Robinette Hood and Her Beer Drinking Merry Man

This past weekend Kari and I went to ANOTHER beer festival on Saturday. A pub in Osgathorpe, The Storey Arms, had a small beer festival, showcasing about 20 different English beers. They also had ferret racing, which is not very exciting. We (or actually I) tried several beers and had several hamburgers (fried onions and cheese, nothing else, they were soooo good) and watched rugby. The difference between rugby and American football (hereafter referred to as football), is that in American football players smack each other around for about 10 seconds at a time. In rugby they smack each other around nonstop for for 80 minutes (2 40-minute halves).

I am going to go off on a tangent for a bit about rugby and football and then we will get to the Merry Man part of the post (the Beer Drinking part was above, there was not much to that, we drank beer). Both sports entail very big and fast men trying to move a ball from one end of the field to another. It seems that in football the blind hits are more common, while rugby is more open field tackling/steer wrestling. Oh, all those should pads from the 80's? They are in rugby player uniforms. Thin pads on the shoulders and on the ears (think wrestling headgear). Very fashionable. Neither sport appeals to me, what with my delicate bone structure.

On Sunday we went to Belton House (near Grantham, NE of Ashby) and did some archery with real longbows. That was fun. There is something very meditative about it, and the THWACK the arrow makes when it hits the hay bale target is very satisfying. For your information regarding archery in England: If some dumbass was to walk across the field, or the arrow goes beyond the field and hits said dumbass, sucks to be him. There is apparently an ancient law still on the books that holds the archer immune from responsibility. Unfortunately, there are never any dumbasses with cell phones around when you need them.

Anyway Kari got two in the bullseye and won a pen. Ta for now.


Belton House


Robinette Hood avant pen


Merry Man