The Hurdy-Gurdy Man.

A teensy weensy bit of a problem today, switched the computer on first thing this morning and it downloaded some updates, decided to do a restart and didn’t work again. When it does work, it’s very good - going like it’s got a rocket up its bum, but it’s been the source of a lot of problems though admittedly, some of them are due to the modifications that I've installed. The faulty hard disk was the main one, but that has now been replaced and seems to be fine. So today, I backed up all my data - a procedure that, while being advisable, turned out to be un-necessary, re-installed Windows and removed all the bloatware. Office won’t re-install but, 36 hours later, everything else seems to be working - for now. There are shareware and freeware office suites available to tide me over, but they’re so clunky as to be virtually unusable.

On another front, the Chapel had a medieval day; nothing too extravagant, a few archers, a travelling musician with a plethora of instruments, a cook and a perfumier. I didn’t spend much time with the last, though I’m sure she was very interesting; but the other three were fascinating people and very knowledgeable.

Two  of the archers had bows and arrows to shoot at targets, but they were small low energy devices to minimise the risk of putting peoples’ eyes out. The third had  a real bow and a variety of rather vicious looking arrows, but the two were not going near each other in that environment. I did try the pull on the bow but, unsurprisingly, was no where near strong enough to fully draw it; I am not renowned for my upper body strength and a real archer would have spent an hour a day training, but it was interesting discussing the finer points of the design. There were about a dozen different design of arrow heads, including armour piecing, mail piercing (not the same thing at all) and one intended to merely cause intense pain - probably to stop a galloping horse. It is an interesting thought that killing an animal charging at an archer will not stop it quickly enough to protect said archer; he really has to persuade the horse that it wants to run away from him.

The itinerant musician was obviously very successful at his trade, as evidenced by his expansive belly - though I suspect that he had a certain amount of padding underneath his tunic. His hurdy-gurdy is a cross between a violin, bagpipes, an accordion and a rattle. The handle turns a rosined wheel that works on four strings, one of which carries the tune while the other three act as drones; the keyboard is used to play the tune and if the wheel is wound fast it activates the rattle giving an effective rhythm section. He could also sing at the same time and did seem to be quite a jolly fellow.

They were all the sort of people who could talk about their subjects ad nausiam, much the same as bee keepers really.