The Laundry Basket Jousting Tournament

Over the weekend there was a church YSA (Y'all Still Ain't Married?) conference in Stamford, where we'll all meant to get together and mix and mingle. The drive over the was gorgeous, by the way. There were all these old stone homes with farmland all around. I told WR I wanted to live in one of them and he said I probably could buy one if I have the £700,000.

There were about 40 of us, and one of our activities involved this Blind Walk, which I was not too sure about. They divided us up into groups, loaded us into cars, blindfolded us, and dropped us off in the middle of the countryside with a map. The spot where lunch would be was circled, and we were told to call if we weren't back in a couple of hours. And of course my group (of which I was not the navigator) instantly headed off in the wrong direction and were actually heading off the map 40 minutes later when we waved down a car to ask where the heck we were.

But, it was warm outside, the sun was out, and we had this amazing walk through the countryside. Turns out these public footpath things they do here are great. We need to look into those back home. I saw cows and calves and sheep and lambs (I was three feet away from twin black & grey baby lambs and my heart almost exploded from the adorableness of it all). There were pheasants and horses and old churches and tiny villages with red phone booths. And brooks and pastures and fields and rolling green hills and daisies everywhere. I left my camera in the car on accident, and spent the entire walk kicking myself. There was this one field that we ended up going around because the bull inside give us the stink-eye. I didn't want anyone to be hiding my gored-to-death body in a haystack. Plus it was hard enough for me to go through the regular cow pastures--my years in Alaska have taught me to see all large animals as things that will quite likely kill and eat me if given the chance.

At the lunch spot, our hosts' two boys (Henry and George) asked if I would come watch them have a Laundry Basket Jousting Tournament. I eventually said yes, and sat outside with my bread and my amazing potato & leek soup to watch. They held laundry baskets like shields and rushed at each other from across the yard, trying to knock the basket out of the other's hands with their long jousting sticks while bellowing at the top of their lungs.

Me: So, who invented this game?

George: Uh . . . knights?

Me: Ah . . .

After that they didn't have much to say to me, since I'm the idiot American who doesn't even know about knights.

Posted in: England