s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

This weekend was DA- Darton Anniversary. This is a yearly event held by our local shire. Fighting, feasting, Arts&sciences classes, archery- all the good stuff. Also a chance to meet people from Christchurch and Auckland who have come in for the event.

The “big event” which had us all nervours was the feast Saturday night, as for entertainment we were doing a play between courses (La Mandragola, by Machieveli). This play is a comedy about a man who lusts after another mans wife, and the hijinks that ensue as he gets caught in a strange plan to satisfy his desires. It was an ambitious play to try adn perform, a bit more than an hour long. Lots of lines for the main characters to learn (Tam, Sharon and I, and to a lesser extend Beth). We made it through the first act pretty well, then started forgetting our lines. Things got rather hilarious after that.

We learned some important lessons. One was that the cast should see me in my disguise before the play. Otherwise they might be trying to do a serious scene, but every time the looked into the wings and saw me, the lost it and laughed uncontrolably.

There was also some inspired casting. Madonna Leucretzia, the “beautiful and well-mannered” woman which was the cause of all the madness, was played by Geoff- a large, shaven-headed bearded fellow. Even better, Geoff played here using his “Paremarema maximum secuity prison accent”. The lovely lady woud respond to many a situation with a belligerent “Wot?” Hi-larious.

Many members of the audience laughed to the point of pain. A night none of us will forget. At least not without extensive therapy and perhaps some serious medication.

To my utter surprise I won the archery tourney on Sunday, which was nice after a rather disappointing performance in the fighting tourney on Saturday. But at least I got a good funeral! This year as a fund raiser Darton brought in the (newly formed) Mourners Guild. Fighters could pay a fee, and get a funeral. The quality of the funeral depending on how much you paid. Stretcher, pall, hearse, priest, women wailing and earing their clothes. All were available for a price. Only one person did not pay- which would have earned him a loot&boot, then dragging him away to a mass grave. And wouldn’t you know it- he won the tourney! It’s amusing as most of the audience was hoping he would lose, just to see what a loot&boot looked like.

After the event about 15 people came over to our place for a “post event revel”. Many of these people were hand spinners, and we ended up sending home some bags of alpaca fleece with them, which they will sping into yarn for us. Pretty cool. We also sold a few hundred grams of fleece to Jennifer. Woo! A sale! I will actually have a positive cash-flow thing to report on our next tax statement! :)

And today… today I was supposed to be taking it easy (trying to recover from a cold that caught up with me this weekend during the frenzy of activity and lack of sleep). I was going to take Jim for a walk after lunch, but Stuart came by to catch his errant ewe. He had his bike, and the two of us got her herded down into the yards. Only one thing went wrong in this whole operation. She ran into the mob of horses at one point (we had to move her through a paddock where the horses were), and as we were trying to get her through one horse paniced (Casey, of course), bucked and gave me a really solid kick to my left leg. Boy, it certainly hurts when a 450 kg animal kicks you! Thankfully nothing was broken- which was good because a few seconds later I had to tackle the sheep as she tried to break past me back into the paddock! Gee, and this was supposed to be a “take it easy” day! Never a dull time here on the farm.