I know you’ve been thinking about nothing else for the last few days. Not the pesky plague. Not economic uncertainty. This, and only this:
What the hell is that thing Guy made?
Dale Belcher, of Independence, Kansas, in the USA was the first person to answer, and the only person to get it right! Well done sir!
It is of course a till for hanging my set-squares on.
Dale’s answer won him a copy of my new book.
But it wasn’t the best answer. That laurel belongs to Vojkan Selakovic of Serbia, who wrote in with this:
Perhaps I’m stating the obvious here, but it should be apparent that we are looking at a type of, perhaps unsurprisingly, anti virus barrier for historical manuscripts.
This is a semi-finished, though cleverly masked, DIY set.
In these dire times, we are faced with an increasing challenge of balancing between our health, our lives, and our need for analysing historical manuscripts*.
That is why a group of aspiring inventors…invented a DIY set for sword fighting instructors and dedicated HEMA practitioners. The current model, unfortunately, only cover Fiore manuscript dimensions, blatantly discriminating against other, lesser manuscripts. Something that will have to be addressed in the future.
So to give you a brief overview I will have to use an illustration found on the link provided [I took a screenshot. GW]. Keep in mind these are copyrighted, like, seriously, very strict and all.
– Piece no. 1 is a plastic sheet/screen holder which is fixed to your regular book stand by a screw, or, if you’re really going for that authenticity – nails.
– Piece no. 2 is just a leftover part Guy Windsor put there to mess with us. It’s useless.
– Piece no. 3-4 are a disinfectant holder, a stand nailed to a side of the book stand. It holds your standard 2,5L disinfectant/hand sanitizer dispenser/bottle you probably have tons of by now.
– Piece no. 5 is a (cleverly) unfinished mock up hand used for turning the pages, pointing to a play, pushing the dispenser button, scratching the back etc.It needs a metal rod inserted into it, and provided are three rod holders (ideally all three can be combined into a 3m single rod for that extra level of social distancing).
Please forgive me for being a Captain Obvious here, but it had to be done.
Cheers!
*I hope it was obvious enough that this part was just a joke. Stay safe everybody, #StayAtHome, and stay positive (except if you are testing for COVID-19).
This was so clearly what I should have made that I sent him a copy of the book immediately!
In other news, I went on a walk to some woods outside Ipswich at the weekend, and for the first time got to see the bluebells in bloom. Previously, I have been travelling at this time of year, and missed them.
Aren’t they glorious?
For user-friendliness I’ve only uploaded a small version of the photo to my blog, but if you’d like the full size images I've put them in a dropbox folder here. No copyright, do with them as you will.
Oh, you were expecting something to do with swords? Well, I’m working on a couple of things, but couldn’t leave you in suspense over that squares till a moment longer.