarily because they want to. And most of all, dolphins are not tools. We might find interacting with them therapeutic, but only if we forget they are truly alive in their own way.
I have done my own dolphin experiences. I have swum (or more floated around) with our own lovely little indigenous Hectors dolphin, the rarest and smallest dolphin of all. I loved them so much and as one of them breached and leaped around me I had a sense of joyful recognition somehow - I called out 'I know you!' I have also fed wild dolphins. At Tangalooma Beach on Moreton Island they come in the evenings, and people wade into the water and feed them fish. I felt moved to be interacting with these creatures who I know to be intelligent and sociable, and to feel that they had some choice about interacting with me.
Probably the people in the dolphin therapy swimming pool felt the same way.
Our relationships with animals are fraught with contradictory demands - the demand for difference and the demand for similitude. We want animals to be a bit like us but not completely like us. We want them to be enough like us to relate to, but not so like us that we have to treat them like people, because that would be too complex or too just plain weird. We want them to be better than us, to be pure or authentic. We want them to be like infantile versions of us (neotony) - to have big eyes and little faces and make small high sounds. We want them to represent ideas we value, such as wildness or community or peacefulness or strength. I think all of this is important. Children learn to relate to others who are like-me-but-not-me by anthropomorphising animals. We expect our children to learn kindness and gentleness through our pets.
I don't know what animals want. The animals I share my life with actually want to have some sort of relationship with me, which I find extraordinary. Early anthropologists such as De Saussure thought it remarkable that any two humans can make themselves understood, and yet somehow people rub along even when they mix up cultures. I think it no less remarkable that my cat Isis Fang wants to sit with me or that my dog Tigger Ratbane greets me when I come home. What do they think about communicating across species? Somehow cuddles and gentle talking are never lost in translation.
Our ability to understand animals is curtailed largely by our inability to experiment (and just as well). However we know that apes have developed theory of mind, and that elephants grieve, and that some of the 'higher' mammals show what looks like altruism. There are two incidents I know of where animals have been suicidal. One was a captive dolphin, who starved himself until his living conditions were improved. Another was a harrowing example of a mother bear in a Chinese bear bile farm who was unable to stand the sufferings of her son and killed him and then herself. This was recently reported by WSPA.
I think animals are our next great ethical frontier. Most of us would now agree that women have souls (that was once put to the vote) and that people of recent African descent should own property. We are beginning to work out that marriage equality is not going to destroy society. We would probably assent, if pressed, to the notion that we are all on this one planet and we all have some responsibility for it. I am figuring here that there is a grand scheme of human development, and that scheme entails a widening and deepening sense of compassionate concern - from ourselves to our families to our communities to our nations to our humanity to our interspecies interconnected inter-everything world. If we can truly include all humans as valued equals in this world, my hope is that we can turn our gaze to other animals.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
It was a wrench, but I managed it.
Tonight I walked down to the hardware store to buy a large crescent spanner. It was dark and raining and two things happened. The first was that I nearly got hit by two turning vehicles despite my having the right of way and the traffic lights with me. Huh! The second was that a young man outside the McDonalds asked me for money. I don't as a rule give money to young men because in my part of town* they use it to buy artificial cannabinoids. The local store has a $120 tab for artificial cannabinoids, and they must be its only source of regular income apart from cigarettes and junk snacks. Up until very recently the artificial cannabinoid K2 was legal and very dangerous it was, bad for my business. The newest version, Kryptonite, is less toxic according to a chemist acquaintance of mine. It would have to be.
Anyway, when the young man said 'Miss, miss have you got two dollars please' I responded 'No thanks'. Why did I thank him? Did I think he was offering me the opportunity to give him money? Was I just being polite? Why would I be polite? Because he said please?
I am happy to walk around the streets at night. I am protected by my giraffe hat and my below zero cool attitude. I honestly believe that short plump older women should damn well be able to walk around when and where they like. As should young slim tall women. I also mostly believe that I am invisible to men. This has been the case for several years. It gives me a position of being permanently 'othered' where I can observe from a vantage point. I like it. It keeps me safe and amuses me.
A little while ago, however, I was briefly not invisible. I was on the bus going home from work. The bus was about two thirds full and a young ruffian sat down beside me, choosing my seat rather than some empty ones. His friend sat across the aisle. This man asked me the time. He then began to tell me very explicitly what he wanted to do to me. Very explicitly, but in a quiet monotone, so that the people around me probably could not hear. I was shocked, for sure. I sat stony faced (I hope) for the duration of the ride, and felt more and more alarmed as the bus approached my stop. To get out I would have to get past him. What if he wouldn't let me out? What if he did something to me as I squeezed past him? I realised to my growing horror that I may have to Make A Scene. I decided if he did not let me out I would stand up to my full height (ahem!) and say in a loud but calm voice 'This man is sexually harassing me. He is refusing to let me out'. While I doubt that anyone would actually intervene, people would stare, and I hoped I would be able to exit the bus while they watched and the man would be unable to do anything to me. After all, as a respectable looking short plump older woman I could not be considered to be complicit in his sexual harassment of me. They might have a laugh at the thought that this rough looking young guy would be harassing me, but they would not disbelieve me.
Even at the time I noticed that I was just as alarmed about having to Make A Scene as I was about the man sexually harassing me. When I was young, feminists commented on this. Women were expected to be polite and sweet and put the needs of others first. Women did not Make Scenes unless they were morally dubious, or their children were at immediate risk. Women were not loud or dirty or expansive, and they did not walk around at night.
In theory all that has changed. Women can drink and shout and fight and even beat box. Younger women really are more assertive. I didn't think, until that incident, that I still had that resistance to standing up for myself. How deep these social fears run, even over decades. How is it that I think I have to be older and less conventionally attractive in order to be creditable. To be safe.
As it happened, the bus came up to my stop. I rang the bell and said to the man to let me out. He rose, stood aside, and I got off the bus.
So maybe the next time a young man tries to beg money off me when I am walking at night I won't thank him. Or I may offer him my 10" crescent spanner instead.
* Aahh Linwood. Motto of Linwood: Linwood - 87% of residents prefer it to prison. Alternative motto of Linwood: You're never bored in Linwood!
Anyway, when the young man said 'Miss, miss have you got two dollars please' I responded 'No thanks'. Why did I thank him? Did I think he was offering me the opportunity to give him money? Was I just being polite? Why would I be polite? Because he said please?
I am happy to walk around the streets at night. I am protected by my giraffe hat and my below zero cool attitude. I honestly believe that short plump older women should damn well be able to walk around when and where they like. As should young slim tall women. I also mostly believe that I am invisible to men. This has been the case for several years. It gives me a position of being permanently 'othered' where I can observe from a vantage point. I like it. It keeps me safe and amuses me.
A little while ago, however, I was briefly not invisible. I was on the bus going home from work. The bus was about two thirds full and a young ruffian sat down beside me, choosing my seat rather than some empty ones. His friend sat across the aisle. This man asked me the time. He then began to tell me very explicitly what he wanted to do to me. Very explicitly, but in a quiet monotone, so that the people around me probably could not hear. I was shocked, for sure. I sat stony faced (I hope) for the duration of the ride, and felt more and more alarmed as the bus approached my stop. To get out I would have to get past him. What if he wouldn't let me out? What if he did something to me as I squeezed past him? I realised to my growing horror that I may have to Make A Scene. I decided if he did not let me out I would stand up to my full height (ahem!) and say in a loud but calm voice 'This man is sexually harassing me. He is refusing to let me out'. While I doubt that anyone would actually intervene, people would stare, and I hoped I would be able to exit the bus while they watched and the man would be unable to do anything to me. After all, as a respectable looking short plump older woman I could not be considered to be complicit in his sexual harassment of me. They might have a laugh at the thought that this rough looking young guy would be harassing me, but they would not disbelieve me.
Even at the time I noticed that I was just as alarmed about having to Make A Scene as I was about the man sexually harassing me. When I was young, feminists commented on this. Women were expected to be polite and sweet and put the needs of others first. Women did not Make Scenes unless they were morally dubious, or their children were at immediate risk. Women were not loud or dirty or expansive, and they did not walk around at night.
In theory all that has changed. Women can drink and shout and fight and even beat box. Younger women really are more assertive. I didn't think, until that incident, that I still had that resistance to standing up for myself. How deep these social fears run, even over decades. How is it that I think I have to be older and less conventionally attractive in order to be creditable. To be safe.
As it happened, the bus came up to my stop. I rang the bell and said to the man to let me out. He rose, stood aside, and I got off the bus.
So maybe the next time a young man tries to beg money off me when I am walking at night I won't thank him. Or I may offer him my 10" crescent spanner instead.
* Aahh Linwood. Motto of Linwood: Linwood - 87% of residents prefer it to prison. Alternative motto of Linwood: You're never bored in Linwood!
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
On knowing how to be medieval.
The Abbey Medieval Festival in Brisbane is the biggest in the southern hemisphere.
We knew there would be actual jousting from the website and there was a place on the form for buying tickets where you had to register your weapons. We expected something cute - a few stalls, some rented costumes. We were way impressed.
There were hundreds of exhibits. Vikings were commonplace and there was a big camp of Varangian guards. Outremer was also well represented. We liked the catapults and siege engines. We watched a display of archery where guys with mostly English yew longbows shot a running pig.* We really liked the Italian style fencing where unarmoured rakes in doublet and hose fought each other with two rapiers each. Very flashy and theatrical. We missed a lot, including being too late for the display of medieval surgery. There were tree nymphs on stilts and Gypsy dancers and a blacksmith and plague victims. I hadn't seen so much hand tooled leather since 1975.
There were some hard core re-enactors and some very period costumes. Overheard at the Hornmaster stall, a young woman looking at a knife: 'I would buy it but the handle's not quite period'. 'Yes', replied the Hornmaster's wife, 'He usually makes them for about a hundred years earlier'. There were also some very strange mashups of costume and style bleeding into Gothic and vaguely Romani-ish hippie. There were quite a few vampires. A group of Goths got told off by the security detail for smoking, and sulked like, well, stereotypical told-off Goths. I ate stew and drank elderflower cordial.
We had tickets for the jousting. I have to explain here I am married to a pedant. I sat on the bleachers and watched them warm up their horses, and thought, if they couch their lances wrong I will just have to walk out, I will just have to, or my husband will never forgive me. All the time on the TV they couch their lances wrong and it infuriates him. I sat there and nobody tried to sell me a rat on a stick, and I thought well, I won't be able to walk out because the place is packed, but I will just have to delete all the photos or he will wave his arms around and shout.
So, they came out on their horses, and bless my soul they did actually couch their lances correctly. The horses were so eager to go they had to be held back by mounted squires, and they took off at full noise, and being unhorsed wearing 40 kgs of armour looks truly painful I can tell you. It looked a bit like this (these are mine and my daughter's photos):
I enjoyed everything, from the people who saved greyhounds** to the pen with all the small kids racing around whacking each other with wooden swords. And I watched the kids in their toy armour shouting Huzzah! and Have at you! and I wondered, as you do, how come we know how to be medieval?
By medieval I don't mean feudalism, crop rotation and the invention of the stirrup. I would suggest that medieval means two vital things:
1. lace up tops, on all sexes including underwear (seen it), and
2. hair, as much as possible, worn long by all sexes
It is true that the most ordinary people look stunning in medieval garb. Plump women look comely. Stocky men look fierce, especially with lots of hair. And if all else fails you can just wear armour or go as a nun.
We think of the medieval world through many historical filters. They used to be called the Dark Ages, meaning the times between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. They seemed mysterious. During the Victorian age the Pre-Raphaelites found this attractive. They wanted to react against industrial-strength modernity and valued things that were artisan, bucolic and spiritual. I think of Pre-Raphaelite art as being a filter - think the Lady of Shallot, Arthurian legends, dim forests, floating hair, death and the maiden. It is very romantic and somewhat airless in large doses.
1960's hippiedom also harked back to medieval-ness as being innocent and free. I am a bit young for this but I knew slightly older people who were still into this - Merry Pranksters, Hurdy Gurdy men, folk music. This is another filter.
Now you can play a heap of games that are based on alternative medieval-type worlds, such as Mount and Blade which is set in a parallel Eastern Europe. You can watch or read Game of Thrones and almost think Westeros exists. At the Abbey Festival, a stall advertised 'Game of Thrones Cloaks'. You will find a medieval costume section in your local costume shop.
All this has its charm, and it means that when I go to a medieval festival I know pretty much what to expect and how to behave. However, even the most dedicated re-enactors who replicate the tech down to each link of ring mail is seeing her world and her actions through filters of time and thought. You can never really get it right. And that is part of the fun.
* not a real live pig.
** 25,000 greyhounds are bred in Australia. Hundreds survive their racing careers to be rescued and adopted. The rest, well, the racing industry has a lot to answer for.
We knew there would be actual jousting from the website and there was a place on the form for buying tickets where you had to register your weapons. We expected something cute - a few stalls, some rented costumes. We were way impressed.
There were hundreds of exhibits. Vikings were commonplace and there was a big camp of Varangian guards. Outremer was also well represented. We liked the catapults and siege engines. We watched a display of archery where guys with mostly English yew longbows shot a running pig.* We really liked the Italian style fencing where unarmoured rakes in doublet and hose fought each other with two rapiers each. Very flashy and theatrical. We missed a lot, including being too late for the display of medieval surgery. There were tree nymphs on stilts and Gypsy dancers and a blacksmith and plague victims. I hadn't seen so much hand tooled leather since 1975.
There were some hard core re-enactors and some very period costumes. Overheard at the Hornmaster stall, a young woman looking at a knife: 'I would buy it but the handle's not quite period'. 'Yes', replied the Hornmaster's wife, 'He usually makes them for about a hundred years earlier'. There were also some very strange mashups of costume and style bleeding into Gothic and vaguely Romani-ish hippie. There were quite a few vampires. A group of Goths got told off by the security detail for smoking, and sulked like, well, stereotypical told-off Goths. I ate stew and drank elderflower cordial.
We had tickets for the jousting. I have to explain here I am married to a pedant. I sat on the bleachers and watched them warm up their horses, and thought, if they couch their lances wrong I will just have to walk out, I will just have to, or my husband will never forgive me. All the time on the TV they couch their lances wrong and it infuriates him. I sat there and nobody tried to sell me a rat on a stick, and I thought well, I won't be able to walk out because the place is packed, but I will just have to delete all the photos or he will wave his arms around and shout.
So, they came out on their horses, and bless my soul they did actually couch their lances correctly. The horses were so eager to go they had to be held back by mounted squires, and they took off at full noise, and being unhorsed wearing 40 kgs of armour looks truly painful I can tell you. It looked a bit like this (these are mine and my daughter's photos):
I enjoyed everything, from the people who saved greyhounds** to the pen with all the small kids racing around whacking each other with wooden swords. And I watched the kids in their toy armour shouting Huzzah! and Have at you! and I wondered, as you do, how come we know how to be medieval?
By medieval I don't mean feudalism, crop rotation and the invention of the stirrup. I would suggest that medieval means two vital things:
1. lace up tops, on all sexes including underwear (seen it), and
2. hair, as much as possible, worn long by all sexes
It is true that the most ordinary people look stunning in medieval garb. Plump women look comely. Stocky men look fierce, especially with lots of hair. And if all else fails you can just wear armour or go as a nun.
We think of the medieval world through many historical filters. They used to be called the Dark Ages, meaning the times between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. They seemed mysterious. During the Victorian age the Pre-Raphaelites found this attractive. They wanted to react against industrial-strength modernity and valued things that were artisan, bucolic and spiritual. I think of Pre-Raphaelite art as being a filter - think the Lady of Shallot, Arthurian legends, dim forests, floating hair, death and the maiden. It is very romantic and somewhat airless in large doses.
1960's hippiedom also harked back to medieval-ness as being innocent and free. I am a bit young for this but I knew slightly older people who were still into this - Merry Pranksters, Hurdy Gurdy men, folk music. This is another filter.
Now you can play a heap of games that are based on alternative medieval-type worlds, such as Mount and Blade which is set in a parallel Eastern Europe. You can watch or read Game of Thrones and almost think Westeros exists. At the Abbey Festival, a stall advertised 'Game of Thrones Cloaks'. You will find a medieval costume section in your local costume shop.
All this has its charm, and it means that when I go to a medieval festival I know pretty much what to expect and how to behave. However, even the most dedicated re-enactors who replicate the tech down to each link of ring mail is seeing her world and her actions through filters of time and thought. You can never really get it right. And that is part of the fun.
* not a real live pig.
** 25,000 greyhounds are bred in Australia. Hundreds survive their racing careers to be rescued and adopted. The rest, well, the racing industry has a lot to answer for.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
From Crazy Clarks Warehouse in Brisbane I bring you...
Seventeen days in Brisbane.
A suburb. Another suburb. A McDonalds. A BP station. A KFC. A Coles supermarket. And across the road - a McDonalds. A BP station. A KFC. A Coles supermarket. A McDonaldsBPKFCColesHungryJacksRedRoosterWoolworthsJayJaysBestandLessKMartBigW.
Shopping mauls. We went to ChermsideBlueWaterDeceptionBayMargatePeninsulaFairMyersStrathpineNorthLakes.
Motorways. M1M3GympieArterialBruceHighway.
Actually, I admit to loving the motorways. Fast and smooth and 110kms an hour into town and the traffic just segues and merges and carries us and suddenly we are at the bottom of a giant triangular structure and it is a bridge and we are going up it and then the car beeps and somehow we have paid a toll. And petrol is so cheap. Cruising and swirling in the stream, what you think is, wow it was totally worth wiping out a few thousand Iraqis for this.
And it took two days to do the Art Gallery, and one whole day to do the museum, and I learned some very sobering stuff about Australia's truly shitty history with its indigenous peoples. I stayed in a cute suburb with cute apartments, and took the train (which I can do because I have been TRAINED haha). The sun was shining and the fish were jumping and the cotton was high, and you could almost believe capitalism is wonderful and will last for ever.
And I found this. Now you will have seen the famed internet meme the Three Wolf Moon tee shirt for sale on Amazon. It is famous particularly for its comments section, where people make witty comments about the shirt along the lines that it is associated with WalMart, poor people and bad taste. And it makes the wearer sexually irresistible, and so fabulously manly he can impregnate women simply by walking down the street while wearing it. One of the top comments is from the awesome George Takei, who is almost an internet meme himself.
Go here
Now, I can do better then this. From Crazy Clarks Warehouse Where Everyone Gets a Bargain, from one of Brisbane's better suburbs (I might add), I give you this, and I was lucky to photograph the last one before a slim middle aged well spoken Chinese man grabbed it off the rack. Note the brand tag: Oz Rocks. Of course it does.
The FOUR WOLF RANDOM INDIAN CHIEF MOON TEE SHIRT.
This will make you sexually irresistible not only to humans but to Harleys (and probably dragons).
A suburb. Another suburb. A McDonalds. A BP station. A KFC. A Coles supermarket. And across the road - a McDonalds. A BP station. A KFC. A Coles supermarket. A McDonaldsBPKFCColesHungryJacksRedRoosterWoolworthsJayJaysBestandLessKMartBigW.
Shopping mauls. We went to ChermsideBlueWaterDeceptionBayMargatePeninsulaFairMyersStrathpineNorthLakes.
Motorways. M1M3GympieArterialBruceHighway.
Actually, I admit to loving the motorways. Fast and smooth and 110kms an hour into town and the traffic just segues and merges and carries us and suddenly we are at the bottom of a giant triangular structure and it is a bridge and we are going up it and then the car beeps and somehow we have paid a toll. And petrol is so cheap. Cruising and swirling in the stream, what you think is, wow it was totally worth wiping out a few thousand Iraqis for this.
And it took two days to do the Art Gallery, and one whole day to do the museum, and I learned some very sobering stuff about Australia's truly shitty history with its indigenous peoples. I stayed in a cute suburb with cute apartments, and took the train (which I can do because I have been TRAINED haha). The sun was shining and the fish were jumping and the cotton was high, and you could almost believe capitalism is wonderful and will last for ever.
And I found this. Now you will have seen the famed internet meme the Three Wolf Moon tee shirt for sale on Amazon. It is famous particularly for its comments section, where people make witty comments about the shirt along the lines that it is associated with WalMart, poor people and bad taste. And it makes the wearer sexually irresistible, and so fabulously manly he can impregnate women simply by walking down the street while wearing it. One of the top comments is from the awesome George Takei, who is almost an internet meme himself.
Go here
Now, I can do better then this. From Crazy Clarks Warehouse Where Everyone Gets a Bargain, from one of Brisbane's better suburbs (I might add), I give you this, and I was lucky to photograph the last one before a slim middle aged well spoken Chinese man grabbed it off the rack. Note the brand tag: Oz Rocks. Of course it does.
This will make you sexually irresistible not only to humans but to Harleys (and probably dragons).
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