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Monday, January 20, 2020



Whoever scanned this photo didn't bother to crop out the cheap binder, and neither did I.
I do, however, really like the atavistic look on the model's face.
Edited to add:  This is another Monte Hansen shot according to James IV.

9 comments:

  1. Wow..and another great one. The stance of the archer certainly displays the male body well..

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  2. Once again, Monte Hansen by W&B.

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  3. All really good ones today!

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  4. And "atavistic" is most definitely the operative word. After all, the bow and arrow are amongst man's most earliest weapons - and I use the word "man" in its pejorative and modern meaning of the "male of the species", despite the fact that archery was a noted pastime of the Victorian grande dame. I have since youth been involved in the early music scene and so attend many Mediaeval fairs and theme events. You meet some of the most eccentric people. I once asked a woman who was obviously completely bats, dressed in an ad hoc assortment of homespun bed linen her name only to be told that she was Gytha Thorkelsdóttir, mother of Tostig, Earl of Northumbria and his brother, King Harold II of England of the House of Godwinson, last Anglo-Saxon King of England, who died in the Battle of Hastings in 1066 saying that he had an arrow in his eye. "Never mind, Sire, just keep blinking and it'll soon work its way out..." I regularly run into a friend of mine who manufactures genuine replicas of the English long bow in his hideout in the New Forest. You would not believe the strength needed to shoot an arrow, so you can just imagine how he is built - Arnorldesque shoulders on a ballerina's waist. And just what he looks like in his leather jerkin and tights - with one of the neatest arses in the whole of Hampshire. I have no idea what he's packing - this is, after all, something called family entertainment - but I doubt he's circumcised like Monte Hansen. But then, they dodn't call him Robin Hood for nothing....

    He came to Sherwood Forest with a feather in his cap
    A fighter never looking for a fight,
    His bow was always ready, and he kept his arrows sharp.
    He used them to fight for what was right.

    Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen,
    Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men,
    Feared by the bad, loved by the good
    Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.

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  5. I've actually been to the New Forest twice, and there is a decided lack of trees. That was when I learned that "forest" was a legal, and not ecological, term that had more to do with ownership and hunting rights than trees in England.

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    1. Yes, indeed - although the word "forest" does also carry the meaning of a dense, wooded area on a large scale, which is still the case with Sherwood Forrest in sunny Nottinghamshire. They were effectively restricted areas reserved chiefly for the monarch's hunting. William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror - and one of our reputedly gay kings - was shot in mysterious circumstances in the New Forrest. Much more is made in America than Britain of the Magna Carta - or Great Charter - which the barons forced King John to sign in 1215 at Runnymede, only a short riding distance from Windsor. It is not generally known that there was also a Carta Foresta - or Charter of the Forrest - of 1217, which laid down the rights of those living and working within one of the royal forests and may well have had an influence on the legends of Robin Hood. I have seen one of the few existing copies, written likewise on velum, in Latin. One of the capital crimes, of course, was for commoners to poach boar and deer, which was a hanging offence. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother - mother of our present Queen and Queen Consort of the late King George VI, who finally popped her clogs at the age of 101 in 2002 - was once overheard to say, "Oh, this dear, dear country; these dear, dear people". On the Long Walk in Windsor Great Park one winter's day, a herd of grazing deer hoved into sight through the mist. The pal I was with rid himself of a temptation by yielding to it and with suitably tortured vowels, exclaimed, "Oh, the deer, dear deer."

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