Kinda tiring time travel, but a lot of fun

The Land of Faerie’s Expotition to Excalibur Fantasy Faire went off as scheduled today very nicely.  The group met at Aronal’s house for a very substantial brunch—“the group” being Aronal, Godorion, Endora, Rowan, and some other odd bods.  L and M stayed home because the weather looked kinda cold-ish for M to be out in garb.  (Later in the day, the sky faired off and it warmed up very nicely, but I sure couldn’t have predicted that at ten o’clock.)  Before we left, I borrowed a knee-length wool cloak from Aronal, and it kept me quite warm all day, even standing or sitting in the full wind.

Excalibur is a smallish faire, and makes no great pretensions at authenticity à la TRF or Scarborough Faire.  Perhaps because of that, there was a larger fraction of the crowd who were in some sort of garb or garb-ish costume than at the larger festivals.  Certainly there was the damnedest assortment I’d seen in a long time, everything from what looked like a “gay blade” pirate in doublet, codpiece, and black lace pantyhose through a shaven-headed, vaguely Orc-ish Stupid Henchman and assorted, variously under-dressed females (but no bunny-fur bikinis today; too cold for it, although a couple of Roman-era re-enactors froze their bums off in totally inadequate tropical kit) to a very well-garbed Captain Jack Sparrow.  I didn’t have to look very far to find Elvish refugees from Lórien, a whole crop of furries (not the hardcore ones you find at cons, thank the gods) and færies, beings of both sexes with bad cases of Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo, and a whole raft of garden-variety rennies.

We sat to watch the “jousting,” which turned out to be no more than practice tilting at rings while the two riders insulted one another.  By that point my feet were going from chilly to downright cold, because I’d come out in my Tevas as the closest thing I had to footwear proper for my class (non-specific artisan) and garb (long tunic over leggings with a simple rope belt).  When Orion mentioned seeing a boot-maker’s tent around at one end of the merchanting area, I thought maybe I should take the hint and go see about the man.  On the way there I ran into a couple of Poly Austin acquaintances who were merchanting, and while I was visiting with them, up walked a couple of others.  Eventually I remembered my errand, and went on down to the bootmaker’s tent.  Ten minutes and $120 later, I had a new pair of to-the-knee, pirate-style boots lined inside with some kind of fleece.  (L and I are still debating whether it’s real shearling or some kind of synthetic.)  My feet warmed up almost at once, and I was a lot happier for the rest of the day.  It’s amazing how much better my mood is when my fingers and my feet aren’t cold.  Chilblains are certainly period, but they’re just no fun at all.

The group wandered around the faire the rest of the afternoon, watching this and that performer (I got to hear the Brobdignagian Bards properly for the first time, and enjoyed them a great deal) and poking through the merchants’ booths.  I wished L was with me at one costumer’s booth; her clothing was very good-looking, although some of it was clean out of period.  One particularly fine suit I identified as an eighteenth-century Dick Turpin style, and another long brocaded vest looked to be Charles II, missing the end of period by a good sixty years.  (“Period,” in SCAdian terms, is generally accepted to end with Elizabeth I’s death in 1603.)

Eventually we drifted back to the tiltyard for the big “joust” of the day.  It was all Endora and I could do to keep from blowing up in outrage at the preposterous mess of a script somebody had stuck the group with.  We were expected to swallow that King Arthur’s champion, Gawain (mispronounced as “guh-WAIN” throughout, instead of the proper “GAV-in”), the duke of Saxony, was to fight Sir Michael, champion of King Lot of Orkney, while a Duke’s Mixture* of Orcs, Elves, sorcerers and who knows what cheer for and interfere with both sides. (huh??  Saxony is part of Germany, not of Wales, Gawain was Lot’s son, and Orcs and Elves don’t appear anywhere in either the Arthurian Fact or the Arthurian Legend that I’ve ever heard of.  Apparently these people never read anything about the Arthurian Fact, never read Malory, never read Geoffrey of Monmouth, and especially never read a map of the United Kingdom!)  It was the biggest gallimaufry of rubbish I’ve met since the Dragonlance Chronicles.

The biggest inadvertent joke of the whole thing was the guy who was playing Merlin.  He had lank, stringy, below shoulder-length gray hair, carried a staff with a green-glass “crystal” on top, and wore ragged robes and a leather cap with ear cut-outs.  When Endora and I first saw him, we looked at each other and said, “Tim the Enchanter!”  Thereafter we couldn’t quit referring to him as “Tim”.  All he needed was the ram’s horns to mount on his cap, and I’m sure we could have found him a pair on-site if we’d looked.

Finally the joust/morality play seemed to come to a stop somehow, and we all went off to one of the on-site taverns for drinking and singing, with all the musicians and groups forming one enormous jam band.  Aronal and Orion split, and I did the same not long after.  On the way home I hit a big traffic jam on, of all places, the Bastrop (population about five thousand) bypass.  Even with the traffic, I made it home before sunset.

* Duke’s Mixture, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t have anything to do with nobility in any country.  It was the name of a brand of pipe tobacco.  How it came to mean “a mixed-up mess” is unclear.