Party like it’s 1532

Credit-card payment late? Desk job ruining your vision and giving you carpal tunnel? Put on some extra weight? Still not a millionaire?

If only you could go back in time to the days when computers (and their related repetitive-stress injuries) didn’t exist. The carefree days when extra weight meant you were healthy and rich and didn’t have bubonic plague. The days when, if your debts grew too large, you just taxed the peasants and threw another party.

Well, now you can! A Royal Afayre Renaissance Festival is a two-day theme party set in the English province of Calais in 1532. Spend the days imbibing wine and ale, shopping the merchants’ pavilions, mingling with the nobility or the common folk, and enjoying the spectacles at the entertainment stage. Players include Celtic band Avalon Rising, the Village Blacksmith, comedians Myth and Magic, and the fire and swordplay of Out of Kontrol. Costumed characters will represent royalty, Puritans, wenches, scoundrels and blatherskites. (A blatherskite, by the way, is “a noisy talker of blatant rubbish.”) Though most of us get our fill of blatherskites on C-SPAN, those who feel blather-deficient can join the merriment this weekend. Fair hours are 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is $10, and parking is $5. Calais is located at Discovery Park, at Richards Boulevard and I-5. Call (209) 462-2815 or visit www.aroyalafayre.org for more information.