EARLY CHRISTMAS TREAT.

This week has been chaotic, which makes a pleasant change from the usual hum- drum ones.
On Tuesday evening a very close friend came across from Sheffield to take me out for a meal. This was really enjoyable and we caught up on each others ups and downs in life. I am so proud of my friend, she has reached heights in her job where women have never trod. The work schedule is grueling, flying all over the UK and Europe, extensive hours controlling major decision making meetings. None of this has ever gone to her head and she is still the same grounded person I started a friendship with over 20 yrs ago, she does all this and still manages to look a million dollars. No matter what, there is never more than a 4 to 6 week gap that she doesn't make contact and take me out somewhere.


It has been this last 18 months that I have realised how important my friends are to me. I have always loved and valued them, but respect them so much more now. I'm hardly fun to be around and the antics we used to get up to are no more, yet they're still here. Some know of my blog, some don't, nevertheless CHEERS mates, thanks for hanging around..
.

Thursday night was the opening of my sons extension to the restaurant. The original bar was very plush, but the restaurant was having to turn away so many covers because they were packed to capacity. Therefore it was decided that the old bar area would be redesigned to create more capacity for dining, and a new bar built as a separate area adjacent to it.


This was integrated to blend to the same excellent level, consistent with the rest of the building. Slightly oriental mixed with a West End boldness. Although the colour scheme is predominately monochrome, scattered about here and there are touches of gold in the form of some quite unique sculptures.





A wonderful place for private parties (idea for our family Christmas party next year). The evening was superb. I invited my elder sister and her husband who thoroughly enjoyed the eclectic music, champagne and exotic food, she was amazed that she woke the next morning without a headache!!! We both had our hands and cheeks kissed by the most handsome doormen (must find out the aftershave one in particular was wearing), in a word everything was so YUMMY!!!



I was pleased that I had an opportunity to brighten things a little for her. My nephew, (her son), was discharged from the Army on medical grounds, due to an injury he sustained whilst on duty. He has a wife and three children under five, and at this moment is still technically homeless. I won't go into detail, but my sister is doing her best to help, which is creating its own stresses and strains. I am disgusted however that there is such little support for our lads and lasses who fight for queen and country, from the Force's they served in and the local councils...

Friday night Math and I went to the local Tandoori, with a couple who have been friends of ours for many years. This again was a superb night, like going out in your comfy slippers, easy and relaxed conversation, its great when you have friends you feel so at ease with, priceless. So as you see, its been a wonderful week, but the best was yet to come.


I will be taking leave from my blog for the next five days, Math is up to his neck in learning his lines for the local pantomime he is taking part in that starts in January, as well as laying new floors and decorating our home.

Therefore, I was shocked and delighted when he surprised me today with an early Christmas present. This consists of a five day stay at a Therapy spa. I am of little help to him here at home and with the lounge being dismantled to lay the floor, the bedrooms are the only place I can rest my leg. Its better all around that I'm elsewhere whilst all the alterations are being carried out, and what better place than this thoughtful gift? My father-in-law has also given the same gift to my mother -in -law, so I will not be on my own, or allowed to get up to any mischief (drat)!!! I have been told not to worry about packing, apparently I need no make-up (yikes), just bathing wear and a few casual clothes, big white fluffy gowns are provided which you wear most of the time.


Not only is the place packed to the hilt with relaxing treatments, there are courses on 'Transcendental Meditation'. This is a form of meditation I have wanted to explore since starting to practise meditation. If it seems OK maybe I should book him a few days there after all his hard work and performing!!!
So take care, and I will see you soon when I come back all relaxed and Zen like...

FRIDAY 55 FLASH FICTION, famous females

Oooooh!, how my heart flutters, when I gaze at you flexing your bow, proudly dressed in your Lincoln green.
You aimed that arrow of passion to my heart, my darling Robin of Lockley; you and Sherwood own my soul.
The wicked Sheriff of Nottingham, evil through and through, knows
nothing of my love for you...



Maid Marian.

The band of Merry Men that accompanies Robin Hood in his exploits in Sherwood Forest is pretty much an all-boys club – with one exception. No folk tale is quite complete without a love interest, and Robin’s is Maid Marian. Marian stands for all the chaste maidens of the English folk tradition, but there is a more combative side to her as well.

Robin Hood and his Merry Men relieving the Sheriff of Nottingham of his wealth, in Sherwood Forest Maid Marian isn’t present in the very earliest versions of the Robin Hood story in the 14th century, when the emphasis is on wild woodsmen living in the rough, outside of polite society, but she had become an integral part of the troupe by the late 16th century. The relationship between her and Robin then gives the tales a chivalric turn, and adds complexity to his character. He knows how to live the predatory life of the outlaw, but there is also now a capacity in him for tenderness.

The mythological roots of Marian’s own character make her just as complex. We needn’t see her as the delicate, simpering, fragile creature that the Victorians made of her, in which she stands for the archetypal damsel in distress. She too lives in the woods after all, and in earlier eras she was as skilled in hunting and archery as her male companions. In some of the tales she evokes Diana, the Roman goddess of hunting. Marian began life as the Queen of the May, herself a version of Diana, the young woman chosen at May festivities to personify the end of winter, the return of fertility to the soil and the bursting forth of natural forces once more after the long, barren months of the year. Bonfires were lit, a maypole was set up and there was ritual dancing around it.
The May Games had two presiding spirits: Robin Goodfellow, the rough-and-ready huntsman, precursor of Robin Hood, and the white-clad Queen of the May, who was the spirit of the fields, of fertility and the anarchic excess of springtime growth. A May Queen was elected each year from among the villagers, crowned with blossom and garlanded with flowers, as a personification of the strength and abundance of the earth. When she made her entrance in the Robin Hood ballads and stories, she was the narrative embodiment of just this symbolic figure.
Not just a pretty face!

There is no doubt that Marian is a gutsy, courageous presence in the classic ballads. In one version of her entry into the band of Merry Men, disguised in male costume, she challenges Robin, himself disguised, to a duel with swords, and gives as good as she gets:They drew out their swords, and to cutting they went. 'At least an hour or more, that the blood ran apace from bold Robin’s face, and Marian was wounded sore'.

“O hold thy hand,” said Robin Hood.“And thou shalt be one of my string, to range in the wood with bold Robin Hood, and hear the sweet nightingale sing.”
Note that it is Robin who concedes the contest, (Marmie, did you say you were nothing like Maid Marian)?
Far from being embarrassed when they discover each other’s true identities, he welcomes her with open arms into the woodland fraternity. She is already Robin’s lover, as an earlier verse of the ballad makes clear –'With kisses sweet their red lips meet, for she and the earl did agree; in every place, they kindly embrace, with love and sweet unity'.- but now she is also his equal in the band.
20th century girl eh?

But what about thesilver screen? Olivia De Havilland and Errol Flynn starred in "The Adventures Of Robin Hood", (1938© WARNER BROS). In recent times, she has become more than his equal. The BBC children’s TV series Maid Marian And Her Merry Men (1989-1994) presented Marian as the real leader of the heroic troupe, while Robin is just a self-regarding wimp who has become the group’s figurehead by chance.

Maid Marian is the focus and title character of a mock-chivalric, early 19th-century satirical fable by Thomas Love Peacock, and also of a recent debut novel by Elsa Watson (Maid Marian, 2004), which relates the adventures of the merry band from Marian’s point of view.

In 1999, Cardiff University academic Stephen Knight noted, to outrage in many quarters, that in the original 14th-century ballads, there is no mention of women at all. He concluded that Robin Hood is probably gay, and that therefore the merriness of the Merry Men might not have been entirely a question of temperament. On this reading, Marian arrives among the cast of characters in the 16th century, as a way of making the stories more acceptable to an audience for whom homosexuality was now much more beyond the social pale.

So be it fact or fiction, there are many story's about Maid Marian, I have posted just a few. Being the romantic I love to think that despite the wealth and luxury offered to her by the Sheriff of Nottingham, Marian stayed with her true love Robin, until her uncle "Richard the Lionheart" returned from the war. He married them and returned the couple to the wealth and status that the Sheriff had taken from them, AND EVERYONE LIVED HAPPY EVER AFTER...

VOTE FOR THE LIVING LEGEND

The national lottery in the UK is investing £50 million into a project. The catch is that there are four projects shortlisted for the monies, and its down to the public vote to determine who gets the cash. Well, one of the projects is very close to where I live. If we were to get the funds it would preserve and develop an area of great historical interest and beauty. Who could forget Robin Hood and Sherwood forest! Not only that though, it will bring much needed economic regeneration into an area of Britain that has seen much decline since the closure of the mines and the hosiery industry in the late 70's and early 80's.

All I ask is a small favour. Just visit the site at The Peoples £50 million, and listen to the actor Brian Blessed (you know him - from the 1981 Flash Gordon film and that famous phrase 'Gordons alive?') explain why the project is so important.

Then in an unbiased and open way, register on the site and vote for the Sherwood project!!!).

Please don't be shy, vote whever you are, you never know when you might be in Sherwood with good old Robin of Locksley, (and Queenie from blogland of course).