Balingup 2009
September 1, 2009
Filed under:Lotso Pics
For those of you that don’t know how hard nerds can nerd, for Medievalists in Western Australia, it doesn’t nerd much harder than the Balingup Medieval Carnivale.
For those of us in Grey Company, we start talking about, and planning for, the past weekend since roughly 11 hours after the last one ended, and you betcher ass we’re already planning next year’s.ok Bigger and Better is an ongoing goal and we’re all about it.
Let me just take this moment to say, it wasn’t easy, but it was the awesomest fun ever. For starters, wife stayed home, because of logistics of life and logistics of a million different types of fish (fish that make money people, so back off) and volunteered to look after not one, but two incredibly naught toddlers. Jade and her cousin Corbin had the house to themselves for the weekend, with only brief visits from cousin Imo to keep them from completely destroying the kitchen counters and stuffing anything and everything edible into every available crevice in every available piece of furniture. I can only imagine, but I’m pretty sure they are a LOT of work.
So, with Piehead Georgia at The Others (biologicals) it was just the boys, me and Damon, all weekend. And did we have a time, I tell you. Me and my boy had a killer weekend and MAN is it fun to just hang out and spoil that kid.
So wife wins, and I told everybody in Balingup that would listen, and about 17 that wouldn’t, how much wife wins for staying behind and minding the turdy ones while the rest of us ran off to play for an entire weekend.
She is awesome and I thank her with all I’m worth.
But, without further adoin’, here’s some pretty cool pics.
A long-ass drive complete with highway’s not finished (that we thought were) and a Navman that usually tries to do right by me landed us in a valley that has no mobile phone reception. No shit, unless you’re up on a hill, you’re getting nuthin’ without standing in the middle of main street with your left foot 26 inches off the ground and your phone in your right hand. I found this out the hard way, with a rusty old ute cruising around me and asking where the pub was.
There’s always a feast put on by the organisers on the Friday Night to kick off the festivities. The poster advertised good food, good wine, singing, dancing and fighting. Sam graciously volunteered a couple of us for the fighting as well. Which turned into just he and I, which turned out to be ALL the fighting that night, AND we had to follow immediately after the belly dancers. MEH.
Another prime chance to ham it up, and for Sam to kick the crap out of me again.
(photo courtesy: Fabian Doerner – only the "e" has those little dots above it that mean it’s Ze Cherman)
Yep, he slapped me and Yep, it connected. Wandering around drunkenly in the middle of a crowded feasting hall hurling insults and slapping each other in the face is the best way to start a fight. Only drawback is that I’M the one who always gets slapped.
(photo courtesy: Fabian "Nomnom" Doerner)
MY dukes are up, I’M ready to fight, yet as we both drunkenly sway and measure each other up, he keeps his mug long enough to block a punch or two and slap me again.
(photo courtesy: Fabian "Nomnom" Doerner, ‘cept he spells it "Namnam" because he’s foreign and silly)
Smacko. I shouldn’t have had those last 7 hard ciders. Whoops.
(photo courtesy: Fabian "Namnam" Doerner – See, it sounds like "NAAM NAAM" which is either that small Asian country or a mispronounced Indian frybread)
He’s thrown the rest of the contents of his mug in my face, splattering the audience and majority of the cameras pointed at us (those of you in the first 3 rows WILL get wet).
(photo courtesy: "Nomnom")
So I reminded his silly ass that he’d done brung a mug to a Knife Fight.
(photo courtesy: "Nomnom", he’s just Nomnom from now on, I’ve forgotten his real name because of too many umlauts)
And I missed again. And he punched me again. And I didn’t get up agai… well not again, not at all. The little girls next to me were at our table and were gigglingly impressed with my falls.
Turns out that all that falling I practice on grass needs to be lessened when done on hardwood floors. When I went for a pull off a Balingup-local hard cider (actually my first, for pretend drunk is the best kind of drunk) my wrist tweaked and made me cry a little. Sam bandaged my wrist, too tight as usual, and cleared me to fight the next morning.
The potential conflict of interests in my own GP wanting me healthy just so we can beat the shit out of each other on the battlefield is not lost on me, but he reckoned I’d be alright with the wrap… only loosened.
(I handed the camera over, but was still in control, so no picture credit. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was my son or somebody seriously short because the other 3 pictures of this pose all cut my head off)
The day begins with too much chainmail, a round of pictures from fellow reenactors waving at the camera and shouting "Hey Jo, wish you were here!" and a happily underslept grin. Plus a camel growing out of my right ear. I swear I clean ‘em, I just forgot the last few days.
(photo courtesy: Andre de Montsegur)
I apparently got captured tippin’ the ol’ kettle back for a bit of a breather.
(photo courtesy: Andre de Montsegur)
And by "breather" I mean "I gotta talk to my agent about this."
Strangely enough, not actually talking on the phone, but artfully scratching my nose. Or picking it, its hard to tell with a bandaged wrist.
On a more prideful note, I made that helmet from scratch. "Scratch" actually meaning a flat sheet of steel and some rivets and also what happened to the "cross" on the cheek when I was carving it out.
Bloody hard to breathe in that bugger lemme tell you.
(photo courtesy: Chris J. Bartle)
Having seen precious little photos of our Third Crusades fight on Saturday, I hadn’t actually noticed that A) chainmaille makes me look fat and 2) when two lines clash in a large-scale fight, it’s a fabulous idea if they actually stick together instead of having some idiot go galavanting off in front of them all.
What a knob! No wonder he ends up frickin’ dead as.
(photo courtesy: the real marx)
Damon and I were hanging out between fights and watching one of the other clubs perform. As they actually use rattans or ducttape-covered sword-shaped sticks they get to hit as hard as they can. In the head. Ouch.
Hence my expression. Dames was just enthralled, and reckons he wants to do that more than showfighting even. Traitor.
(photo courtesy: David Barron)
Wearing all that armour tuckered me right out. Oh, and the drinking and the dancing and the staying up late. That too.
(photo courtesy: Ze Cherman, who thinks he’s "massiv")
Enjoying too much mead, which I first employed for medicinal purposes for the wrist, and then later employed so that I could go out into the yard and fight with some flaming swords.
You heard me. Swords. Fire. Fire Swords. Some pom makes them and was selling them at the Carnivale as well as staying at the Rec Centre with the Greyco folks, so me and Sam and a couple others got to go outside and fight with ‘em. He had a couple axes, a sword and some katanas, all of which we were able to douse in turps and fight with. Freakin’ COOL.
No pics as yet, but working on it.
(photo courtesy: David Barron)
Not many pics from the first fight of the day on Sunday, because of the early rains and the early hour there wasn’t much of a crowd. Sam and I got to drunkenly punch it up with each other again though, and then join forces to… um, punch it up with each other again, only we got ‘hired’ to do so, right before the serving wenches revealed that they actually work for our arch enemy and choked the sh*t out of me before trying to steal my boots.
(photo courtesy: Lilian Evil)
Me and the Doc, looking excellent. Him in his fantastically shiny shinyness and me in all the stuff that he’d worn before he bought his suit and the stuff that I’d made in my shed (yep, from "scratch" – a flat sheet of steel). Personally, I think we should all just pick somebody that’s got nicer stuff than us and just follow them around until they buy new stuff and the old stuff just falls off.
Works a treat.
(photo courtesy: Chris J. Bartle)
This picture is just pure awesome. They’ve already got it in use on the BMC homepage.
That’s Doc in the front, closest to camera, and his middle chidler Beanie ratatat-tatting out in front.
(photo courtesy: Chris J. Bartle)
I only posted this pic because I’m vain and wanted to show that I was actually IN the march. That’s me with the stoic and mildly constipated look, wearing the armour there… with the big pikey thing… SECOND ROW MIDDLE.
Best part about the march was that I couldn’t find Damon when it was time to head up to the mustering point. No, losing my kid isn’t the best part, he’d been instructed to hang out at the Greyco tent whenever he wanted to touch base, so that’s what he did. When they’d told him that we’d all gone up to the March, he took off to find us. Not wanting to leave the Carnivale grounds (mustering point is up the street about a block) he just made his way to the main stage of the Carnivale and tugged on the pant leg of the dude with the microphone.
Lost? Hell no! He wanted in the bloody parade!
So, "We need the father of Damon Exley to come to the stage… again, Damon Exley’s Dad, please come up here and get your boy…" echoes over the entire grounds and 3 different Greyco folks all go up there to get him and I look like the detestable errant father.
Only afterwards did I explain to folks that he wasn’t wandering around all lost and lonely, he just didn’t want to miss the march and was hoping that the head dude with the mike would get him in there.
It worked. Despite the fact that we were marching trooplike and Porting our weapons and Charging our weapons and Advancing our weapons on order, he got escorted in and marched right out front. That’s my boy!
(photo courtesy: David Barron)
One of our first fights where I get beat up by chicks again, such to the point that I got hit in the eye with a carrot, nearly knocking my helmet off.
(photo courtesy: David Barron)
My one-on-one with Kenny worked out pretty well, where I hollered at him from across the sawdust and told him how killy I was feeling.
I also asked that he not mention that the grey fabric I used for the codpiece on my pants doesn’t really match, and draws way too much attention to my unit.
(photo courtesy: David Barron)
Instead of honouring my wishes, he laughed at me, and then hit me in the head a few times with his pike.
So I chopped him.
Except I didn’t really, he blocked it. Then he stabbed me. Hard. I died. I die a lot. I’m quite good at it.
(photo courtesy: David Barron)
I want T-shirts made of this one proclaiming my Badassitudinosity. In fact, that’s all they’ll say, "Badassitudinosity".
Unfortunately, badass or not, I’m pretty sure I died in that fight too. Maybe I’m just too cocky? Or maybe I only ACT that cocky so that it plays better when I do die? I’ll leave it to you, the people that don’t get to go to these shows, to be the judge.
(photo courtesy: Me… Sucka! ‘Cept I used wifeage’s Camera of Awesomeness, so go Wifeage!)
Did I mention how much fun me and my boy had? My tentative, somewhat scared, li’l guy from a couple of years ago had all but disappeared when he strode up and asked if he could go on a camel ride. My eyes nearly popped out of my head because of the back pressure of me holding back a "Holy cats, WHAT!?!" as I calmly dug out the money for him and then followed him over with his mum’s camera.
I was practically bursting with pride as I snapped about 75 shots of him whilst following the camels around. His nervous little face gradually shifted from "I think the saddle’s come loose" to "this is actually pretty damn awesome" by the end of the ride, so we celebrated with freshly made little cinnamon donuts while waiting for his cousin Beanie to have her turn. When she was up, they were out of kids and still had a seat left, so the gal came over and told Dames he could get on for another ride, for FREE.
Boy did he light up then! He’s in the yellow helmet while Beantastic is in the front. They had a blast! Beanie, in her quiet and demure way was hollering "Yah mule! YEEEA-HAHHHHH!!" the entire time, such to the point of the camel-wrangler asking me "you claiming this one?" To which I replied, "she’s my neice… so NO. I’m claiming the quietly grinning one in the back."
Seriously, look at that smile. That’s my boy!
(photo courtesy: this is tiring, I tire of this crediting thing)
Packing up the tents and he insisted that we get a shot of this before we left for the weekend.
I’m glad he did, because I’m so using this shot to entice his younger sisters into better behaviour.
YEAH, that’ll work.
(photo courtesy: My son, who is still awesome)
This one is more for the wife. I’ll use it to remind her that I actually can, and do, beg a bit.
That’s all for now, thanks for tuning in.
I’ll have more pictures when more of the Grey Co folks get me CDs and such for the official website, and I’ll also try and actually write about life things sometime too, though that’s not as fun. Alright, I usually make it fun, but I’ve got other stuff to do right now. Like put on "Faireez" for the eleventy billionth time today for the 2-yo.
Maybe I’ll dress her in my armour and take pictures. Maybe I’ll just put silly things on her and do the same. We’ll see.
Until next time, keep your socks dry and stay out of the stocks, and here’s a hug from me.
-Smewches
Ren-nerding and a cuteness.
November 16, 2008
Filed under:Lotso Pics
Balingup Part II
September 13, 2008
Filed under:Lotso Pics