Muncaster Revisited: Brilliant Times With Brilliant Kids

More meetings with writers, originally uploaded by Phoole.

I haven't posted any episodes of my Muncaster Castle adventures since the end of March, no doubt owing to a Renaissance Faire having consumed most of my energy over the past several months! No excuse. But on days at my home show, the Bristol Renaissance Faire, when the going gets difficult, when the audience gets drunk and mean, when the secret ego-battles roar out of control, I fling my mind back to those magical Muncaster days, and think, "Did that really happen?" I've been carrying around with me the soft-cover Moleskine I used to chronicle the trip's events as they happened, just to assure myself that someone else was there, that the place and the people are verifiable by someone besides me. And I've been longing to get back to posting about the journey, if only to make myself so beyond-starved for the place that I have to return immediately.

This photo shows me doing what I did most of the time when I was "on" there -- hearing jokes and stories from extremely articulate and interesting children. On the right in this picture, in the green t-shirt and tiger face, is six-and-three-quarters-years-old Eric Flip-Flap, son of Muncaster's 2006 Fool, Maynard Flip-Flap. His surname, of course, isn't actually Flip-Flap, but I cannot keep their real surname in my head -- it gets flip-flapped out and replaced. So I always called him Eric Flip-Flap -- that is, until he and I discussed his career plans.

"So, young Eric," I said to him, grandly, "Of course you're going to be a fool when you grow up?"

"Of course," he replied simply.

"What will your fool name be? Will it be Eric Flip-Flap? Continuing the tradition?"

"No," he announced, and you could tell he'd thought it over. "My fool name will be Eric Tree-Head."

I exploded with laughter, which made him laugh, and we both fell over. I asked him again later, though, and he meant it. Eric Tree-Head.