Football

 

We continue our series of Tales from Sir Dickon, a 14^th Century Knight of the Realm, magically transported to the 21^st Century to become a modern-day life coach.

Sir Dickon has just been watching football on television. He is lamenting that he really doesn’t recognise the modern game and is flabbergasted by how much it costs. Just look at the comparisions.

Equipment
Modern – the Video Assisted Referee system (VAR television replays to help referee’s check important penalty decisions) in the Premier League costs over £9,000 for each game.

Medieval – the only thing you needed was a ball - an inflated pig’s bladder - which cost pennies.

Rules

Modern – there are 17 rules for football, but they cover 150 pages.

Medieval – no eye gouging and no kicking in the testicles. Pretty much anything else is allowed.

Venue

Modern – when it was built, the new Wembley Stadium cost £798 million.

Medieval – their pitch was the village high street. The goals were where the houses stopped at either end.

Players

Modern – Lionel Messi earns £500,000 per week playing for Barcelona – for just 90 minutes work.

Medieval – every able-bodied man in the village. They played for pride and a satisfying tankard of ale after the match.

Injuries

Modern – sore ankle, stretched hamstring – the sort of thing a real man would turn up for work with the next day.

Medieval – broken arms, fractured jaw, dislocated knee cap – and they still had to turn up for work the next day.

I don’t dare tell Sir D that women are allowed to play football.

Flushing toilets

 
We continue our series of Tales from Sir Dickon, a 14^th Century Knight of the Realm, magically transported to the 21^st Century to become a modern-day life coach.

Of all the amazing inventions that people have created over the last 700 years, the one Sir Dickon marvels over most (apart from Porn Hub) is the flushing toilet.

In his teenage years, Sir Dickon shared quarters with a number of other squires. To relieve themselves during the night there was a chamber pot in the corner of the room. Chamber pots are supposed to be emptied daily but this was a sadly neglected chore until the day the pot was brim full with several gallons of fermented piss and would not hold a drop more.

The squires would play dice and the loser had the task of emptying the pot. It was virtually impossible to lift the slippery iron bowl without some spillage. Sometimes the carrier would slip under the immense weight and collapse, drenching themselves in foul smelling urine. When this happened, other boys had been known to piss themselves laughing.

I told Sir D about a modern game, practised by school bullies, known as the ‘Swirly’. The victim is dragged into a cubicle and suspended upside down over the toilet bowl. When the toilet is flushed the victim’s head is dunked into the swirling water.

Sir D was mightily impressed. When he gets back to the 14^th Century, he is going to give his useless squire, Edmund Ass-hat, a Swirly. Since there are no flushing toilets they will have to Swirly Edmund in a chamber pot. 

                                                  

If you want to know how people went about wiping their arses in days of old, check out our other blog post here... scrape

Brexit

 

We continue our series of Tales from Sir Dickon, a 14^th Century Knight of the Realm, magically transported to the 21^st Century to become a modern-day life coach.

Sir Dickon was interested to learn about Brexit. In his day public opinion was quite the opposite. Instead of breaking away from Europe, the English spent a considerable amount of time and effort trying to establish closer links with France – by invasion and conquest.

The medieval view on Brexit goes like this;

Sir D - “Boris Johnson’s tactics were rather weak. He should have offered them a yew branch.”

Me - “Surely you mean an olive branch”?

Sir D - “No, with six feet of yew, you can do this”.
English Longbow - YouTube

During the 100 years’ war, the English fought several famous battles against the French. By the time it got to the battle Agincourt in 1415 both sides knew the routine. A vastly superior number of French knights would line up and charge, ideally across a muddy plough field. The English, armed mainly with big sticks (longbows) and a sheaf of smaller sticks (arrows), would fire volleys until the French were beaten and surrendered. I may have over-simplified matters but I have to agree with Sir Dickon. Yew branches appear to be the answer to settling very complex negotiations in one day.

Historians might point out that this strategy didn’t work out quite so well in the long run. The English armies got their arses kicked by a 14-year old school girl named Joan.

For those of you who are not familiar with this battle please follow the link bellow to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia

 

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