The Conclusion

The question that we wanted to answer was as follows:

"During the 12th Century, the Knights Chivalry Code was an important part of society and every day living. In our modern age, we ask if the code will still be accepted? If so, does it still have a part to play?"

The answer:

No

When we came up with this idea we saw it as being a magical mystery tour, finding out about people's life through doing extensive tasks for them, however what we ended up doing was dancing the YMCA for peoples amusement. I am personally quite saddened at the lack of trust we were shown throughout the excercise. I can understand why, we are two teenage (well I'm 20, but still) guys, and there is now this unfortunate idea that guys of our age just want to kick you in the head and steal your wallet, while filming ourselves happy slapping you. But we were two guys, both wearing the same cartoon T-shirt, and both holding two signs that spelled out exactly what we were doing and why we were doing it. With every person we asked we introduced ourselves by saying we were from Exeter University, yet still they were wary. That was the most disappointing thing in my mind. People also thought we were being nice for financial gain, when was being friendly and helping out your fellow man now a job? Why do people think you deserve money for doing a good deed? It must be because people felt guilty of using us for their own gain, and as we're all people who have not known slavery and have never had butlers/maids/people that did everything for us (Unlike when the Knights would have operated with a large slave population).

All of the quests that we got were all very short and sweet also, I think this reflects the area that we operated in. A high street where people go into shops, and come out of shops with whatever they wanted within 20 minutes at the very longest. This meant the quests we were given were also snappy ones that wouldn't take up too much time, but would do what they were set out to do and then quickly finish. This is easily detected in all of the entertainment quests that we did (mainly on cathedral green) where people wanted to be entertained for a short while, and would either give us a certain amount of time to do the task (5 rotations of YMCA) or tell us to stop when they were satisfied with what we had done.

However, it wasn't all a disappointment. I really, really enjoyed the quests where we got to talk to members of the public as this was one of the main points of the project that we were going to try and focus on. The conversation with the two college students in te Real McCoy arcade about the theme "Timeless", and the conversation with the two music students about what they were up to at college were both very interesting. It's nice to learn something about a person who you would otherwise pass in the street and not even say hello to. There are alot of people in this World that we will never meet, that we will never share a coffee with, and that we were never talk to....but why does it have to be that way? From our experience at least some people will happily have a conversation with you if you simply say the word "hello" and acknowledge their existence.

There's probably alot more I could conclude on this topic, but at the moment I can't think of them. If anyone reading does have any questions about this project and would like to know more e-mail me @ JRD208@ex.ac.uk. Thanks for reading...

The End...

The final day came on the Friday, and by golly jee, would you know it...it was RAINING!! YAAAAAAAY!! No more sweating our unmentionables off while trying to help people out. And also we managed to wear our suits for the first time. We looked well swish, and I would have liked to have been able to wear this "costume" more, as it was our official costume of the performance, unfortunaly the climate had other ideas.

Being very, very wet, there weren't really many people around, and we weren't expecting much, and luckily we didn't get much either.

We began as always by Next, and stood there for some time with people walking past we would try and explain what we were doing and if we could have two seconds of their time to ask for a task, but they were gone on "Hello". We didn't have the boards we had carried explaining what we were doing on this day either (as they would of run in the rain) and I think this was one of the main reasons that we didn't get much of a response from the general public.

Eventually two young college kids (one was called Josh) came around and, although somewhat reluctantly, accepted us holding an umbrella for them as they walked to college. Happily we trotted down the high street behind them, taking turns holding the umbrella to shelter them from the drops of rain. It was a very long quest as we walked a good way, however, we took the oppurtunity to talk to them about what course they were doing, and what they were exactly studying ont he music course. I did enjoy this and it reminded me of the conversation we had with two other college students in the Real McCoy arcade on the first day of questing. However, the guys were kind of shy I think and were a little bit protective towards us as they didn't trust us fully, which again is something we noticed alot. They even offered us money at the end, and were suprised when we said that we didn't need money. This is probably why they were a little weirded out by us.

We stood back at Next again for some time, but constantly got people turning us down or plain ignoring us. The funniest turn down being a girl in her early twenties, who stopped when I talked to her and was interested in what we were doing...until she saw the camera was filming her and instantly shot off down the street in a blur...very strange.

End of Day thoughts:

The guys we did the quest for thought we were after money, and instead of coming out at the start and asking us if they had to pay, they waited until we had got to the college and then thought they'd HAVE to pay as we'd done the quest for them. This is the second time this has happened, the first being with the flower/marraige proposal quest on the first day. Why do people think they must pay for an act of kindness?

Not many people on the streets = not many people wanting tasks. We knew it would be a quiet day but it was REALLY quiet. No one wants to stop when there's a chance they will get wet.

When The Second Day Came...

We began the second day with a smile on our faces and the sun burning a beautiful hole through the o-zone layer once again. Being a Saturday we had high hopes, as this is the busiest day that Exeter high street sees in the week and busy = lots and lots of people. Which we believed would mean lots and lots of quests...How wrong we were...

We began in the opening at Princesshay by Next once again, we waited around for a little but then a lovely young lady who was handing out leaflets for the Thai food resturant "Tiger Bills" came over to give us a menu, and the blah blah of "Two meals for £6.95". Before she could hand over the menu we pulled some kind of knightly Jedi mind trick on her and managed to convince her to give us the task of handing out menus, and basically helping her out. She couldn't hand over the menus fast enough (probably because she gets paid for how many she can get rid of) and we ventured up the high street with menus in tow. I must now say that my menu handing out skills were far superior than Nick's, probably because I've handed out flyers for a job myself quite often (although Nick failed to believe that if you point a flyer/menu at either a man's penis region, or a woman's breast area they instantly take it as a protectional reflex). Once all of my menus were gone Nick took another 18 hours to get rid of his (a possible over-exaggeration) and the quest was wonderfully fulfilled. I think I was more successful with this task because of my boyish good looks and kind demeanor, whereas Nick did resemble some kind of serial killer (especially when he was wearing aviators).

We carried on down the high street to a place we had had success before, just outside Tesco Express. Here we ended up doing a quest for a friend of a friend where she wanted us to do handstands. Unfortunatly, as neither of us could do a handstand it ended up being a team effort where I placed my hands on the ground and Nick raised my legs for a few moments....it's still a handstand!! I think we were both a little annoyed about this task, as we had purposely avoided Cathedral Green as we felt people wanted us to entertain them more when we were there, but obviously people want to be entertained wherever they are.

We carried on down the high street (towards the Real McCoy arcade) passing the Mint Methodist church as we did. Here they were having some kind of May fete and were just closing up for the day, packing things up. We did walk past at first, but then stopped and agreed that being Knights one of the codes is to help the church, and what better way then to help them pack up the most British of things...a fete?! We went over to them, explained what we were doing, and I cannot explain how happy they were. They said we were "answering a prayer" by helping them out, and I was actually touched at how thankful they were. But I feel they were also shocked that two men like us would actual help them, which is sad. Nick took a fold up table, and I took the WORLD'S HEAVIEST box full of books. Seriously, with the heat I thought I was gonna pass out once we had taken it up a flight of stairs.

With that quest finished we went back to our usual standing spot, where a woman approached us with a quest. However, it was outside the city walls (although she was convinced the hospital was only a block away...crazy lady) with dehydration hitting and our tummys rumbling, we decided to end it there.

End of day thoughts:

Even though the high street was absoloutly packed with people we didn't really get anyone coming up to us asking us to do stuff. The quests that we ended up doing involved us going up to people and asking them if we could do anything to help. I think this was because on a Saturday people go into town with the idea that they want to shop, and nothing will stop them doing it. Most people on a Saturday have been working all week, and maybe only have one day (maybe two with Sunday) to do/get everything that they needed to get for that week, and people didn't have the time to stop, or at least that's what they were saying.

We got less people asking us to do acts of a nudity/sexual nature, which compared to the first day was pretty amazing. Many because the people that were around on Saturday were of a more mature nature? Hmmmmm.....

It felt really good helping out the more elderly people at the church fete. I'm not a religious man in any sense of the word, you probably couldn't find a bigger atheist, however it just felt like a was doing a good deed by taking a very, very heavy box up a set of stairs instead of an older person having to drag it up there themselves. I think if the situation arises again I may just offer my services again.

The First Day.....

We started out first day of questing on a very, very sunny Tuesday afternoon. The temperature was around 24ish degrees I would say, so we took a vote and both decided the the normal uniform we will be wearing for our questing was inappropriate (a suit jacket, suit trousers, and our beautiful "Knightly Adventures" t-shirts), so we ended up in the t-shirts and shorts, and let me tell you...it was still boiling!!

We kicked off at 3pm and headed straight to the high street, with our camerman Mr. Mark Boyer. At first we had a very slow response between Next and Tesco. Walking around with signs explaining what we were doing gained us attention, people as they passed would look at the sign and then keep walking. Upon asking some of these people if they did have quests for us they believed there was a catch, and us simply being nice was "too good to be true". Eventually Nick had a clever idea of standing outside Tesco express, so we headed down there and BOOYA! The first quest of the day, from two mid-20's gentlemen. After an explanation of what we were doing they asked us to perform the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. All good...However, neither me nor Nick really knew the words, so we gave them the "What light through yonder window breaks" and the old classic "Romeo, Romeo where for art thou Romeo?". This went down a treat, and garnered some attention from the passing public, as we performed it pretty loud, but I still insist my performance as Juliet standing on a bench is the best Juliet ever performed.

After the success of the first quest we were less worried about walking around for hours getting nothing. We headed to the Cathedral Green...and what a good time we had there. As it was sunny it was packed with students and "norms" alike just chilling and spillin' on the green. The poor people didn't know what was about to hit them. Our second task came in the form of a group of uni/college students, who asked us to sing "Bohemian Rhapsody" to another group of students the other side of the green...easy. At full voice, belting it out across the whole area me and Nick nailed it, to enormous applause from all. Score two for the quest box!! We then went between 3 groups of students (the two from the previous quest about 3 times) and ended up dancing the YMCA for some people, dancing the YMCA while I was sitting on Nick's shoulders for another task (which is suprisingly hard to do), and singing "Like a Virgin" to another group. Unfortuantly going up to a group of strangers and saying that "we wanted to sing like a virgin to them" was a sentence that needed explanation :)

We then met two ladies of the older persuasion who asked Nick and I two things, the first was for Nick to present some flowers to one of them, which he did superbly. The second was I had to present a rose to the second lady, and then propose while Nick sung "I Will Always Love You" (he did a killer job). The last quest we did on the green came at the exit, as I carried a young lady's shopping to where she and her friend wanted to sit. I make that around 8 tasks...oh yeah!!

Upon realising that we were getting quite silly quests from the student population, just for entertainment purposes we chose to move on and see what else we could get. This led to us meeting two very nice college kids in the Real McCoy arcade, and their "quest" was for us to talk to one of them (who was a photography student doing a piece on "Timeless) about what timeless was. I really enjoyed this part of the day, as it's not often you just chat with absoloutly strangers about a rather deep topic! We linked the word "timeless" to what we were doing, trying to see if a code of honour from hundreds of years ago had a timeless quality to it. Yeah...we're proper intelligent...you're so jealous...

Sweating like Gordon Brown and his aides we decided to take a trip back up onto campus, where at Thornlea, Nick read a few pages of a drama student's book. Once we arrived at Devonshire House the heat had got to us, and we decided to give up...however it was a very good day!!

Random Thoughts:

Alot of people are very wary just when you're offering to help them. Since when was someone being nice a threat, and why is there always suspicion? I really hope that we get a more trusting response the next time we do it.

If we didn't say it was a University project would people generally ignore us completely?

The older generation are not as likely to ask us do stuff. Why do they fear late teens/early twenties people. Especially after we've explained that it's totally above board!

Alot of the student aged people seemed to use us as entertainment and to try and embarass us, however when we performed their quests perfectly and with a smile on our faces were they shocked that we actually went through with it?

Lots of people are sexually motivated. The amount of people whose first idea of a quest was "get your penis out" was just stupid. Why is everyone so horny? Does the sun make people more horny? Dirty Exeter folk...

Until next time...stay funky!

To give you all the idea of what we have to follow, below is a list of the rules we must abide by on our quest!

First, the 'ten commandments' of Chivalry:

• Thou shalt believe all that the Church teaches, and shalt observe all its directions.
• Thou shalt defend the Church.
• Thou shalt repect all weaknesses, and shalt constitute thyself the defender of them.
• Thou shalt love the country in the which thou wast born.
• Thou shalt not recoil before thine enemy.
  Thou shalt make war against the Infidel without cessation, and without mercy.
• Thou shalt perform scrupulously thy feudal duties, if they be not contrary to the laws of God.
• Thou shalt never lie, and shall remain faithful to thy pledged word.
• Thou shalt be generous, and give largess to everyone.
• Thou shalt be everywhere and always the champion of the Right and the Good against Injustice and Evil.

And here is the list of the actual code of Chivalry:

• Live to serve King and Country.
• Live to defend Crown and Country and all it holds dear.
• Live one's life so that it is worthy of respect and honor.
  Live for freedom, justice and all that is good.
• Never attack an unarmed foe.
• Never use a weapon on an opponent not equal to the attack.
• Never attack from behind.
• Avoid lying to your fellow man.
• Avoid cheating.
• Avoid torture.
• Obey the law of king, country, and chivalry.
• Administer justice.
• Protect the innocent.
• Exhibit self control.
• Show respect to authority.
• Respect women.
• Exhibit Courage in word and deed.
• Defend the weak and innocent.
• Destroy evil in all of its monstrous forms.
• Crush the monsters that steal our land and rob our people.
• Fight with honor.
• Avenge the wronged.
• Never abandon a friend, ally, or noble cause.
• Fight for the ideals of king, country, and chivalry.
• Die with valor.
• Always keep one's word of honor.
• Always maintain one's principles.
• Never betray a confidence or comrade.
• Avoid deception.
• Respect life and freedom.
• Die with honor.
• Exhibit manner.
• Be polite and attentive.
• Be respectful of host, women, and honor.
• Loyalty to country, King, honor, freedom, and the code of chivalry.
• Loyalty to one's friends and those who lay their trust in thee.

(Both lists taken from http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall/chivalry.html, 07/05/2008)