If wishes were horses
Published on Sun 1 Nov 2009
It's been another fairly busy week. On Wednesday we went to Warwick for a medieval day. I know! Once we'd been kitted out with tabards (robes), belts and coifs (the bit of chain mail that goes over your head, though ours was made of plastic or wool or something rather than metal) we started off with a small amount of archery (after listening to a few tall tales and a long and graphic description of how they removed an arrow from the young Henry V's face after the Battle of Shrewsbury), which I've done a fair bit of before so my technique is quite good, but it didn't seem to help me a great deal with the hitting of things with arrows. Chris managed to shoot a stick in half, which was quite impressive (if somewhat lucky), though I managed to rattle one.
Next up was falconry, in which we learned that the owl is a stupid and nearly blind bird, that a surprising number of English phrases come from falconry (fed up, boozing, hawkers, under the thumb), and that falcons aren't as heavy as you'd think and can fly very quickly indeed.
When the birds were fed up we went and did some swordfighting. We split into pairs and learnt a choreographed fight. I was on the losing side. At the time it felt like it must have looked pretty impressive, but watching the videos I took of the other guys I suspect it didn't. I've still not seen the video of me. After a slightly embarrassing pub lunch, during which the people of Warwickshire did a sterling job of pretending that a bunch of idiots badly dressed up as knights was a perfectly normal sight, we put on not especially knightly helmets and got on to the main event, the jousting.
I'd not ridden a horse since I was small, and a lot of the group never had, but the ones they gave us obviously knew exactly what they were doing, as they tended to just do what they were supposed to, whatever you did. Consequently I'm now convinced that I'm an excellent horse rider, even though I didn't seem to be able to get my steed (who was called Mircale) above a trot (or even to stay at a trot for very long). An animal after my own heart. We started off trying to spear rings with our lances, then moved on to the quintain (a model knight on a pole that spins round when you whack it on the shield), then combined all that together in a little competition, and then had to bash one of the instructors on the shield as we rode toward each other. It was an amazing amount of fun, but I've still got a big bruise on my arm from holding the lances, and today is the first day that I've been able to make my knees touch.
Pretty much as soon as we got back I hobbled off, John Wayne style, to The Portland to see The Wave Pictures. It was a slightly unusual line up for a gig, as they were acting as a backing band to both of the other bands that were touring with them, and the singers from those other bands occasionally joined in, which means that there were 3 acts in a row consisting of the same 5 people. I'm not sure it really worked. There were also an awful lot of guitar solos from the main Wave Pictures guy - I wondered if it was part of the agreement for The Wave Pictures acting as a backing band that at least 30% of that time would be guitar solo. The identically lined up act I enjoyed most was Stanley Brinks, which is the new stage name of the odder brother from Herman Dune, and, maybe not surprisingly, reminded me a bit of the odder Herman Dune songs. Really charming.
The Wave Pictures themselves were a bit of a disappointment. The songs on the latest album either sound like slightly less good imitations of existing songs of theirs, or don't have whatever it is about them that I liked, and they played even fewer of my favourites than last time. On the other hand, at least the drummer looks a bit more like Jurgen Klinsman again. I guess bands have to move on, but I think I'll wait for the greatest hits tour before I see them again.
On Friday I went to the open mic at the Folk Club and had a nice time. Oddly, a question about the Battle of Shrewsbury came up on the quiz machine - I wish I'd listened more carefully to the crazy archer man. It was less busy than normal, but still somehow managed to overrun, and I ended up going last, which I never much like - I get always the feeling that everyone would rather be going home. Anyway, I played a new song called "Wasted on the Young" and "Muscle Memory". Sounded pretty good to me.
Last night was the last ever Broken Family Band gig, and was fancy dress. I'm not really a fancy dress fan but I gave it a go and went as the Phantom of the Opera, i.e. black tie, gloves and a mask that was a bit too small for my face. The mask was held on with loads of double sided sticky tape, but it fell off about halfway through, which left me just dressed in black tie and looking a bit of a fool, but at least able to move my face...
Chris had got a surprisingly good value werewolf mask from Sainsbury's and looked much better than I did. Especially when he was drinking bottles of beer through the mouth. The gig itself was a bittersweet thing - absolutely brilliant, but during every song I was thinking "this is the last time I'll hear them play this" and feeling sad. I was really pleased that they played "The Perfect Gentleman" which I think is my favourite of theirs - the first time I heard that was the moment that I realised that they were something special. I don't think there will be any other bands (that I'm not in) whose first and last gigs I'll be at. I'll miss them.
