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BB2301
: Come Away, Come Away with William Tell
4th
January 2023
What
comes into your mind when you hear the final
movement of Rossini's William Tell Overture?
Could it be that you have a not dissimilar
reaction to that of the father illustrated
by Dave Berg in Mad Magazine in the 1960s?
Those
a little older may recall its more appropriate
usage on television, namely as the theme
music for ITV's "The
Adventures of William Tell".
If you click on the picture below,
you can see Conrad Phillips in action whilst
David Whitfield sings the stirring anthem:
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Come away, come away
with William Tell
Come away to the land
he loved so well
What a day, what a day
when the apple fell
For Tell and Switzerland
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What,
I can hear you thinking, has that got to
do with the dawn of 2023? The answer is simple. In recent times, we have celebrated having
survived another BOOTboy year by visiting the Holmescales Adventure
Centre,
first for axe throwing and then for archery - proper bows and arrows-
Robin Hood style. This year we tried the
continental version- the crossbow.
Lots
were drawn for the warring sides. I
suppose we could have called them by exciting
names like The Terrible Tellers or the Applebusters
but Reds and Blues seemed to suffice. The
Blues had no hesitation in naming Martin
as their leader. Likewise, we Reds appointed
Chris by acclaim, such had been his prowess
in previous affrays.
Ryan
took us through our training session. Fortunately,
there were no little boys with apples on
their heads, just a conventional target.
The first thing I noticed was how
much easier it is to hold the crossbow compared
to the longbow. It is more compact,
lighter and fits comfortably into the shoulder.
It also seemed to produce a superior
degree of accuracy. However, and this
is why the archers dressed in Kendal green
were able to defeat the French at Agincourt,
it takes an awful lot longer to load.
The
first round was won comfortably by the Blues.
Stuart in particular posting a very
impressive score of 48 to which he attributed
the fact that he has only one good eye.
John Hn had the second best figures,
delighting in his competition name of Jonny
to avoid confusion with John PL. You
never know, the name might stick.
However,
the Red's very own King of the Arrows, Tony,
started to come good and was top scorer
in the next two rounds (53 and 49), both
of which were won by his team.
Just
as we thought we were getting good, Ryan
had a trick up his sleeve. For the
fourth and final round, the big target was
changed to three tiny ones.
Each
bowman had four arrows of which one should
land one in each target plus one to spare
if needed. It didn't seem to make
any difference to Tony who comfortably topped
that round as well with 50. The Blues
didn't put up much resistance and the Red's
winning margin increased significantly to
gain an overall victory of 661 points to
580.
The
final stage was the single arrow shoot-off
between the five top bowmen, namely Jonny
(123), Don (136), Chris (137), Stuart (159)
and Tony (182). The smart money was,
of course, on Tony. However at the
key moment his consistency deserted him
and it was Stuart who took the glory which
was a fitting reward as he had been the
Blue's top performer in every round.
Peace
was restored over lunch at the Holmescales
Conference Centre. The key question
under debate was where and in what format
should hostilities be recommenced next year.
Meanwhile we have a BOOTboy
year to which to look forward, one
in which some of us have some very specific
targets in sight.
Come
away, come away, with the BOOT boys now
Come
away, come away, we'll tell you how
We'll
finish the round of Wainwright fells
And
m-a-a-a-a-ny more as well!
Don, Wednesday
4th January 2023
Thanks
to Tony for several of the photos
Comitibus:
REDS:
Pete, Chris, Stephen, Don, Tony BLUES:
Martin, Stuart, Terry, Jonny, John
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Come
away, come away
with William Tell
Come
away to the land
he loved so well
What
a day, what a day
when the apple fell
For
Tell
and Switzerland
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