Kim Siddorn

The funeral will be held tomorrow of Kim Siddorn, founder of one of the oldest and biggest re-enactment groups in the country, Regia Anglorum.

Back when I was an archaeologist, I met Kim, and other members of Regia Anglorum, when they came to the castle in North Wales where I was one of the diggers. The local community had got so interested in what we were doing at the top of the hill at Caergwrle that they decided to hold a Historical Festival, and they invited members of Regia Anglorum along to do living history and skirmishing.
It was great fun! I made a costume, one of the first medieval costumes I'd ever made, with Laura Ashley fabric and a pinafore dress pattern - and I asked a nun of my acquaintance how to make a proper wimple, which I could fasten on with three pins, and without a mirror, if I had to.
I went to work on the bus that weekend, in costume, which turned a few heads. Most people seemed to think I was a nun, despite the patterned fabric of my overdress. One of the Saxon ladies with Regia told me she had the same problem, which was why she had decorated her wimple with embroidery to make it less nun-like.
The chaps in Norman chainmail were great, too - I was doing some of the castle tours, showing what the archaeologists had found so far and talking about the history of the castle, and they were so enthusiastic! It was great to have a discussion with the people I was showing round, who knew about castle design.
Kim Siddorn did the commentary for the shows that Regia put on, and he was very interesting, talking about how members of the society looked at things like the Bayeaux Tapestry and tried to work things out by experiment - for instance, what were those little squares depicted on the tapestry attached to the chainmail cowl? It seemed most likely that they were extra face protection, which could dangle down when not in use.

So that show, and the one the following year, whetted my appetite for re-enactment. In fact, several people who were volunteering on the dig wanted to set up a Regia group in the village. The only reason I didn't join in the end was because I moved away to do archaeology in London - and the group in Caergwrle ended up as the Samhain Society, which still exists.

Here's a picture of the corner of the castle where the medieval bread oven was found - which I helped to excavate.

What I did on my Holidays

I spent the Easter weekend at Dysprosium, the 66th EasterCon, which this year was held at the Park Inn, Heathrow.

I went down the day before the Con, to stay with my Young Man, who lives in the Great Metropolis. I was very lucky - the train ticket cost £10.50 when I booked it, including a reserved seat from Birmingham New Street to London Euston. And everything went smoothly.
The railway line passes lots of canals, and a lovely little motte and bailey castle at Berkhampstead.

This is more or less the view from the train, taken from English Heritage.

Euston was a lot more packed than I remembered it - I used to go through there about twenty years ago - but when we got outside the sun was shining, and it was a short bus ride to Forbidden Planet. I was very pleased to get the next installment of the Green Arrow story I first read in the 1980s, and the new Ms Marvel - but no Captain Marvel figure, which was disappointing.
The Young Man took me to a Craft Beer pub nearby - on the way we passed the oldest pub in London, the White Hart, and a little later we met another friend at the Angel, a wonderful Victorian pub covered in green tiles, with an open fire. The beer was Samuel Smiths. She was on her way to an evening Vampire Group meeting, and had come into the centre of the city early to meet us.
So then it was round the corner to Patisserie Valerie. They have a very nice savoury menu - the Young Man had eggs Benedict and Becky had Croque Monsieur - but I was there for cake! Which made me very happy. The Peter Grant table (as mentioned in Ben Aaronovitch's novel Moon Over Soho) was taken, so we sat upstairs.
And then it was back to the Young Man's flat for the most gorgeous venison, which had been slowly cooking all day, and a documentary about the making of the new Thunderbirds series. Weta, in New Zealand, are doing the model work, and the head of Weta is a big Thunderbirds fan, so it was looking pretty good - and they have the original Parker back! I watched all the Gerry Anderson puppet shows back in the 60s, just at the right age for them to imprint themselves on my brain, and I was so hoping that the reboot would be done right. The first episode was broadcast on Saturday at 5pm, when we were at the Con....

If I Won the Lottery....

Everyone has these daydreams about what they would do if they had squillions of pounds in the bank. New house, world cruise, that sort of thing.

I want to buy a castle.

When I was a kid, we used to holiday in North Wales, at Pensarn near Abergele. Looking down on us from the hillside was a Victorian mock castle, a huge affair, called Gwrych Castle. At the time it was a sort of medieval theme park. There was jousting every afternoon in the summer, a miniature railway, pony rides, a potter, and I'm sure there were lots of other things that I don't clearly remember.
We went to a Sealed Knot battle re-enactment there, which was very exciting, and the first time I'd seen a full scale Civil War battle. That's one of the influences that got me to join Gilbert de Houghton's Regiment of Foote at college, and started me off as a re-enactor.
In the eighties, though, the castle was sold, and quickly became derelict. The Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust has been trying to renovate it and turn it into a 90 bedroom 5 star hotel (I said it was big!), but they're not there yet.

So my daydream would be to renovate the castle, using alternative energy and incorporating geodesic domes and rooms that had huge maps on the floor and Narnian wardrobes and beds that look like Viking longships, and I'd have craftspeople working there, like that potter in the seventies, and a brewery, and a huge library, and artists and writers, and re-enactment weekends.
It's all completely impractical, and I never even buy a lottery ticket, but it's great fun to daydream sometimes.