I used to love reading about Camelot which is really strange when you think what the knights were really like; I didn’t find reading about the Crusades half as appealing not did I take to reading about Charlemagne and Roland. And it wasn’t the dragons, evil witches, or eventful love-stories I enjoyed most. It was the dedication to honour. To be someone whose word one can trust. An idea that could have the substance of corporeality.
I remember my teacher at school saying it was a time when a man would take a veil from a lady, hold it next to his heart and sail off to fight. A time when there were hundreds of pages written about how to fight justly. How to be an honourable enemy. That whole idea of going out and righting wrongs did for me.
When I read Don Quixote, a book of supreme bliss, I realised I was far more like that old man, at sea in a world that did not believe in honour any more, that counted Courtly Love an absolute joke ( and a lot of it is) and all crusades were personal. Ideals were foolish.
I don’t think dressing up and learning to fight holds any honour in and of itself. I don’t think keeping silent when you are in love means anything. But somehow the simple idea that I mean what I say, that I will not mislead, that I can be predictable in a world where human beings are seismically riven with falsehoods, still means something.
I don’t mind being thought of a fool and being relatively poor I would mind more if I let people and animals down.