hiss of warning.
'MOPs! MOPs!'
Not yet fluent in re-enactorese – here was an acronym denoting 'members of the public' – I was taken aback to look round and see a quartet of red-faced pensioners ambling towards us. 'Er, are you open?' called out one, and before any of us formulated a reply, in through the gate jogged Wayne, along with a young boy who he'd shortly introduce as his son.
'Yes!' he blurted, approaching them breathlessly. 'Yes, yes. That's, um, five pounds a head.' He stood there rubbing his hands as they scanned the village and exchanged questioning looks. He was still rubbing away when the small figure at his side broke the awkward silence. 'Dad,' he piped up, introducing what was to prove a trademark pronouncement, 'I'm gonna kill your bum.'
Wayne accepted the ensuing barrage of rearward slaps and punches with no more than a twitch of those stonelike features. 'Tell you what,' he offered, once the assault subsided, 'how about fifteen quid for the lot of you?' And we watched as the visitors tapped vaguely at their watches and wandered back towards the car park.
We toiled through our period tasks as the children ran sweatily amok under a limb-wilting sun. Some time in the afternoon, as the examiner and I were squishing heated goat's milk, sour cream and vinegar into an authentic cheese press, John subtly raised the stakes by inveigling the present tense into his conversation. 'See, we can trade this, maybe for salt,' he announced quietly, and, despite the heat, our labours thereafter were characterised by a gathering sense of purpose. Particular enthusiasm was devoted to our Diane-emulating efforts at twig-whisking cream into butter, though try as I furiously did it wouldn't work for me. Surveying the slurried whey that was the fruit of my twenty-minute manual frenzy, John solemnly announced that such a failure could be interpreted as evidence of witchcraft.
'Smirk if you must,' he whispered, holding out a finger, 'but first let me tell you a story.' And so, with the roundhouse shadows stretching out across Cinderbury's barren stubble, he told us the tale of a pagan acquaintance who, having been teased at work, cursed his tormentor so effectively that he was soon tearfully begged to lift the hex, and indeed handed a great deal of cash to do so.
'And the nature of this curse?' John's small, bright eyes darted from face to sunburnt face. Then, with a grim smile, he leaned towards me until that blistered nose was almost touching mine. 'See this face?' he hissed, jabbing a whey-flecked digit at his beard. 'Tonight, when you're shagging your wife, at the point of orgasm you'll see this face again, and you'll keep seeing it every time you shag her from now on.' All I can say is that this statement affected me a lot more than it would have done three days previously. A year on and I still have occasional cause to hate him for it.
Walking into our roundhouse in AD 25 – the year John had recently opted to place us in – and walking out of it two millennia later had a jarring, Mr Benn quality to it, though it might have felt more jarring had I not been wearing the same shoes in both shots, and been offered a shave and a shower in between.
En route to my fireside farewells I glanced through the door of the roundhouse commandeered by the Time Tarts, where Karen was collecting instruments for the after-dark festivities to come. A shield lay against a plank-framed bed draped with sheepskins, and on a low chest beside it sat a pair of wooden bowls and the cluster of Romanesque oil lamps that bathed the scene in soft, warm light. It was a most becoming still life; standing there in my tourist shorts and a Woodstock T-shirt, I at last felt a nape-tickling frisson of Will's 'period rush'.
Sensing this just as I was about to leave should have seemed a frustrating disappointment, but approaching the fire and its encirclement of tousled craftsmen, I accepted that the reality of my experience was this: you could have
'MOPs! MOPs!'
Not yet fluent in re-enactorese – here was an acronym denoting 'members of the public' – I was taken aback to look round and see a quartet of red-faced pensioners ambling towards us. 'Er, are you open?' called out one, and before any of us formulated a reply, in through the gate jogged Wayne, along with a young boy who he'd shortly introduce as his son.
'Yes!' he blurted, approaching them breathlessly. 'Yes, yes. That's, um, five pounds a head.' He stood there rubbing his hands as they scanned the village and exchanged questioning looks. He was still rubbing away when the small figure at his side broke the awkward silence. 'Dad,' he piped up, introducing what was to prove a trademark pronouncement, 'I'm gonna kill your bum.'
Wayne accepted the ensuing barrage of rearward slaps and punches with no more than a twitch of those stonelike features. 'Tell you what,' he offered, once the assault subsided, 'how about fifteen quid for the lot of you?' And we watched as the visitors tapped vaguely at their watches and wandered back towards the car park.
We toiled through our period tasks as the children ran sweatily amok under a limb-wilting sun. Some time in the afternoon, as the examiner and I were squishing heated goat's milk, sour cream and vinegar into an authentic cheese press, John subtly raised the stakes by inveigling the present tense into his conversation. 'See, we can trade this, maybe for salt,' he announced quietly, and, despite the heat, our labours thereafter were characterised by a gathering sense of purpose. Particular enthusiasm was devoted to our Diane-emulating efforts at twig-whisking cream into butter, though try as I furiously did it wouldn't work for me. Surveying the slurried whey that was the fruit of my twenty-minute manual frenzy, John solemnly announced that such a failure could be interpreted as evidence of witchcraft.
'Smirk if you must,' he whispered, holding out a finger, 'but first let me tell you a story.' And so, with the roundhouse shadows stretching out across Cinderbury's barren stubble, he told us the tale of a pagan acquaintance who, having been teased at work, cursed his tormentor so effectively that he was soon tearfully begged to lift the hex, and indeed handed a great deal of cash to do so.
'And the nature of this curse?' John's small, bright eyes darted from face to sunburnt face. Then, with a grim smile, he leaned towards me until that blistered nose was almost touching mine. 'See this face?' he hissed, jabbing a whey-flecked digit at his beard. 'Tonight, when you're shagging your wife, at the point of orgasm you'll see this face again, and you'll keep seeing it every time you shag her from now on.' All I can say is that this statement affected me a lot more than it would have done three days previously. A year on and I still have occasional cause to hate him for it.
Walking into our roundhouse in AD 25 – the year John had recently opted to place us in – and walking out of it two millennia later had a jarring, Mr Benn quality to it, though it might have felt more jarring had I not been wearing the same shoes in both shots, and been offered a shave and a shower in between.
En route to my fireside farewells I glanced through the door of the roundhouse commandeered by the Time Tarts, where Karen was collecting instruments for the after-dark festivities to come. A shield lay against a plank-framed bed draped with sheepskins, and on a low chest beside it sat a pair of wooden bowls and the cluster of Romanesque oil lamps that bathed the scene in soft, warm light. It was a most becoming still life; standing there in my tourist shorts and a Woodstock T-shirt, I at last felt a nape-tickling frisson of Will's 'period rush'.
Sensing this just as I was about to leave should have seemed a frustrating disappointment, but approaching the fire and its encirclement of tousled craftsmen, I accepted that the reality of my experience was this: you could have
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