Back to the future after an excellent weekend in the past.

I spent the weekend inside or outside various neo-gothic landmark buildings in Christchurch with 150 other brave medieval re-enactors from around Australasia, all wearing the warmest woolen garb in our pre-17th Century wardrobe, and gosh did we need it at times. The event was the coronation of a new King and Queen or Lochac.

I belong to a worldwide group known as the “Society for Creative Anachronism“, which has something like 100,000 people involved globally. It’s the largest reenactment society in the world, probably because it’s very non-specific and inclusive – any attempt at pre-17th century costume is ok. Some people take it very seriously and dedicate a significant portion of any given week to going along to weekly meetings to discuss the finer points of 16th Century German Frocks, 14th century English turnshoe construction, or whatever currently interests them. Or, like me, some folks just turn up to a few events a year to catch up with everyone and try to forget about the real world for a bit.

There was a “Queens Champion” tournament on Sunday. As martial arts go, SCA combat is probably about the world’s most inconsistent, and yet somehow it all works out and has become quite popular. It’s all based on an honour system – you get walloped with a bit of rattan cane that somehow slipped past your defenses, and you have to figure out if, had that been a real weapon (sword, mace, spear, whatever), whether it would have maimed or killed you. If you lose a leg, you drop to your knees and keep on fighting. Loose an arm and you typically stop the action briefly to put the now useless limb behind your back, and in a tournament your opponent will give you time to change to your other hand if you just lost your swordarm.

The inconsistency comes because everyone has a slightly different idea of how hard is hard enough, is wearing differently constructed armour, using weapons of different sizes, shapes, and weight, and has a different repertoire of offensive and defensive technique – as opposed to most martial arts where the equipment is standardised, there are masters who teach novices the same set of techniques all around the world. In this shot, I’m the one in the foreground.