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Castles and Cossacks
Jul. 30th, 2006 10:25 amWe have been Ren Fair-ing - my lodger wanted to get some wool for cloaks for the shop, and so we went up to a thing called Joust at Berkeley Castle yesterday.
Berkeley is rather imposing - it dates from 1153 and is where Edward II met a nasty end. We got taken round it at school and I felt weird and had to leave, but not before noticing that they have a 'unicorn's' horn (it's a narwhale, natch). Some time later, my dad took me and lost his ticket, and the woman on the gate refused to let him in even though she'd seen him 2 minutes previously. So he put a curse on the place. Whether the Curse of Ken Williams is still operational, I have no idea.
Anyway. The fair was held on a meadow in front of the castle and the first person A and I encountered was a man with a ferret. She was the colour of apricots. She held my finger in little splayed hands and whiffled at it. He was, her owner said, taking her out later with a hawk to bag rabbits; he's a falconer, apparently. Subsequently, we watched a falconry display with another bloke, a Scot, who flew a Goshawk (not Medieval, but never mind) for a while and then a lanneret. The lanneret, however, whose name is Lorenzo, shot off. His passage was marked by a panicky whirl of pigeons from the castle roof and then he was seen no more in this parish. I can imagine, quite well, what the falconer was thinking. Unlike masters of mews of times of yore, however, they have microchips and radio tracking these days.
Then we watched a bit of tilting at quintains or whatever it is they do, and went shopping. All I seem to do at these things is eat, and munched my way through doughnuts and Welsh cakes and pork in buns and God knows what else. There was a stall selling that Middle Ages staple, the baked potato, ahem. Still, cups of tea aren't all that authentic, either. A found the tent belonging to our East End contact, Bernie the Bolt, and haggled over wool while I watched a display of stunt riding by a bunch of Cossacks. This was, as one might expect, seriously spectacular ("And now, Vladimir will stand up on two horses, and the louder you cheer, the faster he'll go." Vladimir, clearly one of life's nutters, proceeded to do exactly this, at full gallop). One of the horsemen looked like a Pirate-age Johnny Depp, and knew it: he kept tossing his hair. I think he might have been Uzbek or Kazakh - his name was Attaman, and he was very dark skinned. He was also clearly unbelievably vain, but who cares, when you are (a) that pretty and (b) can jump from one side of a galloping horse to the other, and then ride it backwards.
Earlier on, we'd encountered the stall run by the people who organise the Cossack events and they arrange extreme riding courses. The bloke behind the stall eyed me speculatively and asked if I wanted to try it, but I had to explain that given the sheer amount of damage I'd recently managed to do via a slow plod round a field, extreme riding will not be featuring on my agenda any time soon. Pity, because I'd love to try it. I just think it would be suicidal.
Then we went shopping again and met the two female Russian riders, now in full post-Soviet, uh, fashion of slouchy calf length boots, pin striped miniskirts, and knock-off Ferrari bomber jackets. Compared to their Cossack gear...there's no comparison.
The last time I encountered anything like this display of horsepersonship was in Kazakhstan (Kazakh and Cossack are related words, I believe) - they take it very seriously. First prize for one of the competitions was a 4 wheel drive, and second prize was a horse.
For the shoppers among you, here's what A and I bought:
- a leather hatbox for my embroidery silks
- a Medieval hairwashing device made out of pottery: it's got holes in the bottom and a hole in the top, and you dunk it in a bucket to make a shower head-type device
- an obscene brooch in the shape of a dick with legs and wings, for T to wear during Goddess Conference week (they were originally devised to ward off the evil eye and seem to be based on those alchemical illustrations - I fully expect at least a third of the f-list to have come across these, given the level of erudition knocking around LJ).
- a device for weaving cord
We also met our knife manufacturer and had a talk about new athames.
And it rained. Hooray!
Berkeley is rather imposing - it dates from 1153 and is where Edward II met a nasty end. We got taken round it at school and I felt weird and had to leave, but not before noticing that they have a 'unicorn's' horn (it's a narwhale, natch). Some time later, my dad took me and lost his ticket, and the woman on the gate refused to let him in even though she'd seen him 2 minutes previously. So he put a curse on the place. Whether the Curse of Ken Williams is still operational, I have no idea.
Anyway. The fair was held on a meadow in front of the castle and the first person A and I encountered was a man with a ferret. She was the colour of apricots. She held my finger in little splayed hands and whiffled at it. He was, her owner said, taking her out later with a hawk to bag rabbits; he's a falconer, apparently. Subsequently, we watched a falconry display with another bloke, a Scot, who flew a Goshawk (not Medieval, but never mind) for a while and then a lanneret. The lanneret, however, whose name is Lorenzo, shot off. His passage was marked by a panicky whirl of pigeons from the castle roof and then he was seen no more in this parish. I can imagine, quite well, what the falconer was thinking. Unlike masters of mews of times of yore, however, they have microchips and radio tracking these days.
Then we watched a bit of tilting at quintains or whatever it is they do, and went shopping. All I seem to do at these things is eat, and munched my way through doughnuts and Welsh cakes and pork in buns and God knows what else. There was a stall selling that Middle Ages staple, the baked potato, ahem. Still, cups of tea aren't all that authentic, either. A found the tent belonging to our East End contact, Bernie the Bolt, and haggled over wool while I watched a display of stunt riding by a bunch of Cossacks. This was, as one might expect, seriously spectacular ("And now, Vladimir will stand up on two horses, and the louder you cheer, the faster he'll go." Vladimir, clearly one of life's nutters, proceeded to do exactly this, at full gallop). One of the horsemen looked like a Pirate-age Johnny Depp, and knew it: he kept tossing his hair. I think he might have been Uzbek or Kazakh - his name was Attaman, and he was very dark skinned. He was also clearly unbelievably vain, but who cares, when you are (a) that pretty and (b) can jump from one side of a galloping horse to the other, and then ride it backwards.
Earlier on, we'd encountered the stall run by the people who organise the Cossack events and they arrange extreme riding courses. The bloke behind the stall eyed me speculatively and asked if I wanted to try it, but I had to explain that given the sheer amount of damage I'd recently managed to do via a slow plod round a field, extreme riding will not be featuring on my agenda any time soon. Pity, because I'd love to try it. I just think it would be suicidal.
Then we went shopping again and met the two female Russian riders, now in full post-Soviet, uh, fashion of slouchy calf length boots, pin striped miniskirts, and knock-off Ferrari bomber jackets. Compared to their Cossack gear...there's no comparison.
The last time I encountered anything like this display of horsepersonship was in Kazakhstan (Kazakh and Cossack are related words, I believe) - they take it very seriously. First prize for one of the competitions was a 4 wheel drive, and second prize was a horse.
For the shoppers among you, here's what A and I bought:
- a leather hatbox for my embroidery silks
- a Medieval hairwashing device made out of pottery: it's got holes in the bottom and a hole in the top, and you dunk it in a bucket to make a shower head-type device
- an obscene brooch in the shape of a dick with legs and wings, for T to wear during Goddess Conference week (they were originally devised to ward off the evil eye and seem to be based on those alchemical illustrations - I fully expect at least a third of the f-list to have come across these, given the level of erudition knocking around LJ).
- a device for weaving cord
We also met our knife manufacturer and had a talk about new athames.
And it rained. Hooray!
