Important News!

Thanks to the help of my good friend Jamie my VISITORS FROM THE PAST website has been rejigged and re-skinned and various other technological terms that are probably more correct. This new one allows news posts (this is one right here) and a better enquiry form as well and umpteen other clever features, plus everything I had before.

Bookings are coming in already for next year, even some for Summer term! Meanwhile, with the summer holidays fast approaching this term’s bookings are growing lighter which means I had the time to work on this. Hopefully in the summer holidays, what with re-enactments and Skipton castle, as well as a chance to review the year, I will have some new news stories to impart. In the meantime, it’s back to the (forever) studies for what might become my next new character – a scientific revolution ‘natural philosopher’.

(The picture shows the pirate Captain Burwash in his buccaneer form. If you want to know more about him, click here.)

During a very recent visit as Captain Burwash the pirate to a Yorkshire school I asked the children if there was anything ‘on my person’ they wanted to ask me about – after all I was carrying a lot of things and so far we had only discussed a handful of them.

A little girl put her hand up and asked, “What is that on your back?”

I did the required comedy spin to try and see what she wanted to know, then asked if she meant the cutlass, or the baldrick (belt) it was hanging from.

“No, that,” she said, helpfully pointing at my back again.

I began to list various other things she could mean: My belt bag? The knot on my head scarf?

Then the teacher helpfully answered the girl, “Ah, now you see, Captain Burwash is very hot.”

The girl was asking about the sweat patch!

(Moral of the story: A new linen waistcoat might be cooler than a woolen one, but the consequences of a hot summer’s day are rather more visible!)

As I have done in the last five years, I shall be back at Skipton Castle again for a few weekends this summer 2012.

First I am hoping to attend the Tower Hamlets Trayned Bands Living History event there as a troubled musketeer on the weekend of the 4th and 5th August. Then I shall be there on my own first as ‘Swift Nicks’ Nevison the famous Yorkshire highwayman the following weekend (11th and 12th August) and after that as Colonel Sir John Mallory, castle governor, on the 25th and 26th August.

Here I am back in 2008 being Sir John …

It was 1645 again in 2008

I do not believe I have aged over much since then!