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So I wound up joining the re-enactor club that my partner is a member of. Their focus is 14th century, more specifically archery (and yes, both men and women shoot). I'd been going to shoots for the previous year, but hadn't fully joined until New Years Day this year. 
For the two fairs I did this year, we run an archery range. This and just having our encampment set up in general seemed to attract a fair amount of idiots, so I have plenty of stories. Here we go!
First Fair:
Bit o'background: our range at this event was contained by a green shadecloth fence on three sides and the oval's fence on the fourth side. Any stories referring to "Beyond the shooting area" refer to the side behind the fence.
You should know better
So part of the safety setup for our range this year involved putting signs along the path beyond our shooting area saying "CAUTION - LIVE RANGE" or something to that effect (due to where we were, we couldn't quite block off the path behind the range as it was an entrance and exit for emergency vehicles among other things). For further good measure, part of our safety spiel also includes something to the effect of "If you see something that is unsafe, shout "HOLD!" and hold your bow up,".
This did not stop two different re-enactors from another group thinking they could walk through that area *while* the safety spiel was going on. Cue our resident security guard (that was his day job) having words with them. Those two were also reported to their club.
You REALLY should know better.
This idiot gets his OWN section for one reason. Even though he did the exact same thing as above (that is going along the path beyond the fence), he thought it would be a fantastic idea to do so on a HORSE. Cue our resident security guard yelling at him to move, to which the guy decided to be a smartass and make a comment about how we couldn't possibly hit him for whatever reason.
Yeah, end result of that: Resident Security Guard went over and had a chat with him, idiot got out of the way, the incident was reported to both our club president (who was on the organising committee) AND the fair organiser (who is also a re-enactor himself) and the idiot wound up getting slapped with a ban from future events. (This guy was a jouster and therefore should REALLY know better)
Stupid Question Of The Day
More funny than sucky really, but Resident Security Guard is also a leatherworker (he's also now a leatherworking teacher) and was working on a leather sheath for a cleaver for our kitchen. The shape of the cleaver combined with the clamp that he was using to hold the sheath in place while he worked on it and the way he was sitting on his stool resulted in about half a dozen people asking him "Are you making a rocking horse?"
Do not mess with the Kitchen Wenches
For this fair, I mostly helped out in the kitchen since it was my first one. For some really idiotic reason, our kitchen display was not roped off (this will be changing as a result of this incident plus a few others). While we were cooking our Sunday lunch, this guy wandered up and wanted to try some of the food we were cooking (for various reasons, this is always a flat "no"). When he was told no, he then got up incredibly close to one of the other women in the kitchen and was about to push her into our fire pit, when he realised that she was holding a cast-iron frying pan and there were about another half a dozen ladies standing nearby wielding various sharp pointy things (and in my case, another frying pan). He beat a hasty retreat after that.
We're more civilised than that!
Not nearly as sucky, but I had one or two people come up to me while I was cleaning out our pots with sand and ask me if I was cooking with the sand!
Will you kindly go away?!
Part of our display at this fair includes a games tent. We have four games people can choose to play, all of which date to the 14th century or earlier. One of the more popular ones was The Game With No Name. Some guy proceeded to sit down and challenge my partner to a game. My partner won. OK, fair enough, best of three. This guy wound up playing FIVE games and eventually my partner had to forcefully lose to get the guy to leave. That guy then kept coming BACK to our encampment and rubbing it in.
Second Fair:
Bit o'background: For this fair, our range is contained by a table and ropes on one side and by shadecloth on the others. This is partially because our range is located right next to the oval where a lot of demonstrations were held (ours included) and people needed to get through for that.
You should know better part deux
Part of our demonstration involves four of our club members with warbows (very, very powerful longbows) taking aim at a piece of plate armour and turning it into swiss cheese. This typically consists of them lined up with their backs more or less to the audience, then shooting and holding up Armour De Swiss Cheese afterwards . (When the rest of us demonstrate what a volley of shots looks like, we're side-on to the audience. Basically if you think of a 0, the swiss cheese archers shoot from the right hand side and we shoot from the bottom)
As a result, we have a clearance zone that encompasses the ENTIRE left-hand side of the oval and extends all the way around to the top of the oval to account for both sets of archers. During one of our shows, two of our members decided it was a fantastic idea to sit in the shade of a shed that happened to be in the middle of said clearance zone. What was worse was that one of the members was a child and the other was his father
. Yeah, club president was NOT happy and both father and son were chewed out afterwards by three different people.
It's a CLEARANCE ZONE!
Before the first demo even got to the "volley of archers" stage, four people figured that the tables right in the firing line of the volley of archers was the perfect place to eat. Yeah, they received a VERY public (albeit politely worded) warning from our MC to move.
I swear I'm not aiming there!
The end of our show involves all of the archers being split into two groups, half armed with low-poundage bows and the other half armed with hobby horses. The ones with bows are shooting LARP arrows (which are very obviously foam-ended) at the ones on hobby horses.
For three of the four demonstrations we did at the fair, I kept hitting the same guy by accident near the groin.
Yeah...we don't wear cups FYI.
Ooh, moving target practice!
On the second day of the fair, we had some guys from a local TV station doing some filming for a few of their shows. Our patience ran *very* low with them by the end of day due to this and a few other incidents.
I've mentioned we have a clearance zone. This exists for a VERY good reason and is also marked on the fairground map. During one of the demos we did, the volley of archers get lined up...and cue the twat standing in the clearance zone. Worse still, he was right in the firing line of said volley. He gets warned and told to move, which he does. So we get one volley of arrows out the way (we usually do about six volleys).
Then we hear a buzzing noise...and it turns out that the twat was standing on the top left hand side of our clearance zone...and also flying a DRONE. Cue Resident Security Guard chewing him out thoroughly.
What if that had been something else!
The same TV crew also decided that it was appropriate to film Resident Security Guard coming out of his tent first thing in the morning. With absolutely no warning or permission asked. Yeah...he took that about as well as you'd think.
No, the bathrooms are for us too!
The TV crew had been given a special area of the grounds (still in the fairgrounds, but well away from the main action) to do some filming in for one of their shows. This area was blocked off to both the general public and to the rest of us (not a big deal since that area usually just holds food trucks, which had been relocated to a better spot anyway). Unfortunately, the TV crew also decided that rule apparently extended to the toilet block nearby (which had largely been used by the re-enactors and certain people with extra needs [eg disabled folks and parents with prams]) resulting in a number of people getting chewed out for daring to use said toilet block.
Local Council =/= Immunity!
And the final story I sadly wasn't witness to, but ended with someone getting fired.
So, this fair was more or less organised/sponsored by the local council. They were on hand mainly to act as crowd control, but also to ensure that people were following the rules throughout (eg people not sticking their tent pegs into sprinkler lines).
Before two of our shows, we have a trebuchet demonstration run by another group. The clearance zone we have for our show still applies somewhat since the last thing anyone wants is a wild misfire of a watermelon at 150km/h!
Well, one of the guys who was working for the local council decided that the clearance zone and safety barriers we had set up for our range did not apply to him, so he decided to park his truck in the clearance zone while the trebuchet show was going on. He was promptly told to move by Resident security guard. He complies, then decides to get into an argument about it with Resident Security Guard AND Head Marshal due to both that and the fact that our range was "blocking his path" (it wasn't AT ALL).
Long story short, Resident Security Guard, Head Marshal AND Club President all said something to the council and the council guy wound up losing his job for deciding that the rules didn't apply to him!
Unrelated Heat Suck:
So Second Fair was HOT. We got slapped with a fire ban for both days (which meant no cooking demonstrations [we still got fed as there was a kitchen area near the TV crew site we were allowed to use] or musket and cannon demonstrations - the musket group literally had to yell "BANG" for their demo) and before the fair opened up on the first day, our club president told us "Right, there is evidence of 14th century peasants stripping down to their underwear while doing hard labour in the fields. If you get hot, take your woollen tunics/dresses/hose off and ladies, dunk your veils/coifs in cold water if you need to." (Most of us had our woollen kit on for the parade and any "official" photography, but stripped it off otherwise.)
That advice (along with having water on us at all times) managed to result in none of us going down due to heatstroke. Unfortunately however, not everyone got the memo and a tarot card reader in a tent about 3-4 tents down from our encampment was taken off by an ambulance. Cue the line "Well, she should've seen it coming" becoming a running joke for the rest of the day. (She was fine and returned the next day, wisely sitting in the shade and staying hydrated!)
For the two fairs I did this year, we run an archery range. This and just having our encampment set up in general seemed to attract a fair amount of idiots, so I have plenty of stories. Here we go!
First Fair:
Bit o'background: our range at this event was contained by a green shadecloth fence on three sides and the oval's fence on the fourth side. Any stories referring to "Beyond the shooting area" refer to the side behind the fence.
You should know better
So part of the safety setup for our range this year involved putting signs along the path beyond our shooting area saying "CAUTION - LIVE RANGE" or something to that effect (due to where we were, we couldn't quite block off the path behind the range as it was an entrance and exit for emergency vehicles among other things). For further good measure, part of our safety spiel also includes something to the effect of "If you see something that is unsafe, shout "HOLD!" and hold your bow up,".
This did not stop two different re-enactors from another group thinking they could walk through that area *while* the safety spiel was going on. Cue our resident security guard (that was his day job) having words with them. Those two were also reported to their club.
You REALLY should know better.
This idiot gets his OWN section for one reason. Even though he did the exact same thing as above (that is going along the path beyond the fence), he thought it would be a fantastic idea to do so on a HORSE. Cue our resident security guard yelling at him to move, to which the guy decided to be a smartass and make a comment about how we couldn't possibly hit him for whatever reason.
Yeah, end result of that: Resident Security Guard went over and had a chat with him, idiot got out of the way, the incident was reported to both our club president (who was on the organising committee) AND the fair organiser (who is also a re-enactor himself) and the idiot wound up getting slapped with a ban from future events. (This guy was a jouster and therefore should REALLY know better)
Stupid Question Of The Day
More funny than sucky really, but Resident Security Guard is also a leatherworker (he's also now a leatherworking teacher) and was working on a leather sheath for a cleaver for our kitchen. The shape of the cleaver combined with the clamp that he was using to hold the sheath in place while he worked on it and the way he was sitting on his stool resulted in about half a dozen people asking him "Are you making a rocking horse?"
Do not mess with the Kitchen Wenches
For this fair, I mostly helped out in the kitchen since it was my first one. For some really idiotic reason, our kitchen display was not roped off (this will be changing as a result of this incident plus a few others). While we were cooking our Sunday lunch, this guy wandered up and wanted to try some of the food we were cooking (for various reasons, this is always a flat "no"). When he was told no, he then got up incredibly close to one of the other women in the kitchen and was about to push her into our fire pit, when he realised that she was holding a cast-iron frying pan and there were about another half a dozen ladies standing nearby wielding various sharp pointy things (and in my case, another frying pan). He beat a hasty retreat after that.
We're more civilised than that!
Not nearly as sucky, but I had one or two people come up to me while I was cleaning out our pots with sand and ask me if I was cooking with the sand!
Will you kindly go away?!
Part of our display at this fair includes a games tent. We have four games people can choose to play, all of which date to the 14th century or earlier. One of the more popular ones was The Game With No Name. Some guy proceeded to sit down and challenge my partner to a game. My partner won. OK, fair enough, best of three. This guy wound up playing FIVE games and eventually my partner had to forcefully lose to get the guy to leave. That guy then kept coming BACK to our encampment and rubbing it in.
Second Fair:
Bit o'background: For this fair, our range is contained by a table and ropes on one side and by shadecloth on the others. This is partially because our range is located right next to the oval where a lot of demonstrations were held (ours included) and people needed to get through for that.
You should know better part deux
Part of our demonstration involves four of our club members with warbows (very, very powerful longbows) taking aim at a piece of plate armour and turning it into swiss cheese.
This typically consists of them lined up with their backs more or less to the audience, then shooting and holding up Armour De Swiss Cheese afterwards . (When the rest of us demonstrate what a volley of shots looks like, we're side-on to the audience. Basically if you think of a 0, the swiss cheese archers shoot from the right hand side and we shoot from the bottom)As a result, we have a clearance zone that encompasses the ENTIRE left-hand side of the oval and extends all the way around to the top of the oval to account for both sets of archers. During one of our shows, two of our members decided it was a fantastic idea to sit in the shade of a shed that happened to be in the middle of said clearance zone. What was worse was that one of the members was a child and the other was his father
. Yeah, club president was NOT happy and both father and son were chewed out afterwards by three different people. It's a CLEARANCE ZONE!
Before the first demo even got to the "volley of archers" stage, four people figured that the tables right in the firing line of the volley of archers was the perfect place to eat. Yeah, they received a VERY public (albeit politely worded) warning from our MC to move.
I swear I'm not aiming there!
The end of our show involves all of the archers being split into two groups, half armed with low-poundage bows and the other half armed with hobby horses. The ones with bows are shooting LARP arrows (which are very obviously foam-ended) at the ones on hobby horses.
For three of the four demonstrations we did at the fair, I kept hitting the same guy by accident near the groin.
Yeah...we don't wear cups FYI. Ooh, moving target practice!
On the second day of the fair, we had some guys from a local TV station doing some filming for a few of their shows. Our patience ran *very* low with them by the end of day due to this and a few other incidents.
I've mentioned we have a clearance zone. This exists for a VERY good reason and is also marked on the fairground map. During one of the demos we did, the volley of archers get lined up...and cue the twat standing in the clearance zone. Worse still, he was right in the firing line of said volley. He gets warned and told to move, which he does. So we get one volley of arrows out the way (we usually do about six volleys).
Then we hear a buzzing noise...and it turns out that the twat was standing on the top left hand side of our clearance zone...and also flying a DRONE. Cue Resident Security Guard chewing him out thoroughly.
What if that had been something else!
The same TV crew also decided that it was appropriate to film Resident Security Guard coming out of his tent first thing in the morning. With absolutely no warning or permission asked. Yeah...he took that about as well as you'd think.
No, the bathrooms are for us too!
The TV crew had been given a special area of the grounds (still in the fairgrounds, but well away from the main action) to do some filming in for one of their shows. This area was blocked off to both the general public and to the rest of us (not a big deal since that area usually just holds food trucks, which had been relocated to a better spot anyway). Unfortunately, the TV crew also decided that rule apparently extended to the toilet block nearby (which had largely been used by the re-enactors and certain people with extra needs [eg disabled folks and parents with prams]) resulting in a number of people getting chewed out for daring to use said toilet block.
Local Council =/= Immunity!
And the final story I sadly wasn't witness to, but ended with someone getting fired.
So, this fair was more or less organised/sponsored by the local council. They were on hand mainly to act as crowd control, but also to ensure that people were following the rules throughout (eg people not sticking their tent pegs into sprinkler lines).
Before two of our shows, we have a trebuchet demonstration run by another group. The clearance zone we have for our show still applies somewhat since the last thing anyone wants is a wild misfire of a watermelon at 150km/h!
Well, one of the guys who was working for the local council decided that the clearance zone and safety barriers we had set up for our range did not apply to him, so he decided to park his truck in the clearance zone while the trebuchet show was going on. He was promptly told to move by Resident security guard. He complies, then decides to get into an argument about it with Resident Security Guard AND Head Marshal due to both that and the fact that our range was "blocking his path" (it wasn't AT ALL).
Long story short, Resident Security Guard, Head Marshal AND Club President all said something to the council and the council guy wound up losing his job for deciding that the rules didn't apply to him!
Unrelated Heat Suck:
So Second Fair was HOT. We got slapped with a fire ban for both days (which meant no cooking demonstrations [we still got fed as there was a kitchen area near the TV crew site we were allowed to use] or musket and cannon demonstrations - the musket group literally had to yell "BANG" for their demo) and before the fair opened up on the first day, our club president told us "Right, there is evidence of 14th century peasants stripping down to their underwear while doing hard labour in the fields. If you get hot, take your woollen tunics/dresses/hose off and ladies, dunk your veils/coifs in cold water if you need to." (Most of us had our woollen kit on for the parade and any "official" photography, but stripped it off otherwise.)
That advice (along with having water on us at all times) managed to result in none of us going down due to heatstroke. Unfortunately however, not everyone got the memo and a tarot card reader in a tent about 3-4 tents down from our encampment was taken off by an ambulance. Cue the line "Well, she should've seen it coming" becoming a running joke for the rest of the day. (She was fine and returned the next day, wisely sitting in the shade and staying hydrated!)
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