Good King Hal, known as "The Tudor Pelvis", rocking through yet another rendition of "Hound Dog" to a stunned audience of easily distracted midgets. Surely there must be a law against this sort of thing.
Manchester City 1 Manchester United 0. It gladdens the soul, folks, it really does. But I won't mention it much more in this blog. Honest. I had driven to Essex on Sunday as a staging post for the next part of this journey to this show - onwards up to Norwich on the Monday morning for a return visit to Falcon School. One of my friends on Facebook got terribly upset when she realised that Falcon School was just that - a school and not, as she had thought, a school for Falconry. I promised to get it introduced on the curriculum as soon as is Kingly possible.
The pouring rain which has highlighted our drought over the past few weeks (eh?) had finally given way, and on waking in the wee small hours of Monday I was delighted to see the beginnings of a sunrise. This made the morning drive up very pleasant indeed, and even at an early hour it was warming up nicely. To be honest, for someone who was going to spend the whole day in furs and heavy clothing, it was warming up a bit too much. I was warmly welcomed with a cup of tea and even a hug from one teacher! It was a bigger group than in previous years at Falcon - just under 100 children in three classes. Manchester City 1 Manchester United 0. Ah! It just sounds better each time you mention it, doesn't it? Today's show was just one of those days when everything goes right. It was a lovely group of children, great teachers and everyone got really involved. Loads of laughs and also some very impressive Tudor knowledge, one little girl scoring a rare 20 out of 20 in the Tudor quiz.
Lunch was an ice hockey puck and chips. Sorry, lunch was a BEEFBURGER and chips, and it filled a void, though when it did go in my mouth a big bell rang out, organ music played and loads of very fat Americans started waving flags and shouting. (This is a joke BTW). Meanwhile, Manchester City 1 Manchester United 0. And does anybody even care what a Rock Hyrax is? I do.
The afternoon session was hilarious, loads of laughs, and one of the teachers let slip that one of the others is on the verge of emigrating to New Zealand which apparently the children weren't supposed to know. Oops! That is the sort of thing I do normally, so it was nice to see someone else putting their foot in it. In the joust, one of the gents teams had this young lad in it who frankly hadn't got a clue what he was doing. He just randomly prodded at quoits in whichever direction he felt like at the time, and then wandered aimlessly between the quintaines as the crowd howled at him to get on with the race. Somehow his team reached the final against the ladies team, but he put in a similarly bewildered performance in the final which allowed a very good ladies team to romp to a deserved victory. Our score now goes up to a very one sided:
GENTLEMEN 14 - 26 LADIES
They are getting away now. It is not as close as Manchester City 1 Manchester United 0, but it is just as joyful. Almost as joyful as watching Sir Alex "Complete and Utter ****" Ferguson losing the plot midway through the second half when his team couldn't win. I was very sympathetic. I only laughed for 38 minutes. And then a further 25 minutes. Right, the King is off down to Folkestone tomorrow to see his agent, then back to Somerset for a return visit to the delightfully named Hugh Sexey School in Wedmore.
Oh, and in case I forgot to mention it.... Manchester City 1 Manchester United 0.
