Getting Festive

It’s festival season again! I’m rather delighted by the wide variety of niche, special interest, communities that set out each year to immerse themselves in their enthusiasms for a weekend whilst living in a field and drinking too much.

I’m currently preparing for two days of telling tales to an assortment of LARP (Live Action Role Play), cosplay and re-enactment fans in Gloucestershire at Fantasy Forest. I did a wedding for a sub set of this group a few weeks back and it has to be said that LARPers make a great audience, though I am expecting to be outclassed in the costume department as, for a lot of these people, getting dressed up as something spectacular, wizards, elves, werewolves, aliens, is the entire reason they are there.

Two weeks later I’m off to Valhalla, which is unsurprisingly a Viking Festival, though the location may raise an eyebrow since it’s just outside Basingstoke. There I have to compete with archery, axe throwing, blacksmiths, wolves, fire walking, ravens, boat burning, display fights featuring viking warrior bands from around the country, and the Mead Hall, complete with stage, 10 kilowatt PA and a full programme of viking related music from tinkly medieval harpists to gothic Scandinavian metal.

Now you may think that my preparation for these involves rehearsing my stories and maybe looking up a couple of new ones, which might happen if I have time but mainly it is comprised of activities like rubbing the inside of my viking boots with neats foot oil; sewing my viking tunic up where a seam has split; jump starting the car, moving it to the drive and recharging the battery which has mysteriously gone flat. I have Thursday down for loading the (hopefully fixed) car with the ridiculous array of things I need. Alongside all the obvious camping gear, tent, bedding, stove, enamel plates etc. I also need to fit in chalk boards to advertise my shows, emergency backdrops, costumes, merchandise… instruments: lyre, bodhran, djembe, thunder drum, chimes, dulcimer… then there’s all the odd stuff you have to take because it’s camping: toilet roll, solar powered torches, wet wipes, and not just camping but camping in England, so you need to have enough clothing for any and every possible weather condition: wellies, waterproofs, sun hats, umbrellas, insect repellant, factor 50 sun screen, t-shirts, jumpers.

If last year is anything to go by I could do with a fridge and a rubber dinghy too, one for when it gets too hot and the other for when the rain gets biblical, like it did at Wickham, where I was woken up at about 4am by the extraordinary pounding of the rain on my, thankfully brand new and very waterproof tent, and on going out to check on the guy ropes discovered that a sheet of water around an inch deep was flowing down the hill and under my tent.

I might get to practice my performance a bit before I go but not if I can’t find my sewing kit, I’ve looked in all the obvious places and no sign yet. It’ll turn up eventually but the sooner it does the higher my chances of getting to sit in the shade and bone up on a couple of new viking sagas.

Oh! Water carrier, chalks, tankard… and I must remember a towel this time.

Dom Hugh Dies Again

I’ve told you about my storyteller’s “ready bag” before. It got quite a work out this week at Wickham Festival. On Sunday night at about 12.30 I was rummaging around in the bottom for something I could do easily but I hadn’t done the year before. You see, I’d set myself the task of giving my regular visitors fresh tales, or at least no repeats from 2014, for the whole four days of the festival. Come my last set and with no throat left after shouting over a succession of overloud bands on the nearby second stage during Saturday afternoon, I was very much after something that would leap from my lips with gay abandon and not take too much shaping or remembering. So, shoulder deep in my ready bag, fishing around amongst the fairy dust and crumbled fragments of legends, I finally laid my hand on a dead medieval monk. Always good for a laugh! Although he had been down there for some time, I resurrected him (briefly) and set him to work.

Dom Hugh of Leicester is a comic tale from the middle ages in which the eponymous monk makes unwelcome advances to Mrs. Weaver until she decides the only way to get him to leave her alone is to agree to satisfy his desires. After she has made the arrangements she informs her husband who is quite shocked until she mentions that the plan is for Mr. weaver to hide in the chest at the end of the bed, leap out and scare Dom Hugh so much that he never comes back. All goes to plan until the husband improvises and wallops Dom Hugh with a club. Dom Hugh falls to the ground stone cold dead.

To avoid blame they drag the ecclesiastical corpse to the monastery and prop him up against the wall. When Dom Hugh doesn’t turn up for prayers a search is made and when he won’t answer the bishop’s questions about his absence the Bishop whacks him with his crozier and down he goes: stone cold dead. Again. The guilty bishop tries to lay the blame off on the weaver using the same trick and after killing Dom Hugh for the third time the weaver loads him in to a sack with the intention of dumping him in the river. Meanwhile a couple of thieves who have stolen a side of bacon from the mill are making off under cover of darkness with their booty also in a sack. When they see Mr. Weaver they drop the pork and run. Naturally Mr. Weaver swaps his ex-mendicant for the savoury sack-full and heads back home. The robbers return and lug the lifeless cenobite to their house and hang up their prize. When they open it for some breakfast there is Dom Hugh, stone cold dead.

Not wishing to get hung themselves they decide to return the stiff to the mill from which they think they brought it. Thus the Miller finds himself repeating the horror of discovering a very dead monk instead of rashers. Mrs. Miller comes up with a plan to tie Dom Hugh on to a stallion and send him after the bishop when he goes on his rounds in the morning riding on a mare. The stallion, who is usually kept in a field on his own, is very excited by the possibility of meeting the bishop’s mare and gallops down the lane towards her. The bishop is terrified to see the man he thought he had killed charging towards him, the thoughtful Millers having given him a saucepan helmet and a broom for a lance, so he sets his men at arms on the hapless cadaver who drag him to the ground and beat him until he is stone cold dead. Since this time everyone knows how Dom Hugh died they finally bury him, and it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble if that was what the Weavers had done in the first place!

You’d be forgiven for thinking this tale type is particular to the middle ages but it crops up, a bit like Dom Hugh himself, all over the world and across many centuries under titles like “Old Dry Fry” and “The Thrice Killed Corpse”. Stretched out over 20 minutes, with a bit of joining in, it is thankfully as amorally amusing to tent full of festival goers in modern day Wickham as it was to the Yorkists of Tudor times. I think I’d better dig that monk up and stick him back in the bag.

…here’s to living happily ever after, until the next adventure.

Get Lucky

I’m packing the tent in to the car again, along with my blackboard, drums, hat stand and four foot Dane Axe; it’s funny the things that you gather as part of your job. Storytellers of yore are always assumed to have wandered on foot with nothing more than a bit of bread and cheese from their last friendly host. I’m beginning to think this unlikely and suspect donkeys of yore found ready employment lugging bard’s harps, tents, sleeping bags and assorted tat of the trade around the country. I’ve only been home for a couple of days and barely caught up on my sleep after Wickham Festival where I finished each day with the popular “Late Night Child Free Story Chill” after the main stage closed down. This left me closing up the Storytelling tent at gone midnight and only just getting to the bar in time for a post work pint before it closed… but on a festival site there is always someone who has just come off shift, stall holders, stage crew, caterers; professional nomads all, we happily chat in to the wee small hours to the constant thrum of the generators… and wake at 7 as the sun turns our tents in to ovens.

 

Often, when I tell people that storytelling is my full time job they will respond with “Aren’t you lucky! What a great job to have.” and they’re right, it is a great job.

 

There is a story that inhabits the entertainment industry. It gets dragged out every couple of years by film producers to support their latest offering. Sometimes there is a prequel about how they auditioned thousands of hopefuls or were let down by a big name at the last minute, but the meat of the story is always that the director walked in to a supermarket and discovered their new star working behind the counter. “Like a latter day Cinderella” the press releases say; “A modern tale of rags to riches”. It’s a great story but it is just that, a heart warming yarn that fills you with hope… and makes the audience warm to the character played by the lucky store hand. The missing part of this story is that the actor – and they are already an actor, the job at the supermarket is only a fill in while they are “resting” – has been sending their CV to the director in question for months, they may even have been in for an audition. Sure, the meeting in the supermarket happens… but the groundwork has been laid, in both publicity and skills.

 

Now I’m not saying that luck doesn’t come in to it, there are definitely lucky breaks, but if you are already on the road the chances of a lift are far higher than if you are sat on your back porch. All the professional nomads who live at festivals through the summer have put in the hours and developed their skills. Whatever it is that fills your dreams, you can set off towards it, and if there is no lucky break then you get an excellent journey!

 

My big break is still waiting to show itself but I am doing all I can to make sure I can take it if it comes. One more step on the way is that I have been nominated in the British Awards for Storytelling Excellence this year, http://www.storyawards.org.uk/ please check out the competition and vote even if it’s not for me, we can all do with a leg up after all. I may not make the shortlist but there is always next year.

 

So, who knows? Maybe I’ll get spotted by a producer and turn up as the next Doctor Who, it would still be a rags to riches, meteoric rise to fame, but in the meantime I’ve got a pretty good job, I’ve worked hard for it but I’m lucky to be The Travelling Talesman.

 

*** This months FTC is dedicated to all the litter pickers, stewards, caterers, security teams, lampies, noise boys and girls, marquee erectors, toilet cleaners, shower operatives, stage managers and everyone who works stupid hours behind the scenes to make festivals run. Thank you all.