Pumpkins and history

My turn to blog for a change, but Katy will do Friday after I’ve done Saturday and Sunday.

On Saturday Katy was working and the big four all had music school. With one car that meant: take the children to music school, leave the big four and take Katy to the shop, drive back to music school with A and buy lunch on the way. Pick up the children, then drive to the shop and feed the children in a back room.

As it was Katy’s first go completely on her own at the shop I stayed around for moral support while she tackled the burglar alarm, a troublesome cash till, hoovering, counting money and I made sure she had a cup of tea at hand before I left.

When I got back to music school J was out as he’d forgotten his recorder and so didn’t want to do the last session. (They all do a communal sing, then music games to do music theory, then the last session is using instruments in groups.) K and L are in the same group for the last session and used random percussion, M got to play piano but J sat it out. I think M finds the singing hard due to language problems, so we’re seeing if he can drop that one and I’ll do English with him.

Katy survived her first solo bit at the shop, nearly managed to sell two slings to a dad-to-be before his partner talked him out of them 🙁 , and then after lunch we headed off to the Pumpkin Fair in the sticks that we’d been to before. (All in the name of broadening M’s cultural horizons, of course.)

There were lots of pumpkins, a display of training puppies to be hearing dogs for the deaf, the scouts were doing a throw-wooden-balls-at-crockery stall again which M liked, various stalls selling things, a fire engine and nice fire fighters who talked about their equipment and gave out stickers etc. to the children. The fair’s publicity said that they were moving with the times and so had some Sealed Knot people. (Only a few hundred years off the pace – maybe they’ll be up to Regency next year.)

The Sealed Knotters were good – a nice encampment to wander around, M, K and I got put in the stocks, and then they did a display of soldiery. This was pikemen (I resisted the urge to join in 🙂 ), drummers showing the various tunes they did to signal different things, musketeers and a cannon. The MC was good and explained everything (flash in the pan, plain as a pikestaff, the muskets not being rifled etc.) and apart from the loud bangs everyone enjoyed it. The cannon was a weird double-barrelled type I’d not seen before: it had two separate barrels next to each other on the same carriage which were loaded and fired separately. Also, they were made of a normal metal barrel wrapped in leather for extra strength (the leather goes on wet, then shrinks as it dries). I got chatting to the Sealed Knotters afterwards and they said they also have a 6 barrelled cannon, where you fire them by lighting a small trough of gunpowder (like an old-fashioned camera flash) which goes to each of the barrels’ touch holes. We then bought loads of pumpkins and went home.

Today we were a bit late getting organised, so couldn’t take advantage of the lift offered by a friend for M to go to the Catholic church. So we drove there ourselves and I went in with him and K while Katy got lunch sorted. Our favourite shoe shop (where each of the children’s first shoes, and about half of the children’s shoes in total, have come from) was having an extra day for its closing down sale, so bargains were snapped up. This made us a bit later than planned to go to Kentwell for the Michaelmas mini recreation. We managed to all get in free despite me not being able to find my participant’s passport, and wandered around for 3 hours or so.

It was very nice to see friends – I hope M didn’t get too bored with us chatting – and the weather was glorious. First stop was the Military Pavilion, then the woodsmen, where M got to have a go at sawing a log with a bow saw. The potters were next, where the potter’s creation went a bit wobbly. He cut it in half from top to bottom with a cheese wire thing to show how he’d got the thickness wrong. One of the kilns was firing, with a lovely big fire underneath. Next stop was the foundry, where unfortunately they had no furnace as it had cracked and so they were rebuilding it. I explained as best I could to M about how they made moulds in sand boxes, or by carving blocks of plaster or soapstone.

The pigsty still had a giant old pig, who looked like it had got stuck in the doorway and then fallen asleep. Next door to it were some very nice looking black piglets. On to the Cott (more chatting) where A was re-united with some of her favourite people in the whole world (who had grown since the summer), the wool shed, the dyers and the house made of horse poo. (Explaining to M how the wattle and daub walls were made was interesting!) There was a pole lathe being operating by a spooner that J’s friendly with (who is a very nice man and usually has a group of boy participants around him making things with his help). K wanted me to make him a pole lathe, and lovely though I think they are I doubt that will happen any time soon!

A quick stop at the stables and forge, a look at the monster carp in the moat, the Great Kitchens (where preparations were nearly finished for the harvest feast), the scrivener next door who wrote everyone’s name nicely and then out into the courtyard for some festivities.

One of the gentry girls had been crowned Queen of the Harvest and arrived in a decorated cart. She was received by the senior gentry with many a Huzzah! One of the washerwomen (a lovely woman who turns into “a scrubber” – her own words – in Tudor times) was also crowned Queen of the Harvest, and they both sat on thrones most regally. The alchemists had been lurking with bowls and lit matches (the Tudor kind – a length of rope soaked in saltpetre, that smoulders for a long time when lit), and they turned into slightly anti-climactic fireworks. (Obviously lulling the gentry into a false sense of security for next time 😉 .) There was a random race where four blokes had to run off and fetch a goose that had supposedly been stolen, the monk / priest (who used to be J and K’s school master) blessed and prayed and then all the participants had a feast.

This was followed by follow-the-leader style dancing around the courtyard, and everyone apart from J and me joined in (including A, under her own steam). I sneaked off with J and M a bit early so we could catch some of the other bits before they closed. This was the cedar lawn with tree carved into the Tower of Babel, butter being made in the dairy, the bakehouse where they were just clearing up, the still room where J and M helped with grinding the herbs into medicines and the camera obscura which worked very well due to the bright sunshine.

The alchemists were sort of open, and had some cow and sheep skulls. I learned that cows take up grass by wrapping their tongues around it and pulling rather than biting as they have no front teeth. Sheep have hard bony pads at the front so they can cut the grass shorter (so you can graze cows then sheep on the same field, but not the other way around). Trying to explain what an alchemist is to M was a bit of a challenge, but I think he managed to not misinterpret all the skulls as occult paraphenalia 🙂 . Back to the front gate just before closing time via the stocks, the dove cote, the Military Pavilion and the market, then home.

I fell asleep (fortunately Katy was driving), so she told me afterwards about the reaction to a nice sunset.
L: Look, a shepherd’s pie sky!
K: (correcting L) No, it’s an angel pie sky!
K: (correcting himself) No, it’s a shepherd’s delight sky!

Photos on Flickr in due course.