So I’m back home (yay!) and Alexis and I are lounging around in the living room on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Alexis is busy looking up information on Nottingham, UK, where we are going to be next week on the first leg of our multi-farious vacation (see our trip details link for complete itinerary).

She is reading out various bits of interesting information out to me as she’s browsing, including this gem : “Nottingham is where lace was first produced, and is the site of the Nottingham Lace Museum!”

Which made me think…

… Scene: a dimly lit room in the Museum. Enter, stage right, a GROUP of TOURISTs. They amble along the chamber, gawking at various exhibits. Enter, behind them, ETHEL P. WOODBRIDGE, senior tour guide at the Museum. She dates from the Industrial Revolution…

ETHEL : “And heah we have some fi-iine English lace, worn by Robin Hood himself during special night dances in the forest with his merry men…”
TOURIST 1 : “Uhmm, you mean by Lady Marian?”
ETHEL : “No, young man, by Robin Hood - his merry men all rather took a fancy to him in lace, dontcha know?”
TOURIST 2 : “Errrr, perhaps over his leather jacket, like, you know, how an armored knight has chainmail over his shirt, like that kind of lace?”
ETHEL : “Well! Aaa-ctually, Robin rather preferred wearing JUST lace… that’s what his merry men wore as well, see, just lace.”
TOURIST 1 : “So, wait a minute, Robin and his merry men spent their time dancing in Sherwood forest wearing just lace?”
ETHEL : “Tut tut, it wasn’t called Sherwood Forest back then, we locals knew it as Sheer Wood Forest!”

Nottingham, here we come!