Читать книгу The Lost Diary of Robin Hood’s Money Man - Steve Barlow - Страница 15

14th February 1190

I hate these long winter evenings. There’s nothing to do except sit round the fire with a few candles and play board games.

Robert loves board games, as long as they’re not too complicated. I tried to introduce him to chess (which Crusaders brought back from the Holy Land) but Robert is useless at it – he calls knights “horsies” and can never work out which way they go.

So we went back to Three Men’s Morris, where you have nine holes on a board and all you have to do is get three pieces in a row without being blocked^*.

Robert’s favourite game is queek, where you throw pebbles on to a chess board and bet whether they’ll land on a black or white square. He plays this game with Marian. When she loses, she shouts, “Wats!” and “Oh, dwat!” Then she blushes and says, “Oh, pardon my Fwench.”

Robin laughs just as much when he loses as when he wins, but there’s no skill in a game like this and I get bored out of my skull.

The Sheriff hates the Saxons and treats them like dirt. This is because they keep teasing him.

The Saxons called Nottingham “Snottingham”, but when the Normans came over and asked the name of the place, some Saxon told them, “It’s Snottingham,” and they thought he said, “It’s Nottingham”, so they got the name wrong on all their maps. Of course, Normans never admit they’ve made a mistake, so they insist on calling it Nottingham – but the Saxons still call it Snottingham, and whenever they see the Sheriff of Snottingham they shout out, “Hey up, Snotty!” and run off laughing.

^* Exactly as we now play noughts and crosses.