Do you know of any London are fanfiction (films) slash writers? A radio station in London has contacted me and wants to interview one.

I couldn’t think of anyone off the top of my head, but if you are a movie-fandom slash writer who lives in London and wants to be on the radio, please get in contact and I’ll put you in touch with Laura and the radio people

But I had a great time!  I learned single stepping and how to wave my hanky.  And I learned the choruses of two dances and a figure from each one.  Also I got to use the sticks and hit other people’s sticks, and swagger around with one on my shoulder.

It’s amazing the difference the music made!  Without it I had a terrible time remembering which arm went with which leg.  With it, everything seemed natural.  But I am so unfit.  I had to keep stopping and sitting out while I got my breath back.  One more reason to keep on with the treadmill in between.  I also had no idea that I would come back and find the muscles in my calves, thighs, across my ribs and down my arms aching.  It’s more of a full body thing than I thought.

Altogether I’m very enthused and definitely going back.  And now I’m wondering what colour I want my waistcoat to be

As for the positively medieval part of the post, I have to recommend this blog

Got Medieval

because my life was not complete without ambulatory genetalia.  I particularly like the one on stilts, and the girl power one with the crowned vagina being carried on high by three phalluses.  I swear that one in the hat is wearing roller skates, though.

Tell seven random and/or interesting things about myself. Get five blog buddies to play, too and link to their blogs. Don’t forget to post the rules.

Of course I don’t have seven interesting things to tell! I’m a writer, all the interest in my life, thank God, goes on inside my head Still, I’ll try.

1. I am trained to lead a Regia war-band and to fight with spear and hand-axe (blunt, of course). This is with my Saxon re-enactment society Regia Anglorum.

2. My family and I have appeared on Blue Peter (the famous children’s TV series in the UK). Again this was with Regia. We invaded the studio to illustrate a piece they were doing on Up-helly-aa, which was all very embarrassing because normally we have nothing to do with people who think Vikings wore horned helmets.

3. I currently have only one front tooth, the other one having been pulled out to deal with an infection at the root. I’ve got to wait for about 6 months until the bone is healed before I can have a replacement tooth screwed in to the bone.

4. I know how to spin, weave, make leather shoes, light a fire from flint and tinder, embroider, play the deer-bone flute, recite Caedmon’s song in Anglo-Saxon, cook bread on an open fire, carve a spoon, use a shave-horse and a pole-lathe, thatch a house and lime-plaster its walls. And I’ve been part of a team which has created an Anglo-Saxon longhall and village in two acres of land in Kent:

5. I visited Soviet Russia while it was still the USSR, saw Lenin in his tomb and bought woodwork tools from G.U.M the one and only department shop in the country.  While I was there, I also rode in a troika through snowy forests at a temperature of -20 Centigrade.  The chocolate icecream in Moscow was the best I’ve ever had.

6. I was married in the same church that Oscar Wilde was married in.

7. I married my first ever boyfriend, and we’ve been together 18 years this year

I tag Erastes, Lee Rowan, Charlie Cochrane, Lee Benoit and Emma Collingwood

The Macaronis has a post about women in m/m fiction, written by Lee Rowan, author of ‘Ransom’.

And the Britwriter’s blog has stunned us all by being so popular it’s had to turn people away.  Currently featuring posts about village fairs, stately homes, the fine art of gardening on one’s allotment, cultural differences in interpretation of Torchwood, and the pearly kings and queens of London.

We’ve also got an all day Brit-picking clinic lined up for Friday, where anyone can drop by and ask about anything required in Brit-picking their stories/novels/fic.  I’m hoping that will be something we can do regularly which will be fun for all concerned

I had an interesting Bank Holiday weekend Spent Saturday being a Saxon and discovered that I honestly have lost any interest I had in the period. However, wandering around the multi-period show, we found an outfit called NFOE (New France and Old England). They reenact mid 18th Century America, when it was still a battle ground between French, English and Native American forces. Given Josh and Giniw, this struck me as wonderful. And it was even more wonderful to find out that they belonged to an umbrella organization called ‘Lace Wars‘ So I contacted them and will be going to my first 18th Century show on the 17th of May, at Wimpole Hall just down the road from where I live Result!

We all spent Sunday with heat stroke from being outside on a field all day long on Saturday without drinking enough. Then on Monday we saw Iron Man, which is excellent! I want a suit like that! And if anyone fancies writing Stark/Jarvis slash through the medium of the suit, put me on the list of readers now

False Colors has hit a snag. Alfie threw a strop, and now Fitzroy’s wife wants to talk to him about his relationship with her husband. Plot wise this is all very necessary in order for him to find out that John saved his life, but suddenly my confident ‘oh yes, I’ll have it done by the end of the week’ is looking dodgy.

However, I did achieve something this week I did a follow on to my blog about research. Once you’ve got it, what do you do with it? How much is too much? And what do you do when research indicates that history was just plain nasty? You can find that over here at the Macaronis.

Click here to view the embedded video.

GnlEI: oh hai
Strvn: hai
We can has golden ballz.  Mad king is mad.  Strvn *is Nigmtik*
GnlEI: u suxxors

Jack is keeping his baby

Though possibly you may need to read this first, just to make everything clear: What baby, for crying out loud?!!
All I can say is LOL!  Also ‘best vid I’ve ever seen’

The Mediaeval Baebes are sort of the Spice Girls of early medieval music. I thought there was a slight ‘re-enactment fayre’ fakery about them until they began to sing, at which point I forgave them for unashamedly pandering to the ‘I could have been your white knight and carried you away’ dreams of the predominantly older men in the audience

But boy can they sing! The music is ancient, but given new and vibrant adaptation, and one of the band would explain the story of each piece before they sang it – so each piece was like a glimpse into the strange world of the past as well as being gorgeous to hear. Being medieval, there was much warning of the transience of beauty, the immanence of death, the tragedy of existence etc, but also in continual counterpoint a celebration of beauty and fun and things that made life worth living.

One of the members of the band – I’m not a sufficient fan to know which one – had recently had a baby and had brought it along, where it was wonderfully silent except to gurgle endearingly at the end of a lullaby

But the concert was held in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral, and the band played on a dais at the altar end of the room, looked down on by a statue of Mary:

They seemed as hyped by the significance of this as I was – as an awful lot of their repertoire consists of songs to Mary or about Mary and Jesus. Towards the end of the evening they sang a lullaby which was clearly Biblical fanfic, in which a woman says goodbye to her infant son, knowing that Herod has sent out the order to have all male children killed. In that setting, with that music, it almost brought me to tears.

Thankfully they also sang some cheerful and amusing stuff – I particularly liked the medieval bawdy song about the man who had drunk too much to get it up; which they accompanied with appropriate arm gestures

It was very interesting to be in a context and listening to music which was so very much a part of a female tradition. I found it something of an eye-opener. I’ve never had much time for Mary in the past, but perhaps now I will

Photography was forbidden during the concert but here are the band signing stuff afterwards:

And my realplayer is terribly disorganized so I couldn’t find that lullaby, but here is a sample of the sort of music they played. They played it LOUD and lo! it was good

Temptasyon by the Mediaeval Baebes ]]> http://alexbeecroft.com/2008/03/even-my-concerts-are-medieval/feed/ 0