I used to love the Disney Robin Hood! My dad made me a wooden bow when I was a kid, and i'd wander around the densely overgrown bits of the garden with it, wearing a little felt green Robin Hood hat. I think that's probably why i'm still so keen on it now!

It's not that well known an area of literature, which is surprising considering how popular it still is today! Luckily for me it also means there's potential for original work to be done on it! It does have strange bits. Like how the medieval Robin Hood started as a peasant bandit in Edward 1st's time, murdering the sheriff, robbing the church, mocking the king, and desiring only to live in his forest with his band of outlaws; and then became moved in the Renaissance to a dispossessed aristocrat, fighting against the 'false' King John and for the true King Richard, desiring only to regain his aristocratic castle and Lady Marian (who also first appears here) as part of an aristocratic romantic tradition! ...Well I find it interesting anyway!

Well, I really recommend looking for the version edited by W.R.J. Barron (Manchester Uni press, revised edition 1998). You should be able to get that (or get that ordered) from pretty much any decent bookshop. Or you can get it here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gawain-Knight-Manchester-Medieval-Studies/dp/0719055172/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241709992&sr=1-3 !

There is also a brilliant modern translation version by Simon Armitage, but I don't think it has the old text included. But this Barron edited one has a really good introduction, the complete old text, and a good facing translation to help you along!

Why thank you! Any bands in particular? I read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in one of my uni modules (i'm doing an MA in English Literature at Cardiff). The medieval language in a local dialect makes it slightly challenging in places in the original, but it's a wonderfully magical and intriguing text! Why, have you read it?

Those books were misleading though. I spent every holiday as a child looking for secret passages, smugglers tunnels and hidden treasure, but never found anything.

It's fairly big! Not absolutely massive though! The garden is huge though. And the house looks on to a village green with an old church and duckpond. It would seem like something out of a book if most of it wasn't dull, grey Victorian stone work! It was pretty much just a crumbling, damp, rotten ruin when we first moved there from London 17 years ago, but it's pretty beautiful now!

Actually just yesterday I talked about doing a PhD with my Shakespeare professor, and have decided to do one!

I think it's going to be on the medieval Robin Hood ballads - Renaissance Robin Hood plays, but I need to discuss it with another professor first.

I read loads of Famous Five and Secret Seven books when I was young!

Well a lot of our house is around 100-150 years old, but it also has lots of little older bits too. There's chalk writing on a door in our converted barn counting bales of hay and signed "T. Rose 1801", so we know that it was a farm at least 200 years ago. There was also a trap door covering a priest-hole (for Catholic priests to hide in during the Civil War), so that would be around 1640-50, when maps also name our house 'Rosary Cottage' (rosary beads are Catholic prayer beads). We also have a 12 foot well in our garden, dating from around 1500-1600. Then there are carved stones in our garden from a medieval abbey which had completely disappeared by the first maps, but would have been built at least in the 1400's, and probably even earlier. There are also lots of older foundations under our floorboards, and in various parts of the garden, that relate to buildings which have also completely disappeared by the first maps, so are also probably also medieval, and possibly even relating in some way to the lost abbey! I love our house.

Most of Britain (especially the cities) is like that too! Lots of horrible concrete buildings were built quickly in the 1960s, often destroying old buildings. Luckily a lot survived though and is now protected!

It is indeed the time to travel! Before you have to worry about paying taxes and mortgages. Sadly I don't have enough money to travel this year though. Or the time! I have to write a 20,000 word dissertation over the summer as part of my uni MA course, so will be stuck at uni.

Oh and the bristly hair on top of an elephant's head is indeed awesome.

If I have bad wine then I literally go insane and start talking like this:

I hope you gave her a good talking to.

Actually my one problem with Australia was the lack of old things! I remember being taken my my friend's family to an 'ancient' wooden hotel/pub, the oldest in the Blue Mountains area... and it turned out to only be 100 years old. My house back at home has parts of it that are at least 400-500 years old!

But (from the photos i've seen!) Singapore looks like Blade Runner. And I absolutely love that film!

I've managed to go on a fair few random adventurous trips now! So far i've done Zambia/Botswana, Australia/Thailand, Netherlands/France/Switzerland/Spain/Morocco, Poland/Slovakia, and last summer Greece/Republic of Macedonia/Belgium/Romania/Serbia/Bosnia & Herzegovina/Croatia! Means i've always been broke in term time, and never had enough spare money to learn how to drive (let alone get a car!), but it's been worth it!

Those bits are also beautiful, if a bit dull! I've gone through (and stayed in) some stunningly beautiful places like that though, with medieval churches and pubs that are several 100's of years old. Not sure if they'll be in Victorian working class dress for you though haha! Perhaps in parts of rural Yorkshire, in the north!

I went Bangkok > Chaing Mai > Northern Hills (staying with the forth world people, going elephant riding & rafting) > Chaing Mai (for Songkran - Thai new year, a 3 day national drunken waterfight) > Kanchanaburi > Kho Sok National Park (staying in treehouses and boat houses) > Ao Nang (beaches) > Bangkok > Ayutthaya (ancient ruined capital) > Bangkok and flying home!

Girls and their naked bondage pillow fights...

I'll give you some hard licking.

...oh wait! Liquor. Damn. Hmmm... Finals. Sounds apocalyptic. I have rum somewhere!?

Mmmm... wine exercise.

ginger ale and ginger beer are nice, but nothing like real ale!

I'd say the uk is about 70% grey and depressing, and 3o% beautiful. The bits that are beautiful though (like parts of Oxford/Bath/Yorkshire moors/Pembrokeshire/Lake District/Cornwall or Devon coast) are well worth it!

I met up with a friend living in the Blue Mountains, then went with him down the traditional Cairns > Brisbane > Byron Bay > Nimbin > Sydney route! Then went on to Thailand for a month with another friend who'd been staying in Perth for a few months.

I didn't ask!

Pfffft! That's nowt lass! I ave that much with my dinner.

Wine > tea > rum > coffee > ale > the rest.

I do like my corner of the world. It's a bit wet and cold though. I spent a month in australia a couple of years back!

She claims 6+ glasses of wine and some port. Then she can't remember!

Britain/Uk/whatever this place is called!

Wine is made of purest win.

It's not fine over here, but dark. Although that mey be because it's night time...

Anyway, I am drunk on wine, so very good. How's your fine self?

We'll she wasn't there when I was drinkinging the first bottle!

She was apparentlty just determined that the correct way to our house was via the Bay (so heading in the opposite direction for about an hour)!

We'll she's drinks too much!

I was actually woken up at 2am a couple pf nights ago to let her in! She'd left the drama sociiety ball very very drunk and had to be walked home by 3 of our friends! Apparently she kept trying to escape on the way back and arrived barefoot with cuts on her toes. Still giggling happily though!

*waves at*

I did! And now theyere gone! :'(

Nicole had two glasses of it too though. We watched superspiderman on the tv!

I am out of wine becuase I dranken it! Both bottles! And now it's gone.