Shooting the Breeze

Shooting the Breeze
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 30, 2014

I was curious. I’d run past them before, always on a Monday morning. As I hugged the perimeter of my local playing fields, I caught sight of their frolicsome little group at the bottom of the hill. It was barely 7.30am. A dozen middle-aged men and women were silhouetted against a weak-willed sun, lugging strange equipment across the damp grass.

Lolloping past them on my first revolution of the park, I saw that they’d settled into a row of director’s chairs and were strapping their wrists and fitting fingerless gloves. Surely archery’s a summer sport, I thought, but they seemed oblivious to the chill wind.

When I panted by on my second revolution (there’s rarely a third), I saw they’d marked out the range with red flags and were sighting their bows against the targets.

I braked to a walk and sidled over to a big man propped in his chair, a whistle resting on his tummy. “You must be freezing!” I said, hoping my opening gambit didn’t sound lame.

“Not as cold as Robin Hood here!” replied the man, elbowing his much smaller neighbour, resplendent in Lincoln green. Robin Hood tipped his bucket hat at me. He’d flipped up the back brim, giving his hat the jaunty air of a trilby. A cluster of moth holes ventilated his thin jumper.

I motioned to his armguard and fingertabs. “I didn’t know archers needed so much protection. What’s this for?” and I pointed to the hammock of black netting rigged under his armpit and across one manly bosom.

“Oh, that’s his man bra!” said a rangy fellow with a Scottish brogue, standing to my left.”

The Scotsman’s bow was a fearsome contraption with a network of wheels, strings and cables. “This bow has a draw weight of 52 pounds,” he said. “When you let go, you don’t want the bowstring skinning your arm.

“That sounds painful.”

“Jim’s a Scot!” piped up Robin Hood. “He doesn’t have feelings!”

I turned to watch one of the ladies. She steadied herself and fitted an arrow into her bow. In one fluid motion, she dug the string into her cheek. Squinting through her peep sight, she released three fingers and the arrow streaked across the range and sank into the target.

“How hard is it to get a bullseye?”

“We don’t call it a bullseye anymore,” said Pete, the man with the whistle. He blew it twice to halt the archers, then led me to the targets.

He pointed to the two central circles of yellow orbited by red, blue, and black. “Six arrows in the gold is called a Golden End. Get ‘em all in this inner circle, see, you’ve scored yourself a Perfect End. And if they’re in the grass, you don’t tell anyone!”

“How many Perfect Ends have you had today?” I asked Robin Hood as he retrieved his arrows.

“Mmm – two or three?”

Jim guffawed: “This year?”

“Leave it out, fellas!” said Robin Hood, giggling. “You know I’m almost blind in one eye!”

He explained as we made our way back to the shooting line. “I was a long distance runner. I pounded the pigment off the back of my iris. Ended up with glaucoma. No more running. Now when I see you joggers I want to yell out: ‘Stop or you’ll go blind!’

So I took up biking, and I rode past this mob one day: ‘That looks like fun!’ My first arrow hit the gold. Second arrow – hit the gold. I’ve been trying to hit it ever since!”

“How well can you see the target?”

“Well, I just aim in the general direction!”

“And that’s why no-one wants to stand next to him!” called Jim.

Pete leaned in and said softly “Jim’s a Grand Master Bowman. You won’t meet too many of them. He’s in the top 5-percent.”

“Impressive,” I said, and stood back as Jim selected an arrow with white feathers and strained back on his bow. The arrow vanished into the far grass.

“Sheesh!” he said. “Bet I’ve lost that one. Sometimes they fly so low they go underground. You need a metal detector to find them.”

Robin Hood grinned. “This is no place to come looking for sympathy,” he whispered as he pulled an arrow from the quiver belted around his waist. “An archer only competes against himself. You’ve gotta brace yourself for failure.”

I shuffled backwards, mindful of his iris issues. “Don’t worry,” he called over his shoulder. “I shoot with both eyes open!”

I lost track of his arrow the instant it loosed, but he turned and winked at me so I knew he’d hit the gold.  

It was time to go. I thanked the friendly bowmen, waved to the women and broke into a gentle jog for home, reminded yet again, I know nothing.