Creative anachronism
Quite a long time ago now, I was in the SCA, which stands for the Society for Creative Anachronism. The tagline on the website of the local chapter is "Learn history by living it!", and that is pretty much what it's all about; the Society isn't about literal historical re-enactment (there are plenty of other groups who do that), but about creatively fitting historical activities into a modern context which is safe, fun, and in general a lot more inclusive than was the case at the time.
Mock fights are quite a big part of it, but you can be not just a member but a very active member without ever taking part in one. They're quite fun to watch, though. You have two people dressed up in impressive-looking armour with a whole lot of padding underneath (armour stops you getting stabbed, but it doesn't at all stop you getting bruised!), and then they bash each other up with wooden swords that can't do any real damage, other than bruises if your padding is insufficient, and there's a marshal following a set of rules to decide who has injured whom, when, and how badly. A winner is determined, and then both combatants go off and have a jolly good feast. Great for working off surplus energy. It's also how they determine who the local King or Queen is; there's an annual tournament, and whoever wins it gets to be monarch for a year. So I can truthfully claim I know an ex-king. Nice bloke, too.
But the Society does a great deal else, too. The bardic arts are greatly encouraged, as you can see from the photo. While I'm always up for a bit of lyric-writing, though, that's not the main draw for me. I was in it for the textile crafts. That was where I learnt to do lucet cording and tablet weaving; I still do the former occasionally, but not the latter. And, of course, you do dress up; my historical persona was 12th-century, so I made a couple of bliauts in an almost entirely historically correct way. Almost. In the 12th century, incredibly, they sewed everything up with running stitches. They hadn't yet latched on to the idea that a backstitched seam is much stronger and more stable. I backstitched; nobody was ever going to know the difference unless I caught one of my dangling sleeves on something and the seam didn't pucker!
Unfortunately, the SCA wasn't popular in Sheffield, where I was living at the time, and I had a lot of difficulty in getting to events, since I don't drive. (I did get to one or two things on the train, but since there was nothing going on locally, that tended to be quite expensive.) So in the end I gave up on it; it was a pity, but I felt if I couldn't actually get to anything there was no point in being a member.
And then, over the weekend, I discovered that there's a very active local chapter... and, not only that, but they already have someone in a wheelchair, so they're presumably well used to navigating that. And I thought... ooh.
So I may very well rejoin; but there are a few questions I need answering first, the most important one being if there's anyone who either lives in this town, lives close enough to it that it's not out of their way, or passes through it (or very close to it) on the way to regular events, and who could give me and the wheelchair a lift. I have accordingly e-mailed the chatelaine, and we shall see what she says.
If I do rejoin, I'm going to have to do some serious rethinking. I can't go back to the old 12th-century persona, because I can't wear a bliaut; I need some kind of separates, even if the combination looks like a dress, because of Sibyl. The Society has a fairly generous definition of "mediaeval", so you can get away with anything from Roman times to Elizabethan. For a male persona, it doesn't really matter, because you wore some kind of trousers for most of that period unless you were something like a Roman senator; for a female one, though, I think I'd be pretty much limited to the extreme ends of that spectrum. Ancient Brits could get away with a skirt and shawl, with some kind of top hiding under the shawl, rather than a dress; Elizabethans tended to wear the kind of dresses that you could effectively split in two and they'd look about the same as long as the top half was suitably tucked in. Ancient Brit would definitely be a lot easier both to sew and to wear. I'm not sure about a ruff; I'd be afraid of catching my earrings in it! But I'm pretty flexible regarding gender, so being some kind of historical bloke might well be the best solution.
It is worth mentioning here that I used to have a lot of American SCA friends online, and quite a few of them just used to bat around in pyjamas and claim to be Celtic. I suppose that does depend quite heavily on the nature of the pyjamas; to be fair I do have some rather fun purple tartan-ish pyjama bottoms that would work at a pinch, but... h'mm, not sure about that! Still, there's no denying it would be both comfortable and Sibyl-friendly. Perhaps if I could make a shawl that went with them, I could get away with that. (Or, at least, didn't actually clash. I don't think the ancient Celts were quite so strong on colour co-ordination as we are these days.)
I shall try not to get ahead of myself; we'll see what happens when I hear back from the chatelaine. Besides, it's not as if I haven't the script to pull into its final shape and the inevitable progression of bead earrings to make (expecting a very new colour in the Lipsis today, and I am quite excited about that because it's the one colour that has been conspicuously missing from my collection, a lavender purple!). And I'm still trying to decide which OU module to do in October (I have reached that odd point in my degree course where I do a non-maths module, having just taken a year's break to try to get my Italian back up to scratch, and there are so many intriguing choices available that I'm stymied... but I think it'll be some kind of linguistics module). And there are still some more summer skirts to sew because of this ghastly heatwave. So if I do end up rejoining, making my garb will be yet another thing to fit in... somehow...
...but somehow, I always do.
