I love doing displays. They are my bread and butter. Sure, it's great to get out and have a bash at training, and the sense of achievement when you make something is wonderful. But doing displays is the thing that really gets me going.

So I was very excited about this display - the first we've done for some time. I had to get out of bed at 6:30am in order to travil on to town, pick people up and be at the school to start the display at 9am. The audience consisted of a history class, a textiles class and a metalwork class, so we had put together a display structure which covered all these topics.

We would start with the Saxons, discuss the different kinds of fabrics, arms and armour, and how metal was mined and produced. Then we would put in another fight - between a Saxon and a Viking, and move on to the Vikings, with a discussion on jewellry, textile production, and a little more on arms and armour. Then another fight, between Viking and Norman. Move on to discussions of wealth, and the social aspects of feudalism, then a final fight between Norman and Saxon before finishing up with a brief discussion on archaeology and manuscript evidence.

We had the beginning all worked out. We wanted to grab the audience's attention, so we had decided that we would start with a "noisemaker" - a big, spectacular, noisy fight. Victor stood up and stated in a clear loud voice, "We are the Ancient Arts Fellowship. We..." and I charged him from the side with a loud battle cry.

And I broke Drew's sword.

Drew wasn't able to make it to the display, but he was kind enough to allow us to borrow his sword, which was a very nice example of the Viking style. And with the first shot I made against Steve's shield, the sword broke right at the hilt. We continued the battle with a spare sword, but I can tell you it was a little disconcerting.

The rest of the display, however, went off very well. Victor failed to give me the "danegild" cue to start the Viking-Saxon fight, but otherwise it went very smoothly.

We did go a little fast for the time we had, and we were able to throw in a Challenge Fight near the end. This is where we pick volunteers from the audience and they choose a fighter each to fight for them. This is always a good "audience participation" section, and a lot of fun.

I personally thought that we lost the attention of the audience a couple of times during the talks, but it was pretty inevitable that the metalwork students would not be all that interesting in the textiles bits, and vice versa.

The fights went off very well - we had some great audience reactions when I attacked Mike with the two-handed axe. "Ooooh! Ahhhh!"

This particular audience did not have all that many questions to ask, which was a little unusual. We usually prepare for the stupid questions - "is that a real sword" being the most common one. The few questions we did get allowed us to put in some extra information that we didn't otherwise have as part of the display. For example, someone asked Michael how long it's been since he cut his hair (he was looking pretty scruffy at the end there). Michael used this as an opportunity to point out that the Saxons and Vikings were generally very clean - there have been many combs and grooming utensils found at burial sites - because to be filthy and lice-ridden meant that you got sick.

The obligatory show-and-tell at the end went well, and we only had to yell at the kids a couple of times (they always want to pick up the swords and swing them at each other, and we can't allow that).

As a whole, the display went off very well. The kids enjoyed it, the teachers enjoyed it, and we enjoyed it.