How Culhwch won Olwen

This is something I did more than a year ago now but it never ended up on the blog for some reason.

I was doing a High Medieval module and we studied the story of Culhwch and Olwen, which is an old Welsh story. It's all very exciting, with evil giants and huge boars and so on but the thing that made me chuckle is that the hero in it is so LAME. Seriously.

He's set a list of 40 impossible tasks to do by a horrible giant so he can marry his daughter. And what he basically does is slope off to King Arthur's court and go "Er, can you do these for me please?"

You'll need to click on this to read it properly. I know, I know, HOW I VEX YOU ALL.

So that's the story of that. If you're interested, here's a Wikipedia page on it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culhwch_and_Olwen

What happens to me in pubs

Little known fact: somehow or another, I've ended up as Cider Representative in the uni's Real Ale Society (see my defence of cider on The Yorker.co.uk http://www.theyorker.co.uk/news/fooddrink/7434)

So I thought I'd do a little blog about what happens to me in pubs. Being a girl (surprise I know), one does encounter a few patronising barmen...

As usual click on the pictures to make them clearer.

Reasons why John Roe is awesome

Dr John Roe is my tutor this term for Elizabethan Love Poetry. I also had him a couple of terms ago for modern British and Irish literature (which was a bit misleading because the authors we studied were 96% Irish).

He is the archetpyal English professor, the kind of person you imagine when you think of an English expert. I was happily reading my edition of Shakespeare's poems the other day only to find that he'd edited it and done the introduction. And there's me in seminars blithering on about how the rhymes sound pretty and other such nonsense. Madness.

As usual click on the pictures for a clearer image because I am clearly lacking in basic computer skills.

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The graph of spelling-my-name-wrong annoyance

So I may be revealing my less attractive pedantic side, but oh well. This is something that really gets my proverbial goat. I always try and make sure I'm spelling someone's name right because I know that it's something that annoys people.

Too many times I've sent emails and signed them off as Lizzy (plus my actual name in the address is Lizzy), only to have someone reply cheerily with "Thanks for that Lizzie!" I don't know what I have to do, underline it? Put it in bold? Put flashing lights around it?

It's just laziness. Especially on Facebook when it's RIGHT THERE IN FRIGGING FRONT OF YOU.

OK rant over.

The pie chart of procrastination

I like to call this the 'pie-chart of procrastination'. I'm currently writing an essay on medieval childbirth and in my reading I came across some interesting facts. Did you know...?

• A woman who commits adultery shall do penance for three years as a fornicator. So also shall she do penance who takes her husband's semen in her food for the increase of love.
• If a man has intercourse with his wife from behind, he shall do penance for forty days for the first time.

This is from The Penitential of Theodore, who was Anglosaxon rather than medieval, but I found it amusing. Clearly these Anglosaxons were dirtier than we thought.

The cycle of English seminars

I haven't done my 3rd year yet but I can only imagine that it will be like that. Having a few teething problems with the pictures so click on them for a clearer picture!

Welcome

This is the very first post of my very new blog.

Fear not everyone, this is not another of those whiney self-indulgent blogs that clutter up the Internet. My Big Fat Geeky English Blog (or BFGEB for short) is a place where I can put the geeky cartoons that clog up my head on a daily basis. Hopefully they'll amuse someone.

Doing English literature at university is undeniably academically and intellectually stimulating and blah blah blah, but you also have to laugh at it sometimes.

Along the way I'll be trying to answer the questions that plague us all -

• Is it possible to justify 3 hours contact time a week for the money we pay?
• Will we ever get a job?
• Is there any way we can slip Harry Potter into an essay and get away with it?

Stay tuned duckies.