Play (Roman Games)

[vilakins]

Blame astrogirl2 who was interested in what I did in the weekend.


I'm a card-carrying nerd. Or at least a standard-bearing one. I'm a re-enactor in a Roman legion.

Yeah, that's right, I possess full Roman armour, sword, helmet and all, and am vexillarius for the Legio II Augusta. We do public displays and mock battles (once a firm's Christmas party!) and for our own private fun, hold feasts and slave auctions.



Here are some of us at the 'Past-times Fare' (sic) we were at on Saturday. That's me (Claudia Metella) second from the left holding the standard (that wooden thing with the hand on top) and the guy in the 'bronze' breastplate and anachronistic but necessary glasses is our general, Consul Drusus Germanicus--otherwise known as Rob the Roman which Vila would regard as sound advice. We did formation marching (the tortoise, the wedge, the forceps) and allowed ourselves to be shot at with foam-tipped arrows fired from our extremely cool new ballista. It was a fun day, if very cold and windy, but you get very tired running around in 10kg (22lb) of armour. Other people at the fair were mainly medieval re-enactors from the SCA and various sword and shield clubs; they looked spectacular too and put up some good demos of fighting with swords, rapiers, and staffs. One thing I love about this is that women get to fight as much as the men--and are as good too.

So there you are. Now you know.

After freezing in the cold winds on Saturday, Sunday was summer again after more than a month of rain, gales, and unseasonably nippy weather. I went to a barbecue at a friend's place; all the guests were SF fans and it was a lot of fun in the hot sun by the sea. We didn't talk much about Blake's 7 though. Although two of them had been to the B7 cons held here in the 80s, it's too old a fandom to hold much interest for them any more. I fell for it in 2001 and I'm really looking forward to meeting others who love it as much as I do at Star One next month.

Comments

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

And I thought nerdy was associated with anything the average person would find odd. But then, I don't know why people are interested in rugby, cars, home renovation, violent crime, reality TV, and fishing, just to name the most common topics of conversation in the offices I've worked in.

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

My definition of nerdy is an intense interest in anything I can't empathise with and I agree with almost all of your list. Being Welsh rugby is in my blood, like music. I hopeless at both but they are intensly interesting to me, but I can understand someone else not being interested so I'm not a complete nerd in that respect.