Stepping Back in Time (in which I am inspired to Geekdom) at the Abbey Medieval Festival

Of course my Extravaganza would run off with the gypsies in a heartbeat...

Last weekend we went to the Abbey Medieval Festival and I was inspired to new heights in geekdom. My beloved kinfolk will be suffering for some time to come. 

Wandering from place to place, open-mouthed at the beautiful, carefully researched, costumes, eavesdropping on conversations "of course I had the wool sent over from Northumbria and then spun it using..." witnessing viking war training, wolfhound not-so-training (the Extravaganza was ecstatic at getting to pat the dogs) I was entranced. I went green-faced with covetousness over sumptuous fur trimmed cloaks and beeswax candles, while the kids admired flower bands, wooden swords and cross bows. 

I was most taken with all the dioramas from the times - the tents set up 'in time', often with weaving, cooking or black-smithing displays. 

And it got me thinking... my next book-to-be worked-on is set partly in Iron Age Ireland, and in order to ensure my details are right I really should try some home-re-enactments. I've been looking online for my correct 'working costume' (I'm thinking a nettle dress over a pale pink - madder dye - linen tunic, although a blue-green tweedy overdress over a nettle tunic would also work..) and next week I'm putting my family on an Iron Age Diet... 

My sis-in-law asked me how an Iron Age diet differs from the paeleolithic diet to which I can happily answer - in all the best ways. Wheat, barley and oat were staples, while the heavily cattle-centric society ensured lashings of cream, butter, yoghurts  and cheese. The high dependence on smoking and salting for winter food (and the ease of smoking meats in the perpetually smoky houses) also means that bacon and eggs are a real possibility for breakfast. Of course... I'm going to have to replace all my sugar with honey... and I'm not quite sure how that's going to work. And so many fruits and veggies just weren't available, it's taking me an age to work out which ones we can have and which ones we can't... 

At least I can rest assured that salmon, hazelnuts and porridge are definitely on the agenda. (Meal one - ale stew, meal two - pear-cider roasted lamb...I am suspicioning a fair bit of meat and alcohol may be involved... ) 

Wolfhound training... reminded me of a certain puppy... This wolfhound was supposed to be on the other side of the rope, but decided he'd prefer to be in the audience... fortuitously right next to the Extravaganza...

... be sure to wear some flowers in your hair (Happy Birthday, Mama!)

Just before the taxi came to steal my Mama & Papa away to the airport for their rather eventful* onward trip to East Timor, and after the sparklers had been lit and the cake eaten, I finally got out the flowers I'd gathered and we made celebratory birthday flower wreaths. Or garlands as we decided to call them after dad pointed out the funerary overtones of wreaths.

I was inspired by these gorgeous forest faery crowns over at She Who Rambles and thought joint celebrations for my Mama's July Birthday and my Extravaganza's August birthday was the perfect time to try them.

They did not turn out quite the way I imagined, but voila! photos of the be-flowered birthday girls (and Giggle Bear who kept running off with the garlands).

*My Papa got to the desk at Darwin airport for his flight to East Timor at three am, after waiting in the airport through the midnight hours since the flight from Brisbane, only to be told he only had four months left on his passport, not the required six, so he had to fly home to Melbourne. Poor Mama is in East Timor sans family for her birthday!

28/52

Adventure Boy - with parrot. We took the kids to the Maleny Bird Park for the close of the holidays and walking through the aviary many parrots swooped down to check us out for tempting items like earrings and other piercings.

Giggle-Bear - she seems so grown up now. She is very determined and very expressive and very, very mobile.

The Extravaganza - coming home from the Medieval festival with her beloved pink sword.
"I'm a knight, mummy, I fight people!"
"Knights protected people, darling," I whitewashed.
"I don't protect - I battle!"

Joining (belatedly) with Jodi for a portrait of my little ones once a week, every week, in 2015.

forest

There are certain things one looks for by the end of the school holidays. Outdoors space (to try to stem the ever growing list of breakages), coffee (to bolster the spine) and a certain something to replenish the (somewhat depleted) spirit.

My go-to is a pocket of temperate rainforest in the Sunshine Coast Hinterlands called the Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve. I found it by mistake once when looking for something else (the Botanic Gardens - whose drive was way to steep for me to even consider - cue tantrum, forgotten when we came across the Mary Carincross park.)

On previous trips we've played at the playground, enjoyed the devonshire teas (with views across to the Glasshouse mountains) and oohed about snakes, pademelons, large spiders and bush turkeys, but on this trip we actually entered the heart of the fifty-five hectare reserve.
(Please note - I probably wouldn't have done this - carrying as I was a large baby, a hefty bag, and a sizeable camera - if I'd known the walk was an hour and half round trip - but I'm so glad that I did.)

 The scent - rich and damp and full of life surrounded us as soon as we stepped out of the information centre and into the forest. The callings, whoopings and shrillings of birds was a constant. While our adventure was sadly lacking in snakes, we did see the holes of the giant earthworms (the worms - a few feet long - helpfully mark them by sticking upright leaves in them), a bat colony, a little pademelon (like an undersized wallaby) and some bush turkey compost-nest-mounds.

I also came across information about The Stinging Tree, which will cause 'severe agony for months' with only the lightest of touching and of which I had never heard. The kids went along the path touching everything in the hopes of finding one.  On my return I cast the existence of this tree up to my Beloved and his sister, who laughed at me. 'This is Queensland, what do you expect?'  My sister-in-law assures me that after a few months the agony goes and it's more like an itch. A-hum.

Around us the forest was full of strange noises, lush and green, heavy with moisture, draped abundantly with lianas and full of tangles of roots and vines, and the vast buttresses of ancient trees. Tiny birds flitted and every so often we'd come across brilliantly orange fungi or a scatter of red berries.

Fragments of ideas, jottings for stories, coalesced, as the babe struggled to be down and running in her unsuitable shoes and the kids took turns to hang on my bag and I took one-handed photos, pausing to breathe deep of air as solid as food.

Sometimes, you need to be outside. Sometimes, you need to be reminded of the tang of magic, of the otherness that surrounds.

Look carefully in the photo above to see the bats hanging in the treetops. Their pungent scent gives their presence away long before you see them.

27/52

The Extravaganza - she's been at the scissors again, and this time we've trimmed her hair to short, very short, which will at least cut back on The Great Hair Brushing Battles.  The Extravaganza is a constant source of amazement too me - so bold, so outgoing, so tempestuous and social. I look at her now and I just hear one of the contestants from Project Runway go 'She's fierce'  and she is -outrageous and out there and completely living in the moment.

Giggle-Bear - my solace in times of struggle (for 'struggle' read 'the school holidays'.) Constantly adorable as she explores the world. It's impossible to refrain from swooping her up to cover in kisses and raspberries.

Adventure Boy - Upside Down, showing off on the monkey bars. He loves to be climbing.

Joining with Jodi for a portrait of my little ones once a week, every week in 2015.