Man Enough
Man Enough
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday November 30, 2013
‘The bloke’ is back. I know this because I went to the Medieval Fair in York. Never have I seen so many grunting he-men in one sweltering paddock.
I was at a loose end a few Sundays back. My two smallest urchins needed an adventure while their father was away. As I pulled off the highway into York at 10am, the gauge in my car read 34-degrees. I cruised along Balladong street looking for a shady park. Six-year-old son spotted a hulk of a man crossing the street in chest plate and chain mail. “Look Mum! It’s a dress-up! He’s wearing a metal skirt!”
“Yes, honey. We’ve entered the Dark Ages. That chain mail frock is called a hauberk. It stops a sword from cutting your legs.” His eyes were saucers, so I notched up a gear.
“See his big sword? It’s so sharp he could cut slice you in half with one blow!”
Three-year-old daughter wailed: “I wanna go home!”
Her brother, shocked at the grim and gritty business of trial by combat, grabbed her hand: ‘Don’t worry. We’ll still get an ice-cream.”
We three peasants joined the queue of gentlefolk squashing through the makeshift gate. We shuffled forward and handed the festival wench a tenner.
Inside the fairground, bosomy CWA matrons were peddling Christmas cakes and heraldic tea towels. Big fellas in velvet tunics and hessian trousers were flogging home-made weapons. “What’s this called?” asked my youngster, pointing at a knife with a slender blade.
“That, my young man, is a stiletto.”
I smirked. “Yep, my feet kill in those!”
The weapons merchant leaned in towards my boy: “Your ma’s a smarty-pants i’nt she?!” My 6-year-old agreed, then spotted a chain-mail tunic hanging from the awning: “What’s that?”
“Aah, that one’s got a strange name too – it’s called a cuirass. Can you say that? Cweer-aaas.”
“Plenty of them ‘round here!” (I was on a roll).
He cocked a shaggy eyebrow at me.
“Let’s go get an ice-cream!” I said, wishing medieval shopkeepers didn’t take themselves so seriously. We trooped off to the Penny Farthing Sweets van.
An ear-splitting metallic screech shook the crowd. Small daughter clapped her hands over her ears. Then a baritone boomed over the loudspeaker: “Hear ye! Hear ye! Geoffrey the Blaggard of York will duel to the death with the imposter El Sid from Goomalling. Mark my words, blood will be spilled today.”
At that moment, I heard a chink-chink-chink and turned to see an armoured giant half as wide as he was tall heading towards us. Small daughter darted behind my legs.
He wore a black helmet that jutted over his forehead, leaving two metal slits for his eyes. A wild gingery beard joined up with the shag pile on his chest. His XXXX girth strained against a belt that held a 5-pronged mace in its scabbard. The crowd peeled back to let him pass.
His opponent, El Sid from Goomalling, was a dark knight with curls and brooding looks. “Today is a fine day to die!” he bellowed, and we reciprocated with cheering, clapping and snickering.
And so the bludgeon fight began. The mob roared its appreciation for two beefcakes sweating it out in full armour on a baking hot day. While my children gaped from behind the rope fence, I cast my gaze at the throng.
There were no vapid metrosexuals on display here. I was a maiden amongst the countryside’s best brawn: men in mud-caked boots and faded Levis and wraparound sunnies. There wasn’t a pastel polo-shirt or a pair of suede loafers in sight. For the first time since my high school ball, I felt petite.
I turned back to the arena to see El Sid using his murderous blows to annihilate the home town hero. Geoffrey the Blaggard, his throat slit, collapsed in mock agony, writhing in the hot sand and grass clippings. The kids were speechless.
We wandered back to the car as Geoffrey revived himself with a stubbie of VB. I reflected that even the out-of-town blokes looked man-ful today with their burly chests and thickets of leg hair.
Making a rare trip to St Georges Terrace last Friday, I was perplexed by the male vanity on parade. By lunchtime, the city was teeming with dandies flaunting their over-pumped torsos, finicky hairstyles and stage-managed stubble. Is this what women want?
The man’s man I live with has no truck with titivation. He’s a retrosexual – the kind who hails the Dunlop Volley as the greatest sandshoe ever made. A guy who carries his six-pack in a brown paper bag. I tolerate his quirks because I don’t want a bloke who primps more than I do.
Later, on the drive back to Perth, I asked my youngster which part of the Medieval Fair he’d liked the most. Was it the bruising contests in the arena? The gruesome armaments? The Herculean warriors?
“I liked the honey-tasting best,” he said. But the raspberry ice-cream came a close second.