Maldon Revisited

The Battle of Maldon lesson went reasonably well. I'd been nervous that I wouldn't be able to fill two hours, but in fact I did that and left some over for the next lesson. I wasn't able to do as much in the way of simulating Saxon combat as I'd hoped, but at least I got them to make a shield-wall by holding up their bags while I attacked them with my two-handed axe board marker (this is a variant on my legendary hoplite simulation). After going into a lot of nerdy stuff about the arms and armour of the Dark Ages (which the nerdy FRPG types in the class loved, bless 'em), I read out the poem with various students taking the speaking parts: "Remember you're in a Saxon drinking hall with a lot of people quaffing mead and going 'Aaaaargh!' so you have to speak LOUDLY!"

Trying to demonstrate a blood-eagle on a female student without the kind of physical contact that could result in accusations of professional misconduct was also interesting. Must remember to pick a boy if I ever do this lesson again.

This "living history" stuff is cheesy but fun. Back in the summer, I was talking about education with maggie_lucy about this kind of thing, and she mentioned the headmistress at my primary school (where she also worked) making us kids run up a hill to some castle walls so that we got an idea of the importance of high ground in military tactics. "Bloody hell, I remember that!" was my response. I'd forgotten about it for 35 years, then suddenly there I was in my mind, sweating up a grassy slope.

LJ Name Meme

1. Find the Unicode (UTF-8) numbers for each of the characters in your LJ username.
2. Add them up so that you get one big number.
3. Send a cheque for this number of Euros to the Cult of Solri Invictus.
4. Paste this in your journal.