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Live Range Take 2 and other fair oddities

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  • Live Range Take 2 and other fair oddities

    I've just come back from two glorious days of Ye Olde Medieval Goodness and hoo boy, I have some stories to share.

    Bathroom Suck

    So this particular site has three sets of permanent bathrooms, one of which is located behind the fence separating the re-enactor carpark from the general public. As a result, that particular bathroom wound up being used by the re-enactors and the vendors alike, since the general public weren't able to access it.

    Come the second day however, and since one of the male vendors or re-enactors opted to defile the men's toilets in that particular location, the entire thing (both male and female) wound up being blocked off to the re-enactors and vendors in its entirety. One of the vendors wound up chewing out the event marshalls because of it.

    A little warning would've been nice!
    This one I can attribute to the event marshals failing to communicate more than anything. We had the jousters, pony rides and a "unicorn" set up in the area about halfway between the main grounds (where all the camps, shops and jousting were located) and the smaller oval (where the range and various shows were located). As a result of this, nobody bothered to clue the horse wranglers OR the groups doing the cannon and musket shows (two separate groups) in that the other group were on-site and as a result, the wranglers (and the horses) were unaware of when the cannon show was happening and the horses did not cope well to the cannons going off. Thankfully nobody was hurt!

    Live Range Idiots

    Our range this time was located next to a very large oval, which was also used for the trebuchet firing, musket demo, cannon demo and our show. Unfortunately, said range also happened to be located on the path of a walking track. The council, in their infinite wisdom, chose not to block off the track, resulting in us having to call "HOLD!" more than once due to those people walking along the track, not seeing the giant f@#$ing trebuchet (which would've given them a clue) and continuing along the track right into the middle of our range!

    One other idiot during the trebuchet show also figured "hey, the rules don't apply to me," and chose to put himself right in the firing line of the trebuchet. Trebuchet crew eventually got him to move, although that took MANY rounds of yelling at him (with a cop about 100m away doing absolutely nothing to boot - thanks dude )

    The worst case however, involved a guy on his bicycle who chose to ride RIGHT through our range and onto the oval right in the middle of the trebuchet show. Luckily he only skimmed around the cabin on-site before disappearing back onto the track.

    Who the f*ck gave these kids bows?!

    A couple of the stalls on-site were selling toy or kid-size bows (including our main bow supplier). That in and of itself was not an issue. Unfortunately however, one of the stalls (not our bow supplier) happened to be selling working arrows to go with it.

    This combination resulted in two kids figuring that they could set up their own miniature range RIGHT near us (we were closed off during the trebuchet show for safety reasons) and they kept firing them off and running into our area to pick up their arrows. Eventually our resident security guard had to intervene by telling them that since we had the paperwork to run a range and they didn't, if they kept it up, he'd quite merrily report them to the police who would confiscate their gear and they'd have to buy it back from them. The parents wisely chose to take their kids away from the range entirely after that.

    Reality check!

    More than once, we had people on our range who insisted they "did archery as a hobby" or alternately "knew what they were doing," only to then either ignore our safety instructions or get pissy because they'd ignore our coaching and struggle as a result. We are here to help, take the instruction!

    It did get kind of funny though, when we had this cocky 10-or-11 year old on the range who stuck around for a couple of rounds, changed bows after the first round, then bragged to the girl next to him (who was about the same age) that he was using a lighter bow and as a result, he could shoot/aim better. I didn't tell him that both the bows he was using were the same weight (he actually wasn't too bad, but he had that cocky-ass attitude where he thought he could ignore our instructions re safety)

    Why must you test me?
    Not a suck, but quite funny. The group who did the cannon show had their camp set up next to us and opted to include a shrine to St Barbara as part of their display (St Barbara is the patron saint of armours, explosives and artillerymen). Most of us made an offering as well, even though we're archers (St Sebastian is ours). When I made my offering and it came time to light the candle though, the match cord (that had been lit for this purpose) failed to light the candle, despite many attempts to do so. In the end, we had to cheat with Ye Olde Bic Lighter The running joke for the rest of the morning was that St Barbara was testing my faith.

    Other assorted nuts

    - Whenever we do a parade, we have three things we do as a call-and-response (president or other person with a loud voice leads the call) every so often (and for this particular fair, we have a fourth which is simply "FOR THE KING!"). While we were wandering through, everyone kept cracking up whenever we yelled out "KILL THE FRENCH!" (our group are English mercenaries).

    (For the curious, our calls are "Who are we/ARCHERS" "What do we do/KILL THE FRENCH" and "What do you get when the French king goes to war/A HOSTAGE")

    - At the end of the first day, the horses were let out onto the oval we used for the archery/treb/cannon shows for a bit of a run around. We'd left all the watermelon carcasses that were used for our show and the trebuchet show strewn all over the oval, so naturally the horses went straight for them and started chomping away at them (we saw this bit and cracked up ). Then the horses went for the hay bales we'd also left on the oval (used for the warbow and weapons demos), so they got chased away from that. One of the white horses took offence to that, so instead opted to roll around in the watermelon carcasses and was left an interesting shade of pink . He sadly got taken away for a bath, so I didn't get pics.

    - One of the vendors is someone more or less known to us, who sells various linen and silk threads, dyes and hand-woven fabric. She mentioned offhandedly to us on her second day that while she was expecting say, the earlier period camps to buy a few things here and there off of her, she wasn't expecting the ENTIRE female component of the 14th century camp (which in itself consisted of about five groups, including ours) to nearly clean her out of linen thread. (I managed to get some, which will be used for embroidery)

    - Part of the experience also involved people being taken on walking tours through the different villages by someone who was "meant" to be versed in history. He comes around to our part of the camp and starts blathering on about arrows. Cue one of our members (a fletcher themselves) correcting him CONSTANTLY. In other words, the walking tour guy got schooled big-time
    Last edited by LadyofArc; 09-27-2018, 07:07 AM.

  • #2
    Saint Barbara wasn't testing you. Saint Sebastian was a bit peeved you switched sides. :-) Better make an offering of a lost arrow or you'll be sorry. :-)
    "If your day is filled with firefighting, you need to start taking the matches away from the toddlers…” - HM

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    • #3
      Quoth Crossbow View Post
      Saint Barbara wasn't testing you. Saint Sebastian was a bit peeved you switched sides. :-) Better make an offering of a lost arrow or you'll be sorry. :-)
      Funny you should mention that - during our show, we typically shoot 2 rounds of clout, 2 rounds about 30-40m away from our targets and then 2 rounds at point-blank range at the target. This year we had to change which direction we were shooting due to a planning fuckup (long story), so during the last show we did, one of my clout rounds landed on the roof of a nearby cabin (nobody was in the cabin, we were using it as a storage space for our gear). I guess there's my offering!

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      • #4
        Quoth LadyofArc View Post
        one of my clout rounds landed on the roof of a nearby cabin (nobody was in the cabin, we were using it as a storage space for our gear). I guess there's my offering!
        Nope. Doesn't count. You know where it is. Gotta go worm fishing for it to count. :-)
        "If your day is filled with firefighting, you need to start taking the matches away from the toddlers…” - HM

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        • #5
          Quoth Crossbow View Post
          Nope. Doesn't count. You know where it is. Gotta go worm fishing for it to count. :-)
          I guess last year doesn't count then (I lost all but one of my thin-ass modern recurve arrows at last year's fair and we haven't been able to locate them since )

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          • #6
            Quoth LadyofArc View Post
            I guess last year doesn't count then (I lost all but one of my thin-ass modern recurve arrows at last year's fair and we haven't been able to locate them since )
            Ok, maybe she's giving you a carry-over from losing that many. I've been there myself. Had a tournament where I managed to lose 6 in one day.
            "If your day is filled with firefighting, you need to start taking the matches away from the toddlers…” - HM

            Comment


            • #7
              Quoth Crossbow View Post
              Ok, maybe she's giving you a carry-over from losing that many. I've been there myself. Had a tournament where I managed to lose 6 in one day.
              One of our members managed to lose a couple of his warbow arrows during a show he was doing in conjunction with the cannon guys (basically they had medieval handguns, so the contest was "Who's faster, an archer or a gunner").

              Last year I bought my first proper longbow and some arrows to go with it. I specifically wound up picking arrows with very bright coloured feathers on them so that I could spot them if they submarined (went along the ground and skimmed just underneath) or similar. This actually helped and apart from that one on the roof, I didn't lose any this year.

              That said, losing six in one day would definitely suck.

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