SC - Bread throwing (was Re: Pot Luck)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

kat wrote:
> 
> >     The other thing that gets me are food fights and the bread I spent
> all
> > day baking is being used for ammo.
> 
> We came up with a couple of good solutions for this, after the excrement
> hit the fan in our Barony over this very subject.
> 
> 1)      Designate one or two events where bread throwing is permitted.  The
> Autocrat is responsible for buying "throwing bread" (cotton fluff Wonder
> bread, or whatever's cheapest) and alerting the populace to proper usage.

Forgive me if I'm a bit punchy from a tough week, and this really isn't
one of those questions that gets people labelled authenticity wonks (the
PC term we've been using in the East lately), but I'm curious: is food
fighting considered, documentably or otherwise, a period activity? Other
than the films of Hal Roach (more or less documented as the inventor of
the cinematic pie fight), the only other literary references to
bread-throwing I have seen are in P.G. Wodehouse's tales of the Drones
Club, where a common method of getting a chappie's attention is to heave
a bit of crusty roll at him. Or you can knock the top hat off a tough
old egg by means of a Brazil nut fired from a catapult [slingshot],
generally for gambling purposes. I vaguely remember a line about Claude
(Catsmeat) Potter-Pirbright having set the World Record by hitting the
Game Pie from the far window with six consecutive rolls. These stories
are set, for the most part, in a semi-mythical England between the World Wars.

Is there really any reason at all to think food-throwing (other than
perhaps bones to the dogs) is something that was any less frowned on in
the Middle Ages than it is today? 
 
> 2)      A small, discreet stack of notepaper on each table and a couple of pens
> will give you a "virtual" food fight.  Pass notes giving detailed
> explanations of where the item hit, and what it did to your
> body/garb/whatever.

Yes, I've seen a fair amount of the virtual food fight going on...could
be worse, I agree.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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