Something For The Weekend Sir?

If I can sort out my child care problems I’m going away on Saturday to wave bon voyage to a friend who is starting his yacht master qualification. First stop Hawaii. Arragghh!

On Sunday Archery class is FINALLY in session! There is an historic precedent to archery class’s being held on a Sunday. Apparently a medieval law is still on the statue books which insists that every able bodied man should be practicing his archery skills in his local park every Sunday afternoon. The looks you’d get wouldn’t be the half of it!

In the meantime I thought I’d do a round up of some of the blogs I’ve been reading.

Othmar Vohringer of Outdoors with Othmar Vohringer
There’s a well worn saying ‘The more you know the less you carry’ and the bushcraft and hunting communities are full of people (yours truly emphatically included) who talk a good fight about simplicity, but somehow lose those good intentions when the latest gadget is dangled in front of their eyes. Here Othmar takes a wry look at the fads of today and the traditions of yesterday.

Rex BKA (Bloggingly Known As) The Editor of the Deer Camp Blog
Rex was one of the first people to write to me offing encouragement for my blog and he has dine a great deal to encourage other bloggers.
Well known in american deer hunting circles, his blog started as the newsletter for a hunting club (with its own land!!) and has grown to cover his interest in Hunting deer and squirrel, adventure pursuits, archaeology, habitat management, ghost stories, interviews with mythical beasts and collecting tall tales for use around the campfire. Legend.

Jeremiah Quinn
I’ve recently given Jeremiah Quinn a mention for his writing about urban fly fishing but since then I’ve been reading a little more of his site. He has a house near lake Como in Italy and has written this piece as an introduction to the area for visitors.
‘Porcocania’ starts as a letter about how to work the heating and where the shops are, written to a friend or family member he’s lent his house to. It becomes a brilliant travel guide to the region with lots of hilarious anecdotes about the people, food and culture he encountered during a year living in Italy. If you’ve ever lived in a small community you’ll recognize the characters and customs that give an area its ‘local colour’. Here he explains the Italian concept of Furbo.

‘Furbo implies styling something out that could be disastrous if you didn’t present it the right way. This has something to do with the Italian notion of keeping up appearances. My ultimate example of this is Columbus, the man the Italians like to call Cristoforo Colombo. Many people assume that Columbus’ mission was to prove the world was spherical. Obviously, there is no money in that, and it was already in any case generally accepted by navigators and traders to be so. Also, America was known to be there as the Vikings had documented its discovery 500 years earlier. No, Columbus was looking for a shortcut to India, so that he could get pepper more quickly back to Spain, so that they could set up a new and undisputed trade route and get rich. OK, so the key words are India and pepper. Columbus goes off on his long voyage, doesn’t find India and can’t find pepper. Goes back to Spain, terrible voyage, bad weather, scurvy, lands in Spain. What does he say? Couldn’t find India, didn’t get any pepper? No, this:
‘Found the West Indies, here’s a chilli pepper’. Now that, my friends, is the definition of furbo.’ By Jeremiah Quinn

Bound to be a much better use of your valuable reading time than the Sunday papers or my ramblings.
Bushwacker