Nothing's forgotten...
... nothing is ever forgotten.*

Including, it would seem, the true art of archery . Forget your carbon-fibre bows, your counter weights and your sights; the true art of archery is firing an accurate stream of arrows at a man-sized target, in rapid succession. This is the way they still do it in Shillong.

We've just had the pleasure of watching a unique local 'sport' that doubles as a system of local lottery: Sita Khnam involves a group of Khasi marksmen oh-so-cooly shooting hundreds of arrows into a barrel-shaped straw target within a 3 minute time frame! At the end of the shooting session, the number of on-target arrows are counted, and the last two digits of the total are taken as the lucky number. If you've bet on this particular number (before the shootout is concluded), the evening beers are on you.

David chose to play the odds and bet on the number 1 being the final digit of the lucky number. And -- along with the small crowd who'd taken an interest in his little flurry -- got overexcited when the adjudicator held high what was thought to be the final arrow, celebrating slightly too early. Disappointment, and a roar of disapproval, came crashing down as two arrows, one after the other, were thrown into the ground.

A gently fascinating spectacle and one that showed just quite how Robin Hood, and his handful of Merry Men, could have taken on a small Norman army.

*Ref: Robin of Sherwood (1980's. TV Series)