Rebirth

Welcome, renaissance reader, as last weekend, multiple things happened which would fall into the category of rebirth. Firstly, we went to something called a Renaissance Faire, and secondly, it rained an awful lot. Let me tell you about those things.

Renaissance Faires are an oddly American pursuit. I say 'oddly', because obviously the Renaissance more-or-less happened before European settlers reached this continent, so it's a celebration and recreation of something that quite literally didn't happen here. Secondly, if you believe the idea of 'Renaissance' as celebrated at these events has much to do with historical accuracy, then I guess you probably also think that Robin Hood was a real historical figure, and that he had Kevin Costner's mullet.

I have to admit, I didn't really understand what was going on at the Renaissance Faire. As we were queuing to get in, it was obvious that we were in the minority, as we weren't wearing costumes. Once inside, the majority of the Faire seemed to be preoccupied with... well... selling costumes that you might want to wear to a Renaissance Faire. However, interspersed amongst the costume stalls were various stages hosting wandering minstrels and Renaissance-themed entertainment acts: Americans trying to do English accents, singing what they think are English songs. There's also jousting a couple of times a day, and overall the thing they seem to be aiming for is at least in part what in the UK we'd call the entirely fictional atmosphere of 'Merrie England'.

An odd little sidebar is that in the UK, we wouldn't call this era 'Renaissance' at all. If you say 'Renaissance' to someone in the UK, they'll envisage the intellectual outpourings of medieval Italy or Germany rather more than what might be called the English Renaissance. It's not that the Renaissance didn't happen in England, we just don't really call it that.

When I did my research, this particular Renaissance Faire is intended to capture the atmosphere of a Derbyshire village in the mid-late reign of Elizabeth I, which is why blokes with beards keep popping up and quoting Shakespeare in mid-Atlantic accents (because that's what peasants in Derbyshire would have done, isn't it? I mean, there's a tradition of that still going today... [reader, this is a joke, just so you know; I mean, I've been to Eyam, so perhaps a better approximation of a Derbyshire village would have been a strict, stay-at-home lockdown and constant, unrelenting death, but I guess we can get that feeling for free these days]). Indeed, this lady was aiming to portray Elizabeth I, although personally I felt it was a better approximation of Maggie Thatcher circa 1982:

Your boys took one hell of a beating!

What's interesting, of course, is that in the UK we know this is about as representative of the era as Blackadder. Here, I'm not so sure that really registers, although the whole thing appears to be an excuse to dress up and be a bit silly. As regular readers will know, this appetite for silliness is something I quite like about America, so I have to admit to enjoying the spectacle somewhat, although perhaps for not quite the right reasons. One step at a time, reader.

On Sunday, it rained. It rained all day, and then it rained again for part of Monday. It would be an exaggeration to say that 'the rain it raineth every day' (see what I did there reader? Yes, honestly, I think about these blogs, they're not just tossed out like tomorrow's chip paper), but it'd be entirely accurate to say 'the rain it raineth quite consistently for two days running, and you don't get many of them to the pound in these parts'. This was basically what all of October looks like in the UK, but to have it do that here was unexpected, newsworthy, and quite disruptive. The trees here really aren't expecting those kinds of conditions, so my afternoon walk looked like this:

I think this moved some bits of California from 'extreme' drought to 'exceptional' drought, so that's a bit of progress. It'll need to rain a lot more to get us back to anything approximating normal levels, so let's hope for a wet winter.

Anyway, reader, it's always fun to see how different cultural aspects are interpreted here compared to the UK. We're now into Halloween, which is another excuse for generalized silliness, so we're looking forward to that. Huzzah!