The first people I encountered on the day was Contact Front, the Vietnam re-enactment group, walking through around the site in skirmish line in silence and communicating only by hand signals. This was actually quite confronting and I know there’s some debate over whether it’s too soon after the event for such a group.

Members of the Ludi Gladiatorii Romani were practicing knife fighting, under instructions and with dummy weapons, in their camp enclosure. This was interesting and I would have liked to have chatted with these guys to find out more about them but there was no one available who was not fighting.

In the main arena, any number of supposedly medieval groups in period costume flailed away at each other with swords in a thoroughly pointless display of stupidity. These guys know nothing of period fencing and many cannot even hold their weapons effectively. They are nothing more than drinking clubs who wear funny clothes.

Once this dross was cleared away, the Australian Napoleonic Association and similar groups gave a demonstration of fire and movement early nineteenth century style. The were using black powder muskets and, even though there was less than a dozen soldiers per side, the field was soon obscured by smoke as they by turns advanced or retreated in line and good order. Surprisingly, the French lost.

They were followed by Prima Spada School of Fence performing a skit about dueling in the Renaissance, starting with a insult given (almost) unintentionally in the street and proceeding to naked blades at dawn. Then they got silly and it dissolved into an all-out brawl.

The question I kept asking myself as I toured the site, the groups and watched the various events is what do these people want visitors to get out of their display. For the most part, I had trouble understanding or discovering what the lesson each group or display intended to me to learn.

There seems to be no value proposition presented to the audience other than “oh, look at the pretty costumes and the people acting silly.” There is nothing to draw people in and get them interested in history. The whole event is entire passive and a spectator sport. It’s just too easy to change channels and do something else. In short, everyone seemed happy just to say “we’re re-enactors and we’re here to stay” – like a pride march for history nerds.

And there’s the rub. From the apparent age of the re-enactors, they’re not here to stay for very long. Unless something is done to introduce new people into the fold, the entire re-enactment movement is liable to die a slow, withering death.

In order to avoid this fate, something needs to be done to, for instance, convert the public who attend History Alive and other events into paid up members of all groups which take their historical fancies. There needs to be more engagement with the public. There needs to be a program of getting the public involved, of teaching them about history, and of explaining to them what we find so cool about the past. We need to turn them into us.

Last Sunday was the twelfth anniversary of the day we were married. Yay us! After all we’ve been through it was a bit of a shock to realise that we’re still together and that we actually like hanging out with each other. To celebrate, we did two things: dinner at a new (for us) french restaurant called C’est Bon on Saturday night, traipsing around the Glasshouse Mountains looking at rocks and stuff Sunday. Both our Satruday night and our Sunday wanderings were brilliant.

C’est Bon has earned itself a good rep both generally and within the french ex-pat community in Brisbane. The restaurant is rather expensive ($150+ for two) but food is simply brilliant and well worth the price. The aspect that sold us was the entree and dessert platters. We love sampling the range of tastes offered by a restaurant in order to decide whether we’ll go back. The degustation d’entrees consisted of all the standards: pate, tomato tart, escargots, scollops (coquille St Jacques) and a mousse of goat’s cheese. I took ownership of the snails and seafood immediately and had a little of whatever else Kathi deigned to leave on the plate. For mains, she choose the Duck a l’Orange (another classic) while I opted for the cassoulet because it always reminds me of our stay at Carcassonne. Both these dishes a la version original tend to be a little too oily for Australian tastes but these successfully and very gracefully leapt this hurdle. The degustation de
desserts included a mini creme brulee and mini creme caramel, as you  would expect, but added to these a lemon tart and a chocolate tart whose filling was so dense it generated its own gravity. During dessert, the last Brisbane Riverfire ‘dump and burn’ by the soon-to-be-retired F-111s roared by.

Glasshouse Mountains Excursion

The Glasshouse Mountains north of Brisbane were given their name in 1770 by James Cook who likened these volcanic plugs to glasshouses standing above a generally flat landscape. We wandered about the various lookouts and belleviews that are noted on the maps and took a bunch of photos. One of the things that surprised us was that the local aboriginal legends about the formation of the Glasshouse Mountains were completely lacking. For me, the legend is interesting because it, like many other legends of coastal peoples in the northern half of the continent, speaks of a rapidly incroaching tide which in undates the coastline. Is this a memory of the rising sea-level at the end of the last ice age? The legend is fairly well known but there is no eveidence of it at any of the sites we visited except for cryptic notes saying things like “this mountain features heavily in local legends” or that it is “considered sacred by the traditional owners of the area.” Perhaps, we theorise, the owners of the legend have not given their permission to have the story displayed publicly. Perhaps, it’s a simple oversight by the EPA who manage the area for the state govenment. Hands up anyone with more info? I’m dead keen to know.

SCA - Fencing Fest - 2009 - Prize Fight

This is a very different SCA to the one I knew and refused to have anything to do with twenty years ago. These guys are interested in metal weapons rather than foam and are actually interested in history – unlike the previous lot. I managed (not too surprisingly, it seems) get get entangled into a couple of discussions on such wide ranging topic as properly use of the buckler from the I.33 manuscript (AD 1295) to Achille Marozzo (AD 1536) and opinions on the merits and otherwise of the German longsword school as taught by Joachim Meyer and others. All were scholarly and reasoned debates.

We watched their competition and the grading of a student to the next grade. There are some obvious differences in style between our groups. The first is the ACA preference for heavier and less whippy blades – which has inspired me to research again the length, weight and other dimensions of example swords surviving in museums and other collections. The second is that the SCA allow draw cuts. These occur when the blade is placed against an opponent’s appendage and drawn across it in an effort to slice through the said appendage. The ACA doesn’t practice this technique because for the most part normal clothes defeat it. We believe you need to either cut hard against a limb with the sword edge or stick the point of your weapon into the opponent to injure them.

SCA - Fencing Fest - 2009 - Slideshow

I had a few bouts against them. Of note, one was against one of their top-rated sword players and I was completely p0wned by him. I also bouted with a couple of others who were rated roughly the equivalent of me. These were more 50/50 affairs where we both gave as good as we got. All the SCA members I bouted with had extra-ordinarily good point control but I know I could have powered right through their light, whippy blades with solid cuts but we were playing by their rules and this type of thuggery isn’t allowed. All bouts were enormous fun and I can’t wait to see these guys in action again at Swordplay 2009 at the end of August.

I’ve got some photos but none of them feature me. And before you ask: no, I do not play dress ups. The photos feature SCA members who’s names I have no idea of and the ACA’s very own Scott McDonald in his home-made leather armour.

Kathi holding our costume prize

We were encouraged to turn up “in the spirit of the celebration” and Kathi made us Eiffel Tower festooned t-shirts in order to blend in with the locals. This won us a team prize of a bottle of bubbly in the costume competition. The individual prizes went to those who looked most like characters from ‘Allo ‘Allo. When the others in the room found out that Kathi made the t-shirts, I think she felt that both her and the t-shirts got more attention than either deserved whereas I was trying to pimp out her sewing skills to anyone willing to pay.

The evening consisted of a lot of very good food and wine. All the standards made an appearance such as Onion Soup, Mussels in Garlic, Duck a l”Orange, Creme Caramel, etc. Later we had a couple of sing-a-longs of such standards as the Marseillaise, Frère Jacques and Alouette. Let me just say right now that singing at all, let alone singing in the round, is not a personal strength. Also, anyone who claims that enthusiam can make up for a lack of talent is lying. I think the entire room proved that.

Over the next few days, I’ll post some of the stuff I would have posted in France if I had a working internet connection.

Right now, I’m concentrating on staying awake while it’s daylight here.

OMG! This place is big! Really big! Really, really big! Big just doesn’t cover it. Neither does huge, enormous, gigantic or any other words of the same type. It took us more than three hours to wander from one wing to the next and back again. And they don’t let you pause too long in any one spot because it holds up the rest of the traffic coming through. Then there’s the gardens – they’re bigger. It’s 1.5km from the chateau through gardens which would be magnificent if the cold hadn’t convinced the flowers it was still winter to the first of the out buildings which became Marie-Antoinette’s private residence. Once you’re at the lake, the half way point between the chateau and the residence, the grounds stretch from horizon to horizon in all directions. We knew we’d have a job doing it but we discovered that there’s simply no way to check out both the chateau and the grounds on the same day. I reckon you may even need two days for the gardens alone.

It’s difficult to talk about any one part of Versailles without ignoring other aspects equally important to developing an understanding of the place. It is not a location which can be understood piecemeal but must be absorbed as a whole through long association. For example, there’s monuments and decorations dedicated to the medieval scholastic tradition of grammar, logic, geometry, music, etc but talking about these leaves out any discussion of the tension between these motifs and those of the new (at the time) humanism which embraced poetry, rhetoric and direct observation of the natural world rather than reliance on received authorities. There’s a tension here between the old almost stylised remnants of the medieval world and the new struggling-to-be-born elements of late Renaissance Romanticism. This can be seen in the abundance of statuary based on Greek and Roman models but placed on curved paths and in rotundas rather than the straiht lines of classical antiquity.

Above all, the impression is one of conspicuous consumption – and even then the term is barely adequate to describe what’s going on here. The entire palce is the embodimentof the idea that the state exists to serve the King and not the other way around. You can’t visit here and not be struck by a very modern concern about the army of people who kept this place running during the time of the Sun King, Louis XIV. So many people with arguably the most prestigeous jobs the working class could aspire to beavering away to keep the royals happy and show off the power and grandeur of France. While this attitude (that the state exists to serve the King) was in the process of changing elsewhere in Europe as an outcome of the Protestant Revolution 100 years before and the dangerous precedents drenched in the blood of the English Civil War, the change passed over Versailles without being noticed. It’s no wonder that the French revolution occurred a little over 100 years later.

Around 4pm, we took the train home feeling that we had barely scratched the surface of what could be seen and understood in this place. The recent cold weather has delayed the spring here so that the 100 metre long flower beds and gardens are merely a promise of their real beauty. In another month of so, they will be fantastic and that’s what we’ll be concentrating on if and when we come back.

Today was Kathi’s day on the shopping circuit, so I took myself off to the Musee de l’Armee and the tomb of Napoleon, both housed at Les Invalides, the hospital and nursing home established in the 1670s (if I recall correctly) to look after wounded soldiers of France. It still retains this purpose and, while on my way to Old Trousers’ tomb, I saw nurses and orderlies wheeling equipment and dinners between buildings.

The thing you need to remember when visiting the Musee de l’Armee is that ‘musee’ can mean art gallery (la musee du Louvre) where objects are on display as much as it means a museum as we know it with a teaching purpose. Inside, there’s the standard collection of arms and armour from Roman times up to the present and, while this is interesting (especially the swords since I’ve taken up historical fencing), none of it is extraordinary. Other exhibitions, like the maps in relief (literally, 3D maps of famous locations and famous battles), are very interesting as well but nothing spectacular. The exhibition that grabbed my attention, however, was the “History of the World Wars” which starts in 1870 with colonial shenanigans in Africa and the wacky plottings of Bismarck who enjoyed annoying any one he didn’t like and ends in 1961 with the building of the Berlin Wall. The rationale is that the the two world wars were a direct result of animosities and grudges developed during the colonial period. The section on the Capitulation of France in 1940 is very dry and fact-laden, not surprising since the issue and the debate surrounding the surrender is revived here every few years for political point-scoring. Ending with the Berlin Wall is explained as the formal dissolution of the WW2 alliance between the USSR and the western Allies and the beginning of a whole new dynamic in the Cold War. I think this is a very sensible design decision.

[I'm really starting to believe that these Italian school groups are following me around. Is there nowhere safe from screaming Italian teenagers?]

One thing that can be said for the French is that they love their artillery. Every inch of the museum not given over to something else has a cannon in it. Mostly, it’s just the barrel of the artillery piece but in some cases there are full limbers just lying about. It seems like every named artillery piece (as was the custom from the introduction of gunpowder weapons to the end of Waterloo for important victories) is named and its battle honours described. As well as guns for battles such as Valmy and Austerlitz, there’s the monster bombard built for the Hospitallers to protect them during the Siege of Rhodes. Another is heavily decorated with both religious figures – priests, saints and the patriarchs – as well as people kissing. I can’t make out any connection between these two motifs unless it is the delicately engraved snake which meanders along the barrel turning this cannon into the strangest lesson on sins of the flesh I’ve ever seen.

Next it was the tomb of Napoleon. I haven’t seen Lenin’s tomb in Moscow so I have nothing to compare this to but never have I seen the cult of personality made manifest and elevated to the level of a religion. This must be how the Roman emperors did it (and given Napoleon’s stated aim of recreating the Roman empire, I’m not surprised). It’s unbelievable. I truly cannot comprehend how one man can inspire such extravagance to be created in his memory. The ceiling stretches skywards to a dome painted as well as, if not better, than any of the Renaissance masters could have achieved. The mausoleum itself is dug two stories into the ground. The light from the windows below the dome and the lights burning around the sarcophagus create a column of light surrounding Old Trousers’ porphyry and marble tomb.

I met Kathi for a late lunch at a cafe near the Louvre and wasn’t surprised to see a mass of shopping bags beside her. We stagger home for a nap before going out to dinner at an Italian (See? They haunt me.) restaurant down the road. It also does takeaway pizzas which I’m sure we’ll sample once or twice before we leave.

Our studio apartment is in the centre of Paris between three points formed by Les Halles, the Louvre and Notre Dame Cathedral, which we visited today.It’s basically a 10m by 5m box with a bed, a couple of chairs, two TVs, a bathroom and a small kitchenette. It’s decked out on grays and silvers – apparently this is the fashion as we’re seeing this colour combination everywhere. Inside the street door is a maze of turns and steps up and down in order to get to our door. I’d hate to have to do this drunk. The place is fine for our purposes and the bed is very comfy.

[There's photos of it on the other camera but we forgot to bring the right cable to transfer them to the lappy.]

The parvis, the plaza in front of Notre Dame, is filled with Italian and American school students on vacation as well as with eastern european beggers who think they can screw more from English speakers than the natives. They were continually harrassing us until we twigged to respond to their question of whether we speak english with a haughty “non!”

Notre Dame is a wonder of the medieval age. It’s at once a place of worship, a fortification, a symbol of power and a religious textbook in stone. I need to know more about it. Because last time we were here, I went inside the main apse and Kathi wasn’t interested, this time we decided to make the climb to the top of the towers. The narrow spiral stairs (70 vertical metres of them!) make you dizzy and the worn stone steps make you fear slipping and falling into those coming up behind you.

Halfway up you cross from one tower to the next to complete the journey, passing by all the gargoyles you’ve seen and loved. Clambering through the tiny wooden doorways in to (or out of) the bell towers is tough on a large chap and a backpack sure doesn’t help but the nimble Italian minxes manage it with no problems at all. Damn them.

From the top of the south tower, you have a 360 degree view of Paris that is a marvel to behold. You can see all the famous landmarks pass by as you take a turn aroudn the parapet: Sacre Coeur at Montmartre, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Saint Serverin, the big domed building (whose name escapes me), etc. It’s obvious from this angle that Paris was largely built in the 18th century. There are lead roofs everywhere studded with tiny chimneys and any space where they can’t put a building is given over to a neat little garden (hmmm, didn’t I say something similar about Hong Kong?).

After this we wandered the Latin Quarter and paid a visit to the Shakespeare and Company bookshop where all the Lost Generation writers hung out (like Ernest Hemmingway and Henry Miller) and other instances of bohemia such as a quilting shop and games store. I’ve been surprised at just how easily interacting with people in French is for me this time around. For every shop we visited I made sure I kept myself occupied by chatting with one of the sales people while Kathi looked about (also, a well known shoplifting tactic – or so I’m told). By the time the petites boutiques have (temporarily) lost their appeal for Kathi we were exhausted and had lunch at one of the innumerable little cafes before wandering home sore-footed again. Now we’re going to have a snooze before heading out for the evening.

I’m calling it ‘honkers’ because that what the British tourists call it – and what a bunch of sour-pusses they are. Never in my life have I heard so much whining about everything, especially “how they can’t speak proper English.” It makes me wonder what their expectations were before they arrived. Surprisingly, the German tourists here are quite nice. Previously (the September 2005 trip to France) we only encountered the sort of German tourist which led us to dub them “the Americans of Europe.” Here, the Brits deserve a similar title. Especially infuriating is the way they treat the locals in whatever service industry they come across as if the people trying to help them were coolies at the hieght of the colonial era.

We’re having some trouble allowing ourselves to enjoy our holiday. We can’t help but remember that if things had happened differently we wouldn’t be here and that the funding for the trip comes from the money we had intended for setting ourselves up for bringing home our girls, Charlotte and Marianne, from hospital. It seems to have hit us fairly hard today. Consequently, we didn’t feel quite up to the ferry to Lan Tau island to see the huge golden Buddha and the museums we had planned on seeing are closed Tuesdays. Damn. Instead, we took the subway to the Nan Lian gardens and old Walled City of Kowloon.

The Nan Lian Gardens are built in the Tang style and so highlight the interactions of stone and water. Completely superfluous sprayers make sure that there is a fine mist in the air so that every view looks like a Chinese landscape painting. The skill behind the design of the garden only becomes evident when you realise that each stopping place along the one-way path opens into a different vista: a stone garden, a wooden grove, a waterfall, stones retreating into the water, woods emerging from the water.

The Kowloon Walled City was, by a lapse in bureaucratic excellence, left out of the region which became the British colony. Consequently, all growth in this area was compeltely unregualted. Locals tell stories (apparently) of rats the size of small dogs carrying away anything that was edible. Photos from before the area’s destruction and restoration show unplanned high-rise monstrosities that by any concept of engineering or even aesthetics should be unable to remain standing. Today it’s a neat little park with replica Qing Dynasty walled courtyards, covered walkways and pagodas.

We’ve spent some time looking ofr some small trinkets or gifts by which we could remomber our visit here and can find nothing we want to pay money for. Everything we come across looks like it was – umm – made in China. Neither markets, department stores nor tourist traps have a single thing worth buying. There’s lots of little cute things but we can find the same tacky cuteness at home. Very disappointing.

Now, we sitting around and about to start the mammoth task of repacking everything for the flight this evening. I’d like to come back here some time. But befoe I do, I’d like to know a lot more of the history of the place and its place as a part of modern China. I also think that learning a little Cantonese is vital for successly getting about here.